A morning at the museum!

A few days before Christmas Eli and I got an unexpected treat – we went to the Children’s Museum with my cousin Catherine and her son Joshua! Joshua asked for Elijah to go with him, and I’m so glad that Catherine listened to his suggestion and gave us a call – we had a great time!

The day started with some excitement however, as about 15 minutes before we had to leave Elijah grabbed a box from the counter and said, “What is this? Grandma’s pancake?” and then proceeded to put the box (which was indeed Grandma’s OPEN box of pancake mix) upside down over his head. His head was instantly coated with pancake mix. I didn’t have time to give him a full bath so up on the counter with his head hanging over the sink he went. That mix was quite stubborn and it took me forever to get it all out! And then he had to change clothes too. We still made it on time to meet Catherine and Joshua though.

Once at the museum Elijah had a blast. There was a penguin exhibit with slides and such, and a toddler area with a kitchen and a fishing boat and cars. Then there was the grocery store, which was the biggest hit with Elijah. He immediately spotted the carts, ran and got, “My cart!” and started filling up. He started with the produce, but then spied cereal and “popcorn!” on the shelves. What fun. Joshua got in on the action too, and it was hard to tear Eli away to go upstairs and check other things out. Even when we were upstairs he wanted to go back down. And now (2 weeks later) he is asking to go back to the grocery store.

At the end of our visit Catherine helped me corral Elijah in to looking in this mirrored box which reflected lots of Elijah’s, and I got some cute pictures of him. My favorite thing from the day was seeing the two boys start to play together, and having Joshua come up to me and ask to have me read him a book. I love to read, so it was a good memory to read to both of the boys. I’m already planning our next visit, and I’m glad I bought the membership so we can go whenever we want! Thanks for inviting us Catherine!

Cookie Time!

Over the holidays I baked cookies a few times, and Lori, Mom, and I got together this year to have a cookie-making day just like we’ve been saying we wanted to for years. We made about a zillion dozen cookies, and the kids even got in on the action. The girls were really good at their parts, and Elijah was mainly interested in getting the sugar he was supposed to be rolling his cookies in into his mouth instead.

One of the days that Mom and I made cookies with the kids we made the kind of “cookies” where you lay out circle pretzels, stick unwrapped Hershey’s kisses in the middles, soften them in the oven for a few minutes and then press M&Ms on top. The kids laid out the pretzels on their cookies sheets, and were working diligently at unwrapping the kisses. Even Eli was helping unwrap, though occasionally one frustrated him. At one point he looked at me and said, “Who wrapped these?” Mom and I started laughing, and without missing a beat Lexi chimed in, “God did!” Eli seemed okay with that answer and Mom and I were laughing too hard to try and sort it all out. :) At the holidays Elijah brought the tin around to all his cousins so they could eat the pretzel cookies, but then when Noah and Nathan took the last ones he brought the tin back to me and told me that “Noah Natey eat all cookies. Not nice.” Hey, if you’re handing them out you’ve got to expect people to eat them, Elijah! Now when he asks for cookies I’ll give him the choices of what we have and he invariably wants the pretzel cookies! They were a hit!

Fun in the snow? I don't think so.

Elijah’s first time playing in the snow this year didn’t go quite as Jon or I expected. Jon was so excited to take Eli outside after our first big dump of snow, but Eli wanted nothing to do with it. Jon listened to, “No! No! No! No! No!” as he got Eli’s snowsuit on, his coat on, his hat on, and the boots and mittens. It took about half an hour to get all of that on a struggling 2 year old, and that should have been a clue that all was not going to go well. I was helping Mom and Dad clean Dad’s office, so I couldn’t really help much either. Jon dragged/carried/pushed Elijah out the door and then put him in a snowbank so they could start playing. Elijah immediately ran back to the door screaming his head. Jon picked him up and Eli promptly kicked his boots off. I helped get them back on and then Jon tried to get Elijah interested in running up and down the driveway, throwing snow, sitting on the big snow-covered rock, etc. Elijah wanted no part of it though, and within a few minutes they were back inside. Elijah decided he was so traumatized that he needed to walk around the house for another half an hour crying. And Jon was disappointed and upset, even going so far as to say, “Other little boys know how to have fun in the snow.” That’s about as upset as Jon gets, so he took an Eli-break for a little bit. :) Our little boy certainly knows what he does and does not want to do, I’ll give him that. Let’s hope his future snow outings go better!

This is NOT fun, Daddy!

Hmm, I don't think he liked it.In case you haven't heard over the last
half an hour, Mom, I'M NOT HAPPY!

Eli knows his "M"... even upside-down!

A while ago, Eli and I were playing his Reader Rabbit computer game together (a collection of mini-games for preschoolers). We were playing the "Alphabet Train" mini-game, where a train appears on the screen with 3 cars, with an alphabet letter printed on each car.

When a train car appeared with the letter "W" on it, and the game's narrator said "W", Eli spoke up, telling the game, "No, M!" Eli doesn't know the letter "W" yet, but he recognized it as an upside-down "M"! I thought that was pretty cute.

In general, Eli is really good at matching things that look the same. Another thing he did recently was pull the "Michigan Santa" and "Michigan Snowman" ornaments off the Christmas tree, and show them to me, saying, "Look Daddy, both have letter M!"

At least Eli has that letter "M" down cold! Now we just need to keep working on some of the other ones that he doesn't quite know yet, like that "W"!

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree . . .

Putting up the Christmas tree was a little different this year since, 1) It wasn’t our tree, and 2) It wasn’t our house. Still, we made it a family affair, with Jeff and Lori and the kids helping put up the tree on Sunday afternoon, and then Jon and I and Eli and my Mom and Dad decorating it on Sunday night. We did half of our ornaments and half Mom and Dad’s ornaments, so the tree is quite eclectic this year.

Lexi and Tori carried all the branches upstairs!Grandpa puts the top of the tree on!

During the ornament hanging process Elijah was really excited to open up all the boxes and try and take everything out as fast as he could - which, as you can imagine since a lot of the boxes had glass ornaments in them, didn’t go over too well with Mommy and Grandma.

Mommy holds her breath and supervises
the unwrapping of an ornamentElijah with his tree-decorating-beverage-of-choice. Hot chocolate!

We did end up with a nice selection of ornaments for the “Eli section” of the tree though, and Grandma discovered that she had quite a few ornaments which were a big hit with Eli – most notably a little mouse driving a choo choo train. Just about every morning now Eli takes his ornaments off the tree and lines them up under the tree and then carries them around all day. They ride his trains, take naps with him, and even come to eat with us occasionally. Then before bed at night we get to put all the ornaments back on the tree.

Hey, my froggy truck moved to Grand Rapids with me! Yay!

This takes extreme concentration
and superior hand-eye coordination.I did it all by myself, Mom!

Elijah really likes these cats in a basket ornaments that I have, the Michigan Football Santa (Santa with a football in a Michigan jersey and helmet) and the Michigan Football Snowman (ditto Santa’s get-up). We were playing with his ornaments the other day and I was asking him what the cats say – “Meow” – what the train says – “Choo choo” – and then what the Football Snowman says. Elijah looked at the snowman for a bit then got a big grin and said, “Go Blue! Just like Daddy!” We’re training him young, yes we are. Daddy was so proud.

Anyway, back to the tree decorating. After we were done Eli kept running back and forth around the tree and looking at all the ornaments, and we couldn’t really convince him that a family picture was necessary. Most of the pictures turned out with grumpy Eli or grumpy Mommy and Daddy faces. Finally we let him sit on his Retro Rocket and hold ornaments, which seemed to appease him. And despite the grumpy pictures we had a good time decorating the tree this year!

Pity the fool who thinks I'm going to smile for this picture!

Do you know why I'm smiling now?

You'd be smiling too if you had a sweet Retro Rocket like mine.At last, a picture where none of us looks too goofy.
Merry Christmas!