A couple weeks ago mister man moved to his “big boy bed”. The transition went amazingly well. We talked it up for a week or so, telling him about all of his friends that are in twin size beds now, so he was prepped. Then one afternoon we all went to the mattress store and found his new bed. I tried to get him to lay down and try it out in the store, but he was more interested in jumping off the king size Tempurpedic on the other size of the room.
Here he is, waking up from his last nap in his crib.
When we told him he’d be moving to his big boy bed that night, he did about the cutest thing he’s ever done. He personally chose each of the stuffed animals he wanted to bring to his new bed, carrying each one over from his crib and telling them that they would be in his new bed with him.
Here he is in the bed.
He was extremely particular about his construction truck sheets for the first several days. Wouldn’t let me even get close to touching them. Quite protective.
He’s been in the new bed a couple weeks now. He’s really good about staying in it in the morning until we come get him – not sure what convinced him to stay in there, but it sunk in. He’s fallen out a couple times. The first time Steph went in there and he was sitting on the floor at the end of the bed. He said, “Momma? Momma? I fell out of the sky!”
One of my greatest fatherly accomplishments of the last couple weeks was teaching Eli the difference between trucks and airplanes, and the fact that even though airplanes have wheels, they don’t actually drive on the ground like trucks do.
Here he is showing how he flies his red airplane. The sounds he makes are either a buzzing airplane engine noise, or a short high pitched squeal, which I can only imagine are the passengers screaming for their lives. He demonstrates both here.
Eli’s new car seat came in a box – a fairly decent sized box. What does any kid do with a new box? He makes a fort out of it. Of course, Eli isn’t capable of making forts yet so mom and dad helped him. His new car seat box clubhouse is one of his new favorite toys, and he and his kitty Lucy hang out in there a lot. Generally not at the same time though, otherwise this happens.
Once Eli turned a year old he was cleared by the doc to graduate to a forward facing car seat. It’s been wonderful, for him and for us. Now we don’t have to perform a contortionist event to feed him Cheerios while driving down the interstate at 70 miles per hour. Eli likes looking forward too, and his new forward facing seat makes him feel like he’s driving… so of course he makes his driving noise while we go down the road.
Remember that E*Trade commercial where the guy’s playing the lottery and loses? The baby turns and says, “I wanna show you something. It’s my shocked face”. This is Eli’s version:
A few months ago Eli said his first word, which was “hot”. His first word was “hot” because he would always crawl towards the oven and try to clamber up inside it, and we would say “No Eli, that’s hot”. Then we’d scoot him back, and he’d cry. The same thing would happen with the firstplace. He would try to get inside the fireplace and we would say, “Please don’t do that Eli. That’s hot”. Then we’d scoot him back. Then he’d cry.
Not all of Eli’s adventures end in crying. I promise.
Anyways, it got to the point that anything we would tell him “no” about he would associate with being hot. So now he believes he’s not supposed to climb the stairs alone because it’s hot. He’s not supposed to throw his peas onto the floor because it’s hot. Today he was banging both hands, covered in spaghetti sauce, on the dining room table and I said, “Eli, no”. And he looked at me with wide eyes, and shook his head up and down, and emphatically said, “HOT!”
We had a fun weekend celebrating Eli’s birthday with family and friends. Thanks to everyone who helped us remember Eli’s first year and for all the love and support you’ve shared with us over the last 12 months.
One of Eli’s favorite books that he has loved since he was just a little guy is a counting book called “Fish Eyes”. Like most kids books it features ten pages with an incrementally increasing number of animals on each page so you can learn how to count to 10. In this case, fish is the animal of choice… you probably already got there though. So we decided to throw Eli a fish themed party, complete with cut out paper fishes and a swimming take-home party favor for every guest… that is, a goldfish. Here are some decoration and party pics from the day – many special thanks to our unofficial, yet somewhat official, family photographer Meg for pictures.
In keeping with the theme of the party, our birthday present to Eli was a new goldfish! We took suggestions from party-goers to find a name for our new family fish, and the winning entry was: Ned! Whenever we say to Eli, “Where’s your fishy?” he looks at Ned’s bowl and says, “Blub blub blub”. Here he is…
As I’m sitting here writing this tonight I’m remembering that exactly 1 year ago to the minute I was running around the house like a madman throwing things in the car while this was going on upstairs. Looking back, in that moment, I could not have imagined that Elijah was less than an hour of away from being born. How we made it to the hospital in time, I’ll never know. By the grace of God only.
And tomorrow Eli will be one year old! We can’t believe how quickly this last year has gone by, and how many changes we’ve seen flash before our eyes. iPhoto says we have 6,953 pictures of Eli that we’ve taken in the last year. I’ll spare you most of those and leave you with these 13; one from his birthday, and one from each month thereafter.
There’s a grand party on the books for this weekend to celebrate Eli’s first year with family and friends. And we’re excited for many more years to come!
