Block City!

Elijah loves the blocks that Grandpa Bob made him for Christmas, and just recently has begun expressing a desire to build larger things than just stacking a few blocks and knocking them down. Last week he and I built quite a large block city (we used all the blocks!), with Elijah as the chief designer and Mom the construction labor. Elijah just loves designing and building new cities every few days, and can spend hours playing with them.

Great work, Mom! Now let's start playing!

As you can see in the picture below, Elijah has bridges, ramps, garages, and even a corral for his animals. Eli told me just where to put the roads, the ramps, and the bridges and, trust me, he knew if Mom didn't listen to exactly what he wanted! Mom's design input was not needed, thank you very much! The only suggestion of mine that he took was the addition of garages to park all his cars (they are the yellow blocks in the picture).

I love seeing new aspects of Eli's personality come out, and to see how his mind works. Maybe he'll be an engineer like his Grandpa someday, or an architect like his Great-Grandfather! He is certainly showing a love for building and design at an early age! And I'm having so much fun playing with him and building these cities too. Being with Eli is such a joy!

Tumble Bears.

Lexi and Tori take gymnastic classes and are in the age group called "Tumble Bears." Elijah loves watching them do their handstands and somersaults and cartwheels, and tries to join in as much as he can. Over a month ago Mom snapped pictures of the three of them playing together with Lexi and Tori doing handstands in the hall while Elijah crawled underneath their legs. I forgot about the pictures until just now, but I thought I'd post them anyway. Eli has taken to running around and trying to tumble like them in the living room while yelling what I finally deciphered just this week to be "tumble bears." I'm guessing he heard Lexi or Tori say it, and it's pretty cute.

I made it under Tori, now I'm heading for Lexi!

Good thing the girls are so good at handstands!

Hmm, I don't think I'm doing this quite right.
I think I'll just head back through now!

More Elijah Quotes

Elijah is such a fun little guy to be around, and he keeps us in stitches he is so funny. Here are some of the things he has been saying lately:

• I got Eli up one morning and asked what he wanted for breakfast, and he said, "pizza," and ran and got his fake pizza that goes with his play kitchen. I told him that it was breakfast time. To which he replied, "No. Pizza time!" Now every time we do have pizza Eli yells, "Pizza time!" at the top of his lungs.
• One night at dinner Eli climbed up in my chair instead of his high chair. Jon asked him where Mommy was supposed to sit and then said, "Should Mommy sit in your highchair?" Elijah replied, "No," so Jon asked him why not. Eli looked at me and then said, "Too big." Can't argue with that, I guess! He's right, Mommy is too big for his chair!
• Eli was asked one night (I can't remember why), "Do you love Mommy?" He said, "No!" "Do you love Daddy?" "No!" "Do you love Grandma?" "No!" "Do you love cookies?" "Uhm, yes!" At least he knows what he loves! And it's hard not to love cookies!
  

Little Backseat Driver

Jon, Eli, and myself were driving home last week and there was a car in the left hand turn lane whose rear end was sticking out in my lane still, so I asked Jon if I should go around. Before Jon could even answer we hear Eli from the back seat telling me, "Go around! Go around!"

We thought he was still napping, but he was awake. And in the mood to be a little back seat driver it seems. The cute thing was that he was actually looking out his window and motioning me to go with his hands. Of course, once I did comply with his instructions and went around, he still kept telling me, "Go around! Go around, Mommy!"

Uncle Jon and Missy-Mommy.

Now that we are able to spend more time with family, being back in Grand Rapids and all, Elijah is hearing Daddy being called "Uncle Jon" and Mommy being called "Aunt Missy" a lot more. After the girls left one day a week or so ago Elijah was looking for me and asking for Missy. He found me and started yelling, "Missy-Mommy, Missy-Mommy!"

Then late last week Jon was coming down the hall with Elijah in front of him, and Eli ran to the supper table to tell us that, "Uncle Jon coming! Uncle Jon coming!" Jon tried to explain about his name being Jon to other adults and Daddy to Eli, and that Daddy described the relationship they had, but Eli didn't quite get that. :) I guess to a little one it would be hard to understand why Mom and Dad answer to different names at different times. We're reinforcing that he's supposed to call us Mom and Dad and not by our first names, so the majority of the time we're Mom and Dad, but occasionally one of our other names slips out. It's cute, but kind of weird, to hear your son call you by your first name!

License to Drive

My brother and sister-in-law, Jeff and Lori, sold their house recently and are building a new house, and while they wait for the house to be finished a few things are being stored at Mom and Dad's house. One of those things is Noah and the girls' driving Silverado Jeep. I got it all set-up and working for Eli to use last week, and, though at first he really didn't want to make it go (he just wanted to sit in it), eventually he figured out that it was pretty fun to zoom around in!

I'm having fun just sitting in it!

I moved it a few feet!
Niow I think I'll just sit again for a bit.
Watch out, here I come!

My parents have a huge yard and backyard, and Eli can go for a quite a while in a straight line, which is good since he still can't really steer. He just gets a kick out of making the car go for about 3 feet and then stopping. Takes a while to get across the yard that way. His favorite game right now is driving a bit then saying, "Uh oh! Stuck!" He wants me to pretend to push him free while he guns it. I exaggerate of course and he thinks it's hilarious for Mommy to have to push so hard to get the jeep free. The other thing he really likes is using the plastic CB radio as a phone. He calls Grandma usually and says, "Hi! Yep. Yep. Driving Jeep! Goodbye Grandma!"

This is a great driveway to practice my driving skills!Excuse me, Mom, this is an important call.

Thanks for letting us use the Jeep, Uncle Jeff, Aunt Lori, Noah, Lexi, and Tori! We're having lots of fun!

Family Camping Trip!

Well, we’re back from camping, and whatever cold/sinus thing I caught is finally receding, and that means it’s blog time! We went camping July 29-August 4^th at Myers Lake United Methodist Campground and had just an incredibly fun week, despite one or two days of hot temps. The campground had a great lake to play in and a fantastic playground, with a giant boat play structure for the kids to play on. We camped in the group camping area of the park, and that is definitely the way to go, especially with the 14 kids we had between all of us. We were able to set up the campers in a giant circle and the kids could run around and play in the middle with us not having to be constantly concerned that they were about to run off the lots and in the street. So many fun things happened that I couldn’t begin to write a narrative of them all, so I’m resorting to the tried and true bulleting system to avoid those pesky transition statements. :-)

The Lake

• At first Elijah wanted nothing to do with the lake (“Want to go in the water honey?” “NO!”) and he only wanted to throw sand around. But as the week went on and Mom insisted , he warmed up to it. Running in to the water with Grandma was a hit (with all the kids), with Elijah running and then plopping on to his butt to splash. By the end of the week Elijah wanted to run in the water with me and while I was taking off my cover-up and flip flops he told me, “Hurry up, Mom! Splash!”
• Elijah’s favorite thing at the beach had to be the swings. I think he spent almost as much time in them as in the water. And he would have stayed in them longer except Mom kept wanting to rejoin everyone else and frolic in the water.
• Noah decided he wanted to swim all the way out to the swim platform, and that it would be “the challenge of my lifetime.” All 8 years of it. He made it though, and had quite a lot of fun jumping off the swim dock and doing cannonballs with everyone. Nathan and Tyler made it out there too, and even Joshie (at 2 years old!!) swam out there in his floaties and jumped off the dock. He has no fear!

The Playground

• The kids flocked to the playground whenever they had the chance – which was pretty often since it was right next to us. One of the first days camping most of the kids were over there and in the bottom of the giant wooden boat, when they all started singing and being loud, and Tyler said that they were “having a church service.” The kids were sitting against the sides of the boat while Ty stood in front of them singing (which led to all of them singing/shouting). It was incredibly loud in the boat, but at least they were having a good time!
• On Thursday night we herded all the kids (and the adults) over to the playground and played baseball – first the older kids getting pitches of the plastic waffle ball, and then the adults getting swings eventually. Andrew has quite a powerful swing, and I discovered I wasn’t too bad either. Pictures of the adults won’t be posted so as to protect our egos though. :-) The little kids had a milk jug tee and a bat too, and Joshie was smashing them, he’s so strong! This is one of Elijah’s favorite games at home, but since he had to share he wanted no part of it thank you very much.
• Joshie also found Andrew’s lightsaber (while Andrew was batting) and joined Nathan and Noah in play fighting. Except he was pretty good and started chasing them around. Every time Nathan would hit his lightsaber Joshie would stop and say, “Oh” with the really deep voice of his. And Nathan and Noah began calling him Joshua the Great. Elijah found the lightsaber when Joshie was batting and got in on the action a bit too. By the end of the night we had little Jedi Masters running around, with Noah and Nathan adding Master Tyler and Master Nicholas to the ranks.

Other Family Fun

• Can anyone say squirt gun fight? And water balloon fight? Aunt Linda coordinated these activities which usually degenerated into just plain old fun water fights. I was taking pictures and could barely stop laughing during one of the water fights. Elijah was a little confused and didn’t care for having water poured on him the first time, but eventually thought it was fun when he saw Steve dump water over Jon (the Buckeye fan attacking the unsuspecting Wolverine). :-) And Grandma didn’t let Uncle Scott get out unscathed – dumping a huge bucket of water on him. Nathan and Grandma colluded to get Aunt Jill soaked too, and no one was off limits (except the one holding the camera – one of my smartest moves if I do say so myself).
• Aunt Linda also had prizes for the kids for doing spoon races and other games - and I think every one of them had a marker on a string around their neck and a pad of paper as a prize. Tyler kept drawing hearts and firetrucks and bringing them mostly to Jill (he LOVES Jill). I managed to get one too, so I felt pretty special.
• Noah, Nathan, and Andrew were fascinated by Elijah’s ability to talk and repeat almost anything you say. All week long they would say, “Elijah, can you say -----,“ and fill in the blank with silly things. First cat, then doggy dog, then eventually they asked him to say Darth Vader. Which he did. Then Skywalker. Which he did. Quite the sight to have my two year old walking around saying, “Darf Vader.” Rather amusing! One time though they were asking him to say a string of things and he would, with all of them just giggling afterwards. Until they asked him, “Can you say tarantula?” He just looked at them and replied, “No.” Smart boy! Who wants to talk about big hairy icky spiders?!
• We brought along Elijah’s water table, and that was such a great decision. The kids all loved it and it would keep them occupied for quite a while. The back end of the motor home had a storage compartment that you could keep open, so we put toys back there, and all the kinds knew they could just come over and grab things to play with. That’s the great thing about camping with family – all kinds of kids to play with, new toys, and not worrying about the kids grabbing someone else’s toys. It’s okay!
  

I’m looking forward to camping again next year already! Elijah was on kid-withdrawal when we got back and kept looking for everyone to play with. The next weekend when we were getting ready to go back home and check on the house we got packed up and said we were going bye-bye. To which Eli replied, “Going camping! Going camping!” and started running around. I guess he’s ready to go camping again too!