Dancing and now singing

For the last several weeks Eli has been dancing to music that he hears. OK, not so much dancing, as jerking his body forward and back. More like a bob, I guess you could say. But I haven't heard him try to sing until today. We were walking the dogs and Eli had his set of plastic keys that play the beginning parts of several kids songs, like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Ol' Susanna." He was trying to hum along with the song in his high-pitched little voice when he pressed the keys.

It was so cute, and SO off-key.... :)

Going it alone

Michael is out of town this weekend so I am going it alone with Eli. So far so good... and I did not get a lot of sleep last night. I woke at 2:45 a.m. to be at work at 3:30 a.m. to cover all of the Black Friday madness. It was great to be off work at 11:30 a.m. and know I worked a full shift!

Anyway, when I got home Eli had just woken from a nap so I knew I couldn't rest. Michael took off for the airport and we took the dogs to the track and threw the ball for Wally. (Poor Zula only got a short walk.) When we got back we loaded up the car and went to the gym to go swimming. Eli loves the water so much we stayed in for probably 30 or 40 minutes.

That totally wore him out so he took a great nap and that's when I crashed. We both slept from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. And now it seems he is asleep. Let's hope it is for the night! Good night!

Keep away -- with Eli and a vacuum

Today I wanted to give the living room rug a quick vacuum and Eli doesn't seem to mind the vacuum so I did it while he was playing there.

He was crawling as fast as he could toward the front of the vacuum and it was all I could do to try to keep Eli away from the vacuum. I was laughing so hard I had to stop vacuuming and Eli climbed right on the front of the vacuum. Even with all of that noise, he loves the vacuum. (Yes, it might have something to do with the fact that he listened to vacuum cleaner noise for the entire first three months of his life!)

Anyway, it was quite funny and I wished that I had a video of it...

Becoming a gated community

Eli now has the ability to climb up stairs. Uh oh. He went up 6 stairs yesterday and about the same amount today.

Eli does not yet have the ability to climb down stairs. Uh oh. He stops on a stair and then tries to sit down, entirely missing a stair and then falling backwards (he hasn't done that yet, that's just what would happen if his mama or daddy weren't there).

We are in the process of looking for a gate for the bottom of the stairs. That would make 4 gates in our house. We live in a gated community.

11-months-old

Eli is 11-months-old today. Holy cow.

I just can't believe how big he is. And how much he babbles. And how often he smiles at mama and daddy. And how he crawls around and explores all the drawers, baskets and shelves in the house (oh yeah, and the toilet!).

Nanna is visiting Eli this weekend so we are planning to have some fun -- not sure what we will do yet.

A little fish

Eli is a little fish. I took him swimming for the first time in a LONG time last Monday. Then we went again two days ago. He was in heaven. He splashes, tries to blow bubbles, kicks his feet and laughs and laughs. The first time we went with Stef and Alex. Stef taught me this song:

The grand ol' duke of Earl

He had 100 men

He marched them up the hill

And marched them down again

Cuz when you're up, you're up

And when you're down, you're down

And when you're in the middle...

You're neither up nor down!

You throw the baby up and down with the words to the song, and boy, Eli loves that! (Thanks Stef!)

I am so glad that he likes the water. I was always surprised when I would take him to the pool when he was younger and he hated it. He would last about 8 minutes and start wailing, and continue the wailing through the shower and into the locker room. It was so exhausting to take him swimming that I would need a two-hour nap afterwards... (ok, ok, I am exaggerating.)

Crawling and waving -- but not at the same time

Well Eli has now crawled with his tummy off the ground at home also. He still does the army crawl mostly, but he is getting more and more used to the "real" crawl.

I don't think I mentioned that Eli waves now. At daycare on Friday, I picked him up and before we left he started waving good-bye to everyone. And I hadn't even said good-bye or started waving myself. It was quite cute.

A real crawl

Apparently Eli crawled today without being on his tummy. I missed it, of course, because he was in daycare. Sarah said that she was holding up his blankie and he crawled over to her to get it -- probably 3-4 steps of true, tummy-off-the-ground crawling. I am just bummed that I missed it :)

Michael has been trying to teach Eli to say "bottle" and he does say "ba-ba" a lot but I am pretty sure he is just babbling. Michael also tries to get him to say "mama" and "daddy" and those both come out as "ba-ba" also. I am trying to get him to learn some baby signs so he can tell us what he wants -- especially when he wants food and a nap. That would be SO wonderful!

Pointing out the mama....

Michael has been teaching Eli to find specific things on the pages of the books we read to him. I didn't think that a 10-month-old could do that, but I was wrong. In Eli's favorite book, "How do dinosaurs say goodnight?" Michael asks Eli "where's the mama?" and Eli always points to the mama! We are now working on getting him to point to the mouse in his "That's not my dinosaur" book.

The above is one of several examples of Eli becoming a little boy -- it seems like every week his brain develops by leaps and bounds and I can't keep up. He is amazing...

Sleeping on mama and ear update

Eli fell asleep on my tonight while I was feeding him his bottle. He was leaning his head on my chest and facing outwards while I rocked in the chair and all of a sudden I noticed he wasn't drinking anymore. It was so sweet to just rock and doze with my baby on my lap. He was so content. And then when I put him in his crib, he didn't even move. He must have been exhausted.

On Monday we found out that Eli's ear infection hadn't cleared up so he is on his second antibiotic. I hope this fixes it -- ugh, I feel so bad for him. On Monday he was so cranky and now we know why!