"What does Grandma's kitty say?"

"Sssss," apparently! This is Eli's latest trick. He spent some time last night at my parents house, and got to know their cat a little better. Their cat is very lovey and affectionate and wants to be petted - for about 10 seconds. Then she starts hissing (I'm pretty sure she must be bi-polar). So, I guess Eli was petting the cat, all was well, and then she started hissing at him. And he hissed right back. So now he knows that Grandma's kitty says "hiss" or "ssss" to him.

Birthday Party Pictures

Happy Birthday, Eli!

Here's a throw-back picture to the day Eli was born, and a picture to show how big he is now! What a difference a year makes, right? I feel very sentimental right now remembering how crazy and wonderful this day was one year ago. What an amazing year it's been!

We're leaving for Hilton Head in a couple hours. If I have extra time before we leave, I'll post birthday pictures - I still need to get them off the camera. Otherwise, we'll post when we get back!

State of Emergency

Yeah, we've been in a State of Emergency since Hurricane Ike came through here on Sunday. Can you believe it - Hurricane effects in KY? Sunday came with hurricane force winds, up to 80 mph pretty much all afternoon. We lost power right after the Bengals game started (although Thom says is was no big loss, since they played terribly). By early evening the wind had calmed down enough, and we were tired of sitting inside with nothing to do, so we went with our neighbors and walked through the neighborhood. I couldn't believe how much damage there is - people missing siding and roof shingles, lots of fallen trees, and misc stuff everywhere. We got pretty lucky, especially when our power came back on Sunday night. Our neighbors came over to cook, since we have a gas stove. But the area suffered the largest black out in history, and thousands are still without - including my parents, who have been staying with us. Schools have been out this week, and now restaurants and everyone else without power are having to throw out all their food. There was a gas shortage since so many stations were without power, but I guess that is getting better now. Eli and I ran an errand yesterday and it was strange to see so many huge, old trees just completely uprooted. Bizarre.
But on the upside - we are leaving for Hilton Head on Friday! Yeah! I think we could all use a vacation after this! I'll try to get pictures from Eli's birthday party posted before we go.

Barbershop

Well, after trimming Eli's hair myself twice, I decided he needed a real "big boy" haircut. So we took him to the barber Thom used to go to (before I started shaving his hair). He did really well and sat pretty still in Thom's lap. I thought it would be a lot more traumatic, but all was well.

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!