Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Its nice to be needed... until you're not.

I took Eli to the park today. This park is right next to the red line L tracks. When the trains go by it can get loud and scary if you happen to be a baby or puppy. The 1st time the train went by Eli was in my arms. The 2nd time Eli ran back to be held. Same for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th times. The 6th time he could not get back to me in time, he had wandered to far. He just looked at me and then when the train was past he went on his way. Becoming more of a grown boy every minute he did not come back to be held after that. He no longer need to be held. I however desperately wanted to hold someone. The world is too big.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

The reason they made weekends

Today was just lovely.

If you know us, you know we like to eat.  We like to cook.  We like to entertain.  We like to go out to fun restaurants.  Correction: We used to like to go out to fun restaurants.  We're done with restaurants.  For the first few months of his life, Eli was pretty easy to take to a restaurant.  The noisier the better.  He'd usually sleep through them.  As he became more aware of his surroundings, things got more difficult but were usually manageable if I nursed him.  Then bed time got to be more standard and if we were out for dinner, he was often angry and screamy.  There was a small window in time where he was semi-content in the high chair.  Now that he can walk really well, he really wants to walk around the restaurant and attack other guests and their tables.  He does not respond well to detractors.  He goes boneless.  He screams.  At an ill-advised trip to a sushi place last week, Eli managed to get pour out a kettle of soy sauce at an empty table before we could stop him.  Going to a restaurant now is like paying somebody to stress us out.

Entertaining at home is usually fine.  It can be challenging to time things right and make sure I don't spend the whole evening in the other room putting Eli down.  Today, we had friends over for brunch, and it was awesome.  We got to be sociable and eat good food.  Fixed!  There are so many important things they just don't cover in those parenting books.

This afternoon we met one of Kenny's daddy friends and his wife at a playground.  Eli spent most of the time stealing things from other children.  Kenny calls it teaching the older kids how to share.

And to top it all off, I took my first bath in my completed bathroom.  I shall write a separate post about that later this week (the bathroom, not the bath ;-).

Thursday, May 19, 2011

GiGi

So we are going to St. Louis next week and in preparation we have been working on saying "GiGi". He almost has it down. I hope he can say it for my Grandma, his Gigi.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

The naked book worm


There are two things my boy likes these days: 1) being naked (probably gets that from his father) and 2) reading books.

While my mom was in town last week Eli became an avid book listener.  He picks one out, drags it over to you, grunts to be picked up or crawls into your lap.  Sometimes he changes his mind mid-way through the book and gets down to go find a different one.  Sometimes he gets angry that the book ends and makes it you read it again.  And again.  Boy cannot get enough of his Dr. Seus and Sandra Boynton.

About 50 or so stories into Sunday, I commented to Kenny that the boy had become obsessed.  He said, "Don't look at me.  I let him watch way too much TV."  The last time somebody made me read this many pages in a given day I was in grad school.