Napping in a tent.

It was such a treat to have warmer weather last week that one afternoon I decided that Elijah and I should enjoy the great outdoors during his nap time. This could have just been an excuse for me to lay in the sun while my child napped without feeling any guilt for being lazy, but I prefer to think of it as exposing Elijah to new experiences. Yeah, that's it . . .

Anyway, I brought out the tent and tunnel that I found on clearance at Target for $10 (regularly $60, go me) and made Elijah a pretty sweet little napping spot outside. He had a beautiful view of the pond, and umbrella in case it got too hot, a blanket and pillow on the floor of the tent, and a bevy of books to help him unwind and get in the napping mood.

Beautiful sunny blue skies!
A perfect day to be outside.

Grandpa checks out Eli's new digs.

Of course, for the first 10 minutes Elijah was mostly obsessed with crawling through the tunnel and tent, but eventually he quieted down and we read some stories. Then he decided he wanted to fall asleep in the tunnel and not the tent. I went with the flow on that, but after a few minutes he decided "tunnel too hot" and came back to the more shaded tent to snooze. Once he was zonked I made myself comfy outside of the tent in the sun with my swimsuit on, a good book, and a beverage. I don't know why I didn't set up this napping in the tent idea earlier in the summer. What a pleasant afternoon!

Those legs belong to a boy who's
not going to be napping anytime soon.

Mom's happy I'm finally reading books and not jumping around.

Success! He's finally asleep!

Beautiful day, beautiful garden.

Last week the weather was beautiful and I was so excited to get the opportunity to go to the Frederick Meijer Gardens with my cousin Catherine (technically my cousin Cory's wife, but I'm claiming her as my own). :) Catherine was one of the four cousins pregnant at the same time about three years ago, and so she has a son, Joshua, who is just three weeks older than Elijah. We had a gorgeous day, and the boys played together very well. With the only exception being when Eli pushed Joshua off the picnic table while Joshua was climbing up. Eli thought Joshua was heading for his food. So other than my son being a bully, they played well! Catherine and I played together well too, and she never tried to get my food so I didn't have to push her. :)

I hadn't been to the gardens for over 10 years, and my how it has changed. It has expanded drastically and I just loved the walking paths and sculptures. We spent most of our time in the children's garden area, and that was so great just in itself. I'm definitely going to be getting a membership to the gardens!

There was so much to explore, but first the boys climbed a big giant hill next to a big giant horse sculpture ( I didn't take a picture of the horse for some reason), and then realized that their mommies were at the bottom while they were at the top. Hmm. So up the hill Catherine and I went as well. At the children's garden Elijah and Joshua chased each other in a maze, banged drums, rang bells, explored a tree house, had a tea party, dug up dinosaur bones in a giant sand area, played in a beaver's den, and splashed with boats in a big winding river. Whew! What a lot to do! To top it off we all had lunch together as well. Catherine and I were busy running after them most of the time, but we had a chance to chat and have fun too (not that we didn't find tree houses, dinosaur bones, and winding rivers excitement enough).

I think the highlight of the time for me was watching the boys play in the maze together and run around. They would run around corners and surprise each other and then both just laugh and laugh, then run away and surprise each other again. And when we had tea together the boys would politely fill each other's cups, pretend to drink, and didn't bicker at all. What a pair of delightful boys! I'm hoping we get to see more of Joshua and Catherine this fall and winter!

I didn't get out my camera very often, so if you want to check out some more pictures, you can see Catherine's blog as well. She has some great ones there!

So many questions . . .

Elijah is definitely beginning to exhibit the curiousness of a 2 year old and, coupled with his ever-expanding verbal skills, he's become quite the little questioner.

It all started a few weeks ago with Eli understanding the concept of asking "where" someone or something went. One day he was home during nap time with Grandpa while I went shopping, and when I came home Grandpa and Grandma told me that he kept pacing around after he woke, going from the front door to the back door, and asking, "Where Momma go? Oh man. Where Momma go?" Since then he's begun to ask me every morning (without fail), "Where Daddy go? Where Grandma go? Where Grandpa go?" Usually though the subject of the question is Lexi and Tori ("Where Lexi Tori go?), even if they haven't even been at our house within the last day or two. And last Saturday we were eating breakfast at our still-for-sale-house and he started asking, "Where Uncle Jeff go?" He hadn't seen Uncle Jeff for a week, but he desperately needed to know where Uncle Jeff was. :)

Now Eli's firmly grasped the concept of "what" as well. It's cute to see him stop and have to look at everything he doesn't recognize. Then he asks, "What's that, Mommy?" or "What's this, Mommy?" Though occasionally it can get a little repetitive to have to answer a ton of questions, the majority of the time it's super-adorable since he has the cutest little inflection when he asks his questions.

He's also learned that "what" is a response. Last week I was trying to get him to pick up a game he had all over the floor before he got another one out, and he was ignoring my efforts to get him involved in the clean up. I said, "Elijah," with a more authoritative tone, and without even looking up he replied, "What?!," with an exasperated little voice. My mind fast forwarded about 11 years or so and I could just imagine that same exact expression and tone of voice coming out of my teen aged Elijah. Mom was standing in the kitchen and both she and I could barely contain our laughter. I didn't respond right away so Elijah looked at me and said, "What, Mommy? What?"

Though I'm loving seeing Eli learn and be curious about the world around him, I must say that I'm glad he hasn't picked up any of the other question statements. What and where are enough for now without having to deal with any who, when, or why questions!

Eli loves the Michigan Marching Band!

A few weeks ago, while at our house back in Canton, I decided on a whim to grab one of my old Michigan Marching Band yearbook VHS videos. I had picked up the videos from the years that I was in the band (1995, 1996, and 1997) several years earlier, but had never been able to watch them; they were very garbled when played in our VCR (even after playing with the tracking control).

When I got back to Mom and Dad K.’s house in Grand Rapids, to my surprise, the video worked perfectly! Also somewhat to my surprise – Eli loved it! He sat and watched most of the hour-plus-long video as I watched it with him and explained what the different instruments were, and the different shapes that the band was making with their formations. We even caught a couple of glimpses of Daddy marching!

Eli is really into the band now, which he shows us in various ways:

• He’ll bring me the one of the videos and say “Watch marching band movie, Daddy!” He also knows how to put the VHS tape into the VCR – perhaps a rarity among year 2007 2-year-olds? And I’ve found that for all of their faults as compared to DVDs – need to rewind, can’t easily skip around to different points of the tape – VHS tapes have the definite perk of being much more durable than DVDs, and unlike DVDs, I don’t need to worry about Eli handling the tapes. No need to worry about putting scratches on the hard plastic VHS tape!
  

Visual aid for 20 years from now when Eli has no idea what a VHS tape was:

• Eli will take two of the metal lids from his kitchen set and bang them together and say “cymbals”!
  
  
• Eli is starting to be able to pick out the sound of some instruments from music. On a couple of occasions, he’s heard some music on the radio or from one of his movies that has classical instrumentation, and he’ll say “trumpets!”
  
• Eli is getting into the Michigan spirit, too. We’ve caught him a couple of times walking around the house, saying “Hail, Hail!” and pumping his little fist in the air. When we’re watching a football game and I say “Touchdown!”, Eli will respond and say, rapid-fire, “Michigan Marching Band Touchdown!” And he definitely knows the sound of The Victors – I was outside in the front yard with my trumpet the other day demonstrating how to play it for my nephew Noah, and Missy told me later that Eli was inside saying “marching band! Marching band!”

Maybe Eli might be in the Michigan Marching Band himself someday? I don’t know what the future holds for him… but I would certainly be extremely proud if he was!

Spur-of-the-moment picnic!

Last week my brother Jeff mentioned that we should have a picnic together at the park sometime, so on short notice we decided to brave the weather forecast and have a picnic last Thursday night.

We went to a local park about 5 minutes from my parents, and virtually had the place to ourselves. It did end up raining for just a few minutes, which added to the excitement as we dashed from the playground to the pavilion (Noah said we needed to "find shelter!"). Just a few minutes after finding cover the rain stopped and the sun shone down again, just like I predicted. After that I got to hear the girls say over and over, "Aunt Missy was right! It stopped raining!" Ah, music to my ears. :)

Eli and Daddy - the Crocodile Riders!

Grandma heads down the slide with the kids.

Eli, Lexi, and Tori, doing "gymnastics"

It was still pretty windy though, so the concrete in the pavilion ended up being painted a nice red color from the kool-aid that went flying in a sudden gust. And the kids were more interested in eating cheese popcorn than actual dinner. Grandma opened the bag and it was a feeding frenzy, reminding me of those shark documentaries you see.

Watch out, there's popcorn in the water!

Eli discovered his bib made a good pouch for holding his popcorn.

The girls and Eli on the "climbing wall" of the pavilion.

The battery on the camera ran out so I didn't get that many pictures of us playing, but Mom did snap a pic of most of us up on the big tractor tires. Bravo to Jeff for managing to scramble up in dress shoes (he came straight from work to join us). After being away from Grand Rapids for so long it is such a special treat to be able to enjoy fun family time on the spur-of-the-moment (and a weeknight none the less)!

Everyone on top of the tires start screaming!

We made it to the top of Mt. Tire-verest!