Picture Book

Yummy. Here is a wonderful tomato, mozzarella, and basil salad we made with tomatoes and basil fresh from our yard. Worthy of another "yummy."
Okay, Eli's hair is getting really long on top. I recognize this. Some days it all stands up (I think depending on how much he was rolling around in bed), and other days it's kind of flat, and it tends to go forward, making it look longer than if it went to the side. However, I am having a really hard time with the fact that our baby needs a haircut. A haircut is for big kids, not babies. Right? Sigh. I do think it is about time to just take a little off the top. Just a little.
We recently opened a really cute Little People Noah's Ark set that Eli got for his baptism months ago. This is Noah hanging out of Eli's mouth. Poor Noah. Eli always manages to find Noah in the middle of a pile of toys, put Noah's feet in his mouth, and crawl around like this. I hope Noah doesn't mind getting his feet wet.
Look! Kari, Adam, and James (and their new dog) stopped by one day last week. It was really great to see them again, we haven't seen each other enough in the past year. But, anyhow, here are the boys playing. Since they are both very busy, it was quite a task to get them both in the same frame.


Some other notes of interest:
Eli is finally crawling. After what seemed like forever pulling himself army style, and rolling everywhere, he started actually crawling last week. My life has not been the same since. And here's a question for baby stores: Since many houses, such as ours, now have such an open floor plan, why is it so difficult to find extra wide baby gates? Are we alone in this search? We did find one (plus the extension), but had to order it online, and pay hefty shipping charges. What a pain - there are things other than shipping charges that I prefer to spend my money on.

Our kitty is finally almost back to her goofy normal self. As I previously posted, she wasn't doing so well for a while. Well, she's been off the 'roids for a while now and is running around some, and chasing bugs that end up inside, and I even saw her briefly chase the dog. She's still not jumping onto things, but is that really such a bad thing?

What's Going On?

So, I guess we've been pretty busy over the last couple weeks, as it's been almost 3 weeks since I last posted. Here's a run-down of what's been going on:

We went to some friends' lake house and had a great time playing in the water.

Our gym has opened an outdoor waterpark, so I've been taking Eli up there to play sometimes.

We've had some great evenings hanging out with our neighbors; including one night out at a bar that had all the ingredients of a great night out - no kids, good food, good beer, and conversation that doesn't leave the table!

One of Eli's girlfriends, Josie, had her 1st birthday party!

And, oh yeah, we bought a new car. Mom and Dad were nice enough to watch Eli for a couple hours Tuesday night, that we could go sign all the papers and all that fun stuff. It's Thom's new car, but we plan on using it when we go out together, instead of my giant SUV, to save on gas. I'll definitely get a picture of the new car up soon. It's a 2009 Hyundai Sonata. It has all the fun stuff - leather seats, sunroof, iPod port, touch screen, XM radio, GPS. And now it has a brand new giant car seat.

Eli has also been up to a lot lately. Here's a rundown of some of the things he's doing:

Shaking his head "no." Actually, this is the same motion as his dance move. If you tell him "no," he shakes his head. If you tell him to dance, or if Ellen comes on TV, he also starts shaking his head. His dance move shake involves a slight head tilt to the right, but all in all they're very similar.

He's waving "hello." He spent Sunday's sermon waving to Pastor Vicki. She had been gone on vacation for about 2 weeks, and I guess he was excited to see her back.

He now moves more gracefully from sitting up to being on his belly. And can get from his back/belly to a sitting position - we're now full circle.

Eli is also "giving 5" to anyone who will offer their hand.

We think maybe his top teeth are finally starting to come in. We can't see anything, and he's quick to get you with his bottom teeth if you dare stick a finger in there. But he's acting a lot like he did when the bottom ones came in. So we'll see.

He's giving lots of kisses. Big, open-mouth kisses. But if you're up for getting your cheek wet and slimy, they are very sweet.

And our favorite new thing is that he will mimic his first animal noise - the monkey. For anyone that has been around Eli for any amount of time, you know that he is very monkey-like. He does a lot with his feet, and I'm not exaggerating. We call him our little monkey, and his 1st birthday party will be monkey themed. And now he will mimic monkey sounds. Very cute.

So that's a brief synopsis of what's going on here. Let us know what you're up to!

You're a Grand Old Flag

Happy 4th of July! We had a busy weekend. Our neighborhood had a party Thursday night, we had parades, a party at Bunnell's, and fireworks on Friday, another parade and dinner for Thom's Dad's birthday on Saturday, and today we're going to the pool all day with my parents. So here are some highlights from the last couple days. . .

Kitty on Steroids

As some of you may know, our cat, Tia, has not been herself since we got back from vacation about a month ago. I took her to the emergency vet as soon as we got home that Saturday evening (3 hours in the animal ER plus 12 hours in the car make for a very long day). Anyhow, they couldn't find anything wrong with her. Well, she still had not gotten any better and I was really starting to worry about her. So we took her to the vet last Wednesday. After a very lengthy exam, the vet recommended an x-ray on her back. She had a myriad of possibilities - a neural muscular issue (like MS), a broken back, a herniated disc, or who knows what else. So we did the x-ray, which was negative, so no broken back. So we decided to treat it as a herniated disc - steroids and pain medicine. And if she wasn't any better within a week we would reevaluate. Luckily, she does seem to be doing better. This is her first day without pain medicine, so we'll see if she continues to get better. I want to make sure the pain killers weren't masking her pain enough that that alone was allowing her to move around better. So we'll see what happens.

When You're Smiling

Here are Eli's 9 month pictures. We think they're pretty cute! He did really well this time. We couldn't get him to stay on his stomach for pictures, he wanted to roll over immediately, and we eventually had to remove the beach props, because he just wanted to touch them and not look at anything else.

But if you would like a picture, let me know, and I'll get one to you!

Big Weekend

Well, we all had a big weekend! Saturday night we hosted our church's Young Professionals group Annual Cornhole Party. We've done this before, and always have a really good time. It's great to get together with people you don't always hang out with. By the end of the evening, our neighbors were over. We got out the fire pit, and sat around and enjoyed some adult beverages until very late. All in all, it was a great night. Plus, Eli had a nice milestone - for the first time, he picked up (on his own) and drank from his sippy cup! It was very exciting. For a long time he had no interest in drinking from the sippy cup, and we really got out of the habit of offering it to him when we were on vacation. So last week we started getting it back out occasionally, and lo and behold, he started drinking out of it. Amazing.

Yesterday was our church Golf Outing, which I was in charge of organizing for the second year. Thom played again, and got our neighbor, Tom, to play, too. We had a quick downpour right at the start, but then it cleared up and held off again until later in the evening. Everything went well, though, and competition was stiff this year. But my Dad's team won with a 9 hole score of 29.

I had forgotten to mention that Eli now has two teeth, which he finds very intriguing. He plays with his tongue a lot now. And on Wednesday night he did "so big" all by himself. You know that game, right? "How big is Eli?" "Soooo big" and raise their arms in the air. Well, we weren't really doing this all that much, but Wednesday night I asked him and he raised his arms up high and smiled. Of course, I cried, it took me by surprise that much that he did it already. Aah, a proud mommy.

9 Months!

Eli had his 9 month birthday this week. Which, of course, comes with a doctor's appointment. He is now 20 pounds 4 ounces and 29 1/4 inches long. He is much higher percentage-wise for his length than his weight. But one look at his chunky thighs and you can tell he's not missing any meals. The doctor said he looks great. He is suddenly on a strike against vegetables. He just sits in his high chair and cries - until you stop trying to feed him and give him some finger food. Stinker. So we're really starting to experiment with more regular food and stuff. Eli has a super sensitive gag reflex so trying new things is always interesting. I thought all the spit up was bad, but throw-up in the high chair is no fun either!

Anyhow, he's so close to crawling. He rolls all over the place, though, he's never in the same spot for long. And he does scoot himself backwards while on his belly. And he will get on his back, lift his butt in the air, and push himself backwards with his feet. He's very crafty. And still very much a monkey. That kid does more with his feet - it's ridiculous. We were telling the doctor everything he does with his feet, and he was just laughing. They're like 2 more hands to him. So we have decided that monkeys will be the theme of his 1st birthday. Seems appropriate.