13 Months

Well, I blinked and another month flew by. But what a fun month it was! In the midst of all the birthday madness, I forgot to do my monthly update last month.

So, here’s what Eli is up to at 13 months...
*Running too fast, climbing too high, and falling too often
*Some of his new favorite foods are: meatloaf, eggs, pancakes, and watermelon. He goes crazy for fresh zucchini and squash, and will still knock anybody down who gets in the way of his blueberry eating. He is such a great eater, and for that I am so thankful. He will truly eat anything that we put on his plate.

(Stuffing his face with a roll, and politely offering some to mommy)
*His newest and most used phrase is, “Ohhh No!’ He also still says dog and duck about 100 times each day. Dada and ‘dah’ are said far too many times to count, and usually WAY too loud.
*He’s finally starting to do a little sign language, but I really just concentrate on getting him to say the actual word. He knows more, please, thank you, & all done but prefers to whine & yell when he wants ‘more’ and get very impatient instead of asking ‘please.’ We’re making progress though!
*He had his first encounter with the concrete in front of our house, and has the battle wounds to prove it. His daddy has had fun making up different stories for each person that asks what happened.
*He still LOVES to read books
*He still loves to dance and now tries to sing
*He’s extra ticklish these days which we absolutely love. We never get tired of that laugh!
*He’s wearing size 12 month clothes, size 4 shoes, and weighed in a little over 20lbs at his 1 year visit.
*He has the sweetest little voice, and we love hearing him carry on conversations with himself (not that we'll ever know what he's trying to say).
*He's become an excellent basketball player, with no encouragement from his father of course.
*He's still taking 2 good naps each day, but is finally to the point that he can skip a morning nap and survive until the afternoon. He just loves his bed to pieces!
*He went swimming for the first time this weekend, and loved it! We’ve all been dieing to get him in nana & pop-pop’s pool. His little feet never stopped kicking the entire time!





We've got some exciting things going on in the weeks to come, so there's sure to be a plenty of pictures on the way!

Trying to Keep Up

We have been so busy lately. We had a successful garage sale at our house last weekend, and will be helping out with another one this weekend at Danny's parents house. We're hoping to sell the rest of what we didn't sell last weekend. We're also transitioning from the end of one baseball season to the beginning of another. The month of June will be somewhat of a whirlwind, but I'm sure it will be over before we know it. Danny was asked to help coach a legion team on the island, and we felt it was too good to pass on. Even though I think we could all use a break! My only request was that we try and find time towards the end of summer for a family vacation, my goodness we're going to need it!

Eli has been congested, drooling absolute buckets full, and running a low grade fever off and on for well over a week. If it weren't for the excessive drooling I would have thought he had a cold, but he's most certainly working on some teeth. I'm hoping that it's his one year molars, because boy am I ready to get those behind us. I haven't bothered to take him to the Dr. because he's still been his usual happy self despite his congestion and other symptoms, and has still be sleeping well. This too shall pass.

I know I say it often, but this boy keeps us laughing ALL of the time. He is such a mess. Danny and I love sitting down at night and talking about the funny things that Eli did that day. Sometimes we even re-enact them if one of us missed it. I can tell that Danny is just loving these days with Eli, as he's becoming such a little boy and is learning SO much each day. I've been doing a Bible study on Tuesday nights, and they just play hard the entire time I'm gone. Danny loves Eli's new basketball hoop, and gets just as excited everytime Eli makes a basket. We're working on many new words, and trying our best to interpret what we call 'Eli language.' He knows many animal sounds, and has learned which sound goes with which animal.

Speaking of animals...this boy loves animal crackers. So much that he took it upon himself to open up a bag and have a few before lunch!


Here's my little laundry 'helper'


I found a few videos from Mother's Day that I forgot to post.

He's very into crawling around the living room on his head.


He also loves to take a rest in the middle of the floor and saw awwww. He's such a mess!


We have another really busy weekend coming up. With a total of 3 graduation parties to attend and the big garage sale, we're sure to be exhausted come Sunday night!

Champions!

Last night we had the pleasure of cheering on our guys as they took home the 3-A baseball state championship title!! Of course we thought they were already champions in our book :) Karissa(Trevor's wife) and I were so very fortunate to have wonderful friends step in to watch our kids so that we could go and support our husbands. I can't thank you enough Amanda!!! We would have been so upset if we had missed this game. These guys may never get the opportunity to coach in another state championship game. They really deserved it, and we were so proud to be able to witness it!

It was definitely an 'on the edge of your seat' kind of game. We started out with a 3 run lead, but quickly gave them 7 runs after multiple errors. We went in to the 7th inning needing to score 4 runs to tie it, and that's exactly what they did! I've been to more baseball games than I could ever count, and played in hundreds of softball games, but never one as exciting as this. We went on to score 3 runs in the 8th inning, and were able to hold them to 2 runs and that is how the Eagles got their title! It was a nail-biter, and I couldn't stop shaking for the last 2 innings. I truly can't imagine what I'll be like as a parent when it comes time for mine to play in big games like this. Oh wait, a nervous wreck! After last night, I'm thinking I wouldn't mind having another boy ;)
the coaches doing what they do best
The fans storm the field!



Daddy had to let Eli try on his new medal!

Geez this thing is heavy!

This & That

Here's a little bit of what we've been up to, other than the big party! We loved that some of our family from out of town were able to make it to celebrate Eli's birthday. Eli loved his time with cousins Chase & Jacob, and got lots of love from Aunt Katie & Uncle Charles. We can't wait until baby Luke makes his big debut and joins this crazy bunch :) Eli has been the youngest cousin for quite a while now, but that will soon change.

Not so easy to get these 3 to sit still for a picture! We sure do make some pretty handsome boys in this family!

After the party madness was over on Saturday, we decided to spend a relaxing day at the beach on Sunday.

Eli jumped some waves, then ran from some waves, and then ran some more just because. He loves being able to roam freely at the beach. He'll sit down just about long enough to eat some lunch or grab a quick snack. Boy was I glad to have some extra hands for once!
My boys :)
MiMi taught Eli a thing or two about sandcastles. He was interested for about 5 minutes or so.
He loves being outside!
We enjoyed every second of our time with Mimi and Papa Tom, and we were so very sad to see them head off to Texas. But what an adventure they're on! We can't wait to get out to Texas and visit them in the fall. But until then...we're counting down the days until July when we'll get to see Mimi again!
Eli loves his new Elmo that he got for his birthday. He carries it around with him all day somedays. It's been a huge hit in our house. Thanks Billy & Amanda! Amanda even found an Elmo book titled 'SOOO Big!' He just loves it.

Even Papa Tom showed Elmo some love!

That's all for now!

Mother's Day

I'm so thankful to be a mother to this little guy. He's given me two wonderful Mother's Days in his short little life. I couldn't help but think about my very first Mother's Day last year. Eli was only 10 days old, and we took him to church for the very first time. Even though I was still recovering from surgery, and was running on very little sleep, I was so overwhelmed with joy to finally be called a mother. This mother's day was pretty low key. We went to church, and I was on nursery duty in Eli's class. I wasn't sure how he'd do with me in the same room, but he could have cared less until the very end. When he's really tired, he gets extra jealous when I show attention to other kids.

I had the privilege of cooking a Mother's Day dinner for my wonderful mother-in-law and father-in-law last night. She's always cooking for us, so it was nice to be able to give her a much needed break! We had a fun night together, and of course Eli was a ham the whole time. He was running on very little sleep, and is getting another tooth, so it was nice to have nana and pop pop to play with and distract him for the night. Nana helped him mow the lawn after dinner. Then gave a few horsey rides before bed :) I got some pretty cute videos of him too! He lauged hysterically for about 30 minutes straight while using a bottle of tylenol to press the buttons on his train book. I know, it doesn't take much.(And yes, the lid was secure on the bottle!)






He had a blast playing fun games with his Nana!


Couldn't leave out this picture of Eli & his MiMi from last weekend!



I feel SO blessed to not only be a mother, but to have such a great mom and mother-in-law. I don't know what I'd do without them. My mom is truly one of my very best friends, and I feel so lucky to have that kind of relationship with her.

Monkey Party

There was plenty of 'monkeying around' at our house this weekend! Our little monkey couldn't have possibly had a better birthday. The party was a blast, and all of that hard work finally paid off!

The birthday weekend started out with a BIG surprise. I was busy working in the dining room on Thursday afternoon, and had just put Eli down for his nap. The doorbell rang, I heard a package drop, and I went to greet the UPS man. Well..that UPS man turned out to be Auntie Liz!! She left a package with a letter inside. It read...'Auntie Liz would never miss little Eli's first birthday!!!' and had a crazy picture of herself in her best 'gotcha' face! It was just what I needed that day, and truly don't know how I would have made it through the weekend without her help. She helped me clean, decorate, cook, and really helped keep me sane for 4 straight days. Eli was full of laughs the whole time she was here, and we really made some sweet memories.

here she is surprising Eli when he woke up

We took Eli to Jim & Nick's on Friday for his birthday lunch, and then headed back to Island Playground to run off some energy(and lunch!).

We had fun on Friday, but we're positive that he thought Saturday was his actual birthday! He was only 2.5 hours away from being a May 1st baby, so that's ok!

Here he is lounging in his new beanbag, waiting for his friends to arrive
It just wouldn't have been the same without his Mimi there! She always brings the coolest toys too :)
He played with his cake, but didn't really eat too much of it. I finally went and got him a cupcake, and he tried to devour the entire thing in a matter of seconds. I just loved his highchair banner too. I just threw it together with the leftover supplies that I had!

He's a fan of sweets :)

A quick family photo before daddy had to leave for his game

I'm so glad that I took the time to make most of his decorations. I've never been much in to crafts, but I've never really had a reason to be either.
I did a picture banner of his first 12 months
And a birthday banner!

These were so much fun to make!
Our monkey cupcakes turned out great, and Eli's little smash cake was so cute! We decided to make all of the food ourselves, and really kept it pretty simple. We ended up having to move the party up to 12:00 on Saturday because of baseball games that afternoon, so we wanted to make sure there was plenty of food for lunch.


So much to blog about, and so very litte time. I'm sad to say that I won't be blogging quite as much, but very excited about being able to work from home now. Most days I'm busy juggling 3 different jobs...full-time mom, nanny to Brinley, and medical biller. Makes me exhausted just thinking about it, but so far so good! Praying that I'll be able to keep up with that, and also keep my house somewhat clean.

I have entirely too many pictures to sort through from last weekend. I have pictures from 4 different people's cameras, and haven't had the energy to sit down and start editing yet. I'll be posting some fun things soon though!