17 June 2008

crazy. part two.

ok. wow. elijah is eighteen months old.
crazy.

here's just a couple stories of his crazy big boy-ness from the last week or so.

e and i were just hanging out upstairs while i brushed my teeth and got dressed the other day. he was carefully removing items one by one from the dirty clothes basket while announcing whom the item belonged to. so while i'm brushing my teeth, i have a little voice in the background reciting "mama! dada! mama!". he found one of my jammie shirts and decided he wanted to wear it. once he got it on (an ordeal in and of itself), he wanted to show dada. so, downstairs we trekked, found john and showed him the "cool dude" wearing mama's shirt. out of the corner of his eye, he spied my camera. pointing to it, he made his cheesy camera smile face and plopped himself down on the bottom stair, patiently waiting for me to get the hint and take his picture already. once the picture was taken, he jumped up, ran over to the camera and turned it around as quick as his little hands could manage just so he could see the "evidence". apparently satisfied, he then began tugging on the shirt, saying "off? off?". ok my little dude...john and i had a great big laugh about that one...

another example of his crazy big boy-ness occurred last week while we were playing with his wooden blocks. i was building a tower and he was "helping". which typically translates to lots of towers being knocked down before they really reach any kind of acceptable height for a tower but this day, he was actually adding blocks to my attempt at block architecture. then, out of the blue, he grabbed the block out of my hand, looked at me with a slightly annoyed look on his face and announced, "i do! i do!". honestly, i was more taken aback than anything, simply because i'd never really said anything to him like that. when speaking with him, i typically just say "mommy will do it." or "here, mommy helps." something like that. i never really say, "i'll do it." not to him anyways. maybe to john...or on the phone or something. after the initial shock though, i just had to laugh. a slightly melancholy laugh, as i realized, once again, my baby boy isn't such a baby anymore. not at all.

developmentally...he's right on track for his age. physically, he's actually closer to a 2 year old than an eighteen month old which has both disadvantages and advantages. it's good because he can do SO much! throwing and kicking a ball, walking up the stairs with little or no help, undressing himself, putting on his own shoes, almost jumping, riding his little bike like a maniac. it can be bad only because he's got so many physical abilities down that i expect too much out of him emotionally and cognitively that he gets frustrated sometimes. sorry dude!

verbally, he's talking so much more now! he learns words so quickly and though he might forget them or i can't always understand them (i forget what that particular sound stands for), communication is so much easier than it was just a few months ago. not only is he using his words, but he's also starting to put them together into simple two-word sentences. like yesterday, john went upstairs to grab his phone. elijah ran to the bottom of the stairs and pointed up, saying "dada, up?". very exciting to see...

his favorite foods still revolve around fruit and vegetables. he could eat watermelon, cucumber, strawberries and carrots all day and have absolutely no problem with that. he also loves fish, noodles (nooles is how he says it) and oatmeal. he doesn't like cheese unless it's in something which i find weird since he used to inhale it. think i'm going to try mozzarella and see what he thinks about that.

physically, he's around 22 pounds. which is funny since he really hasn't gained much weight at all in the past few months but he FEELS heavier. it's also interesting that he can still wear pants he wore last summer. of course, they're now capris on him (so cute!) since he has grown but his little waist has stayed the same. jokingly, i call him my white ethiopian since he's super skinny with this little pot belly poking out. hilarious! his hair is getting thicker, little by little. i joke with my dad that it's growing in the opposite way his fell out. e still has one little section right in front that's still baby hair. the rest, the top, back and sides, is thicker and most definitely closer to my color than john's. i'd even venture to say it's a bit lighter than mine.

his favorite toys are his beloved ducky, balls of any size and anything that has wheels on it. he will run all over the house with his little toy dirt bike making very accurate brrrrm, brrrrm noises. john says he's got the two-stroke engine noises down, now he just needs to work on his four-stroke noises. sure babe, whatever.

so that's my little eighteen month old in a few paragraphs. if i think of anything else i want to remember when i'm old and gray, i'll add it to this post.

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