Turtle Monkey

Saturday morning, Elias found a stack of bibs and picked one up. He brought it to me and bowed his head for me to put it on, so I did. Then he went back to the pile to grab another one and did the same thing. He wound up with 6 bibs on total.

Every time he’s hungry, he goes over to his booster seat and tries to climb in or looks pitiful. Here it’d been maybe 30 minutes from his last snack.

On Saturday afternoon, Mark took Elias to the grocery store while I took a shower. Here he is right before they go out, walking around in his Spiderman cap.

We had pork, a green bean dish (excellent, BTW!) and corn for dinner. Elias loved it all, but was a bit confused at first by how to eat corn on the cob.

I held it correctly for him to bite into a couple of times and before long, he got it.

Sunday morning, Elias and Teyla played for a while. He seems to have no problem telling the difference between his toys and Teyla’s, even if he’s never seen the toy before! He’ll walk over to one of her toys and then flaunt it in her face until she wants to play.

My mom came over in the afternoon and brought her West Highland Terrier, Sha’re (named after the Stargate character) with her. She is such a sweetie and did so well with Elias!

He loved her to bits and enjoyed hugging her and playing with her.

As a bonus, there’s a video up on Facebook of Elias laughing hysterically at popping bubble wrap. You have to be logged in to view, though I don’t think you have to be friends with me.

More pictures up on Flickr starting here. I’m glad I got the camera out so much in the past three days and hope I can keep it up!

Today Elias has consumed the following meals and snacks:

- Cheerios, a whole banana and milk
- A rice cake, dried fruit and milk
- Cheese cubes, apple slices and water
- Panang curry, fried rice and milk
- Sante Fe Chicken, macaroni and cheese, corn and milk
- Some mini ritz cheese cracker sandwiches and water
- More apple slices, a mini apple oatmeal cookie, two nilla wafers and milk

He has not really been cranky at all today and I’m wondering if his crankiness is due to a growth spurt and he’s just super hungry.

I can’t believe how much my baby boy has grown up in just one year. He’s so adorable, he makes my heart ache almost constantly. This year Elias learned how to roll over, sit unassisted, eat finger foods, crawl and walk to name a few! During our trip to Texas we decided not to bring any bottles and force Elias to give them up in favor of the sippy cup and he responded to that very well. He recently started guiding the utensil into his mouth, taking a much more active roll when we feed him anything requiring a utensil. He just learned to shake his head back and forth and gets a huge kick out of it. He hasn’t associated it with “No” yet, but I’m sure that’s coming soon and the head shaking won’t be so cute then.

Since we returned from Texas, Elias has been especially cranky. I’m starting to think he’s getting in some molars because he’s just NEVER this cranky. I’m sure it’s been difficult for him to go back to daycare instead of being with me and Mark all the time, too.

Anyway, to ring in the new year, here are some pictures of Elias through 2008. I only took videos in August and didn’t publish any photos, so that month is skipped.

January - 3 months

February - 4 months

March - 5 months

April - 6 months

May - 7 months

June - 8 months

July - 9 months

September - 11 months

October - 12 months

November - 13 months

December - 14 months

We are back from our trip to Texas! We had a great time with family and friends and as usual, it was sad to leave. Elias started walking full time on this trip. I can’t believe I officially have a toddler! He is such a fun little boy and surprises me with something new almost hourly.

I don’t have any pictures ready yet from Christmas, but there are a lot of new photos up on Flickr starting here; a couple from before we left for Texas and several while we were in Texas.

Chillin’ with Leah. Elias LOVES this cat.

Putting things into the compartment of his train ride-on toy and taking them back out again. Doesn’t he look like a big boy here!?

Elias trying to climb on and rearrange the displays at Barnes and Noble before a lady came and asked me not to take pictures in their store. We were there to help Mark’s sister Kathy wrap presents for a Legacy Boxer Rescue fund raiser.

The rest were taken in Kathy’s whirlpool tub. Elias loved being in there. To get the whirlpool action going, the water was a lot deeper than all his other baths so far and I stuck by him like glue to be sure he wouldn’t go under. He did try to eat the bubbles and dunked his head halfway underwater a few times. It sent my heart skipping, but it didn’t bother him and he continued doing it. It was kind of neat!

Eating the bubbles

Kissing (or rather, teething) the rubber duckie.

It’s time to get out!

I will be getting rid of this domain name soon (wish I’d figured that out before I had to renew for another year). If you weren’t already aware, we are expecting another little one by June and I feel weird about Elias having his very own website. There will be a new site, probably more family oriented, which will still contain frequent updates, photos and videos of Elias. I’ll post the new address once I figure it out.

Last night Mark got off work early, so I made sure to keep Elias awake (he normally goes to sleep at 7pm). Shortly after Mark got home, we gave Elias his bath (finally snapped a few shots) and got him ready for bed.

Not too long after Mark and I went to bed, Elias apparently had a nightmare because he woke up screaming. Normally when he stirs in the middle of the night, I can rub his head and back without needing to pick him up and he’ll go right back to sleep. Though Elias tried to settle back down, he was still upset. I tried picking him up and cuddling him for a while, which works the majority of the time, but even after holding and rocking him for several minutes, he still didn’t want to be put back down. So we brought him into the bed with us and put him between us. It’s only been the second time he’s come back into our bed since he moved over to the pack and play at around 10 months. He’s not the biggest snuggler in the world, so it was nice.

Around 2am, he decided he had enough of the Mommy and Daddy sandwich and tried to climb over Mark’s head to get out of bed. When that didn’t work and I sat up to figure out what was going on, he put himself in reverse and tried to back himself off the bed on my side. All this while he was clearly half asleep and disoriented. I picked him up and put him back in the pack and play and he slept peacefully until around 7am. It’s odd because he went to bed a half an hour later than he normally does and he woke up half an hour earlier!