Have you practiced today?

Eli has...

You decide...

I thought I'd post a couple videos to show you some of Eli's skills :) Sorry about the 'no pants' thing. I had just changed his diaper, and hadn't put his pants back on...well...shorts. I'm afraid it's never going to be cool enough here for pants...

Anyway, we've been working a little more with Eli and his 'crawling'. This is what he does instead of crawling:

Kinda funny :) He will also roll to an object he wants:

The more we work with him laying on the floor (as opposed to sitting him down...which is really what I've done with him for a while now...) the quicker he does things. He would rarely roll like that, and in just the last few days he's really started to roll around to get things. He's figuring out ways to get what he wants :) We'll keep workin'...who knows? Maybe he will crawl!

I personally think one of the reasons he isn't so 'mobile' is because he is workin' on his verbal skills. Watch this video:

Did you hear him say 'Kitty' and 'Up'?! I know it may not sound like kitty completely, but as soon as we walk into Ryan & Jennifer's house that's what he says...and as soon as I say 'say kitty' he says that. Smarty pants. The other day he was eating breakfast, and was done. He looked right at me and said 'up'! AND, today when Jennifer came over as soon as she walked in he looked up and said 'aunty'. He also will say 'dadadada' when daddy gets home. SO, I think he makes up for the 'not moving so much' with talkin' up a storm :) SO, you decide...do you think he's talkin', or is it just coincidence? I'm prone to think my child is brilliant...

Playin' around

Today has been a busy day! I got up early and went for a run. I was exhausted, though (wore out from watching the Tiger's game last night...still sad about that one...) and only went 2 miles. It took forever to run those 2 miles too. I will be honest, when I woke up I was debating whether to run then or just wait until Eli woke up and run with him...then I remembered I had left my stroller at Jennifer's, so I had no choice.

Eli got up and I had a little photo shoot :) I decided I just didn't have enough pictures of him...

*sigh* Whatta cutie...
We got ready and ran to the grocery store, and then headed to Christine's house for a play date.

We got to hang out with Kaz-Christine was watching him for Bri. It was so fun to see him! He's getting SO BIG! He's bigger than Eli I think! He reminds me of Eli :) I got to feed him his lunch, and he was just giggling! He's so cute...

Levi is about to crawl. He's super cute too. Okay...ALL the babies are super cute :) Levi is so laid back! He's got some killer lashes too.

Is it just me, or does it look like Olivia did something painful to Eli and she thinks it's hilarious...That's not what happened...it just looks that way :)

The traditional 'couch' shot. As you can see, not all of the kids enjoy this. We joked that we will still be trying to get this shot when the kids are 18 and still hanging out together. Pretty sure they will be VERY sick of it by then...

Happy kids!

'Uh, Megan...whatcha doin'?'

Now Eli looks like he's got a plan...

We had a great time playing with the kids and talking. We headed for home around 2, and Eli went down for a (very short) nap. We had tacos for dinner (that's for you, Rick) and worked with Eli trying to get him to crawl. He has decided that he can move if he scootches (How DO you spell that word?!) on his back. It's pretty funny. I'll try and get a video of it tomorrow :) He took a bath, and went to bed. I've been playin' with Photoshop for the last 2 hours, and my eyes are starting to burn, so I'm gonna load some pictures to walmart.com and turn the computer off!

A busy weekend!

What a weekend! We had a packed weekend, but a GREAT one! It started off on Friday when we got to go see Ben & Carly swim in their swim meet. It was very fun to watch them-I can't believe how fast they are!

I didn't really take many pictures, but this one of Ben eating his very blue 'sport bean' made me laugh.

Eli did great at the meet-now that his tooth has finally popped through he's a much happier baby. He was content to play with his aunt and uncle, and go for walks with daddy. We had to leave before Ben & Carly's last event, but we got to watch 3 strokes. Very impressive.

Saturday we got up and I took Eli with me for a run. I had run 2 miles early Friday morning, and had planned on going 3 on Saturday. I haven't run pushing a stroller for a while because I've been trying to get up early, or go later after Edgar gets home...Now, our stroller is wonderful-we love our jogger! However, the route I went on has several hills (pretty sure I've mentioned the GIANT hill before) and when running up a hill with a jogger it's much harder...SO, I did go 3 miles, but ended up walking up 2 of the hills. I ran the rest, though, and went at about a 12 min mile pace, so I was happy with that.

After I got back I made pancakes and got cleaned up. Edgar ended up having to go into work for a few hours, so while Eli napped, I started working on getting ready for our party :)

Krista & Eliott invited us over to a 'murder mystery' party. The party was set in the 20's, and we were suppose to dress the part. After much gel and hair spray, I got my hair to look like this:

It's suppose to be 'finger curls' which were popular in the 20's. It turned out pretty good...though I don't think they used quite as much gel in the 20's as I did...and it looked pretty stiff :)

I also had a TON of eye makeup on...and if you read Jennifer's recent entry, you already know Eli wouldn't look at me with all my make-up on :) It was pretty funny. He would look at me, blink really hard a couple of times, and look away. We finished getting ready, took Eli to Ryan & Jennifer's house (You can read about his activities while we were gone here...) and headed to the party.

Krista & Maranatha-dressed to kill! :)

When ya got this stuff hanging over a chair, you know you're at a costume party :)

Edgar was a 'mobster' and I was a cocktail waitress. It was very fun. Edgar figured out who the murderer was-smart guy! Krista posted a BUNCH of pictures on her site, so click here to see more of our 'adventures' Saturday night :)
Sunday morning we got up and headed to church. When I went to drop Eli off in the nursery, he was 1 of 16 kids...so I decided to stay and help out :) I am SO excited that we will be in our new church building soon! It will have 2 nurseries, so the younger kids will be separate from the older ones, which will be very nice.

After church we met up with Abuela and went to a Fall Festival that was going on in her neighborhood.

Cousin's checkin' out each others shades...

Eli went on a swing for the first time...and LOVED it! He stayed in there quite a while!

**side note...notice his shirt...Too big on him, but today was a very important game for the Tigers, and we had to show our spirit! We couldn't watch the game, so my mom sent me text updates throughout the whole game. It was almost as good as watching the game! I was totally just expecting occasional score updates, but she sent me inning by inning updates...who got hits, who was up, who made amazing catches, who got home runs...It was awesome. AND the Tigers won! However...so did the Twins...so there will be an extra game on Tuesday to determine the winner of their division...I plan on watching the game Tuesday, though I think I would still thoroughly enjoy text updates throughout :)

Eli got to go see the K-9 unit dog. He LOVES animals...though he calls all of them 'kitty'...well...his version of 'kitty' anyway :)

Daddy took him down the slide

And Katie ran all over the place playing too.

It was pretty fun.

Afterwards we went to mom's house and just hung out for a while. Eli took a nap...and I decided he needed some company, so I took one with him :) Mom made us some dinner, we ate and are now at home.

We have a busy week ahead, though I don't know that it is 'interesting busy', but I'm sure I'll find something interesting to blog about...well...interesting to me anyway...

What time did YOUR day start?

Yesterday ended so well. Eli was so happy to have his walker, I got caught up on a bunch of my school stuff, and I was headed to bed at 9:30. I was thrilled to get to bed early because I had planned on getting up today to run before Edgar left for work...which meant an early morning. Well...at 10:30 Eli woke up and started crying. This is extremely unusual for him. The last time he got up after he had been put to bed like that was 8 months ago...he never wakes up! I went in to check on him, and he was just screaming...so I picked him up, and he immediately stopped. He didn't seem to be in pain, or hungry, his diaper wasn't dirty, and he wasn't running a fever. I held him for a bit and put him back in bed. He cried...and cried and cried. It wasn't constant, but at 12:30 I got back up and went back to his room. I picked him up and he stopped. I tried to rock him to sleep, but every time I would try and lay him back down he would scream. SO, I got in the twin bed in his room with him, and there we slept last night...well...sort of. Every half hour he would wake up and cry. As soon as I would put my hand on him and let him know I was there he would stop. Sometimes I don't even think he was awake as he was crying. He didn't open his eyes-he just cried. A couple of times he was crying and I would sit him up and he would 'wake up' and stop. It was weird. I took his temperature, and it was normal, so I have NO IDEA what was wrong.

This morning I felt pretty crummy needless to say...Eli was fairly cranky too. At 8 I took his temperature again and it was 99.5, so I gave him some Tylenol to see if it would help him feel better. He did seem to settle down a bit. At 10:00 I stepped outside and realized it was GORGEOUS out. Low humidity, and cool. So I decided I deserved a treat :)

I loaded Eli into his stroller and we walked to Dunkin' Donuts :) It's amazing how much better a day gets when you have an iced coffee and bagel-even a day following a near-sleepless night! The walk was so nice too. It seems like forever since I've been able to go outside without instantly sweating! I think Eli enjoyed being outside too-he chatted the whole way there. When we got back I put some shoes on Eli and we went out in the backyard and walked around out there too. I put him down for a nap and he slept for an hour and a half. YAY!

He got up and was just plain pleasant to be around. I think perhaps the fact that he had my undivided attention helped :) I didn't have to 'get a bunch of stuff done', so I could just play with him.

Lately he really likes to pull things out of things...He'll take every toy out of the box, or every book out of the bin...or every diaper out of the diaper caddy...He pulled those out, I put them back, he pulled them out, I put them back...it was a fun game :)

He also has been having lots of fun playing the piano too. He's composing this really contemporary jazz piece. It's very interesting...
One thing about this morning (yeah...back to that) was that I did not get to run. I was exhausted by the time I was suppose to go, so I just figured I wasn't going to get to go. WELL, since the weather was so nice, I went this evening. I think if every run was like the run I had tonight, I would run every day...twice a day maybe. It was WONDERFUL. It was nice and cool (for Florida) and low humidity (I think I've mentioned that once already...). I put my headphones on and off I went. I started off at a fairly normal pace, then 'The Macarena' came on. All I could think of was when my dad did his version of the Macarena dance. It made me laugh, and I picked up the pace, and took off (well...took off for me...) I ran 3 miles in 32 minutes 19 seconds. That's faster than the race I just ran! It was 10 min 45 sec pace. I haven't run at that pace for a very long time-it felt great. I realize my runs won't always feel like that, but I'll take it when I can get it!
I had a couple errands to run after Eli went to bed, and when I got home Edgar had the Tiger's game on-YAY! They're on TV! I never get to watch them play! So that's what we're doing-we're both on our computers doin' stuff while watching the Tiger's beat up on the Twins. SO, while the day didn't start off great, it is ending fabulously!

Aaaaannnnddd...he's mobile...finally!

After spending the last few days with a rather fussy, annoyed baby (really, he's a great kid...) I finally gave in and got him a walker. I came to the conclusion a while ago that Eli was never going to crawl. NOW, I could be wrong. Tomorrow morning he could wake up and just decide to do it, but judging from his hatred of being on his belly, and his refusal to get up on his hands and knees (honest! Ask Jennifer!) I think he's decided crawling is not for him. Now walking, on the other hand, is all he wants to do. Unfortunately (for my back) that requires someone to help him. He can't walk on his own yet...but he wants to so bad. He's been so frustrated lately that he can't move. If someone is not walking with him, he's mad. (Now...he does still play while sitting...he doesn't just cry all day :) though sometimes it feels like that...) Anyway, today I had...well...a day. I don't know why I was so easily agitated today, but everything seemed to set me off. (REALLY, WHY is a car seat so hard to install?!?!?!?!?!) Jennifer was watching Eli and mentioned that he was fussy unless you were walking him, and I just decided then and there he needed a walker. So I put the car seat back in my car, wiped the sweat off my face, and we headed to Target.

This happened:

And I have my happy baby back :)

Later that day...

Okay, so I said I would post again with pictures...but I ended up not taking any pictures at all today! I know! Can you believe it?! SO, not wanting to disappoint all 10 of you :) I am posting a picture from yesterday. It's not a great picture...but by the time we finally got the camera Eli's cuteness had stopped...We went over to Edgar's Abuelo's house yesterday after church. We had a really nice time seeing family and hanging out. We were just getting ready to go and Eli started playing with Abuelo. Eli likes to bump heads...if you tilt your head towards him, he will bump his forehead to yours. It's pretty funny. Well, he was doing that with Abuelo. Super cute! And we

missed it...but it's a fun picture of Abuelo laughing.

Today was super busy, but good. After my great start to the morning Eli and I headed out to the mall for a play date with the mommy group I'm in. It was really nice to get out and hang out with some moms. We played in the play area and then had lunch. I had totally anticipated taking pictures, but Eli wanted to walk around the whole time...and since the only way he can walk is if I am holding his hands, I was unable to snap any pictures. Oh well...I'm sure we'll be back at the mall again soon to play :)

Afterwards I went to Kmart and got my costume for the upcoming Murder Mystery party Edgar and I are going to. We're so excited! Krista is hosting it, and it is sure to be a blast. I'm a cocktail waitress from the 20's. Edgar is part of the mob. Fun times :)

We got home and Eli took a well deserved nap, and I got some things done that needed to be done. We ate dinner, played with Eli, ya know, normal evening stuff :)

(While eating dinner Krista called and gave an update on Tricia. She made it through surgery very well. The 'mass' wasn't cancerous, PRAISE THE LORD! and every thing went great. Thanks so much for praying!)

Then I cut Edgar's hair. By myself. Without my sister's help. And it doesn't look terrible.

It's been a good day.