New pets

A few weeks ago we adopted three baby rats from a local small pet rescue. Charlotte and Grace have begged for a pet for along time. We have talked about everything from a puppy (not going to happen) to a goldfish. We finally all agreed on rats, and I think it was a great choice for us. Their names are Rose, Violet and Petunia. Rose is the white one and she is the calmest and was the quickest to let us handle her. They all have nice little rat personalities, and I think they are getting used to the chaos of three little kids trying to play with them.

I guess you're probably either a rat person or you're not. For all of you out there who like rats...aren't they cute?!

All Three

Derek helped me with this attempted little photoshoot the other morning. Eli was not really in the mood. Charlotte is being a really good sport and singing the baby bumblebee song to try to cheer Eli up. Not working.




We finally got him interested in ring around the rosie.


He doesn't drop down at the end, but he thinks it's really funny when everybody else does.


I know you can't see their faces, but I really like this one. I like the motion in it and how Gracie is reaching out to her little brother.


And we're back to the screaming. End of photoshoot.

Summer haircut

End of May 2010


Middle of June 2009


My last baby. Sigh.

Eli Counting

More baby home movies. Eli was counting little shapes in the bathtub, so for modesty's sake I am just posting the audio. The numbers one through fifteen still constitute about half of his spoken vocabulary, but he's saying more and more things every day. Fun times.

Tonight

The summer evening light is very nice in our bedroom these days. I noticed it a few nights ago and finally managed to go get the camera and take some pictures of Eli after his bath. He is playing peekabo with his pj shirt, which is why his arms are thrown back over his head like that. I just noticed he's also holding a pen, not exactly sure why. He says his name now (just omitting the "l" sound), which he learned from playing this game. He says, "Ee-i? Ee-i? Ee-i?" while he has the shirt over his head and then he emerges triumphantly from underneath. Over and over and over. It just never gets old.

May Flowers

I found this cool field of wildflowers while hiking with the girls and my friends Larry and Cayden and Erin. Derek and I took Eli back one evening to try to get some pictures. I have more to edit. The second is not a great picture of Eli, but it is a nice picture of the field. Since I picked it out to edit during the short window of time that I had available, I guess it shows where my priorities really are.




I know I always talk about how Eli doesn't have many words that he says. He is up to about 5 or 6 words at almost 22 months. So I am sure you can imagine Derek's surprise when he picked Eli up at daycare and his teachers were bursting with excitement to tell about how Eli counted to 12! He did it for us at home, too. You have to use your imagination for the consonant sounds, but all the vowels and syllables are there. Aaah, Oooo, Eeeee, Oooor, Iiiii, Iiiiik, Eeeeden,... We wanted to videotape it but we couldn't find the battery charger for the camera, so you'll all have to take my word for it. My boy's got mad skillz.

I spoke with Alex and she reminded me that Louisa did almost this same thing at the same age. So he's following in great footsteps!

Eli Talking

Hi! Long time no post. Thanks for still checking in. We're still here. Really.

I finally uploaded some of the video of the kids and resized it to post on-line. Here is Eli saying just about every word he knows. Note: although we prompt him several times to say Mama, he's never actually said it. Yet.



The little hand gestures that he does are from the song Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee. He does this all the time. I'll look over and he'll be sitting there singing to himself going through all the motions. I finally asked his day care teacher what the song was. Before we didn't know, but we would make him laugh alot by imitating him.

More video to come, now that I have gotten the software working and everything.

Easter

I'll be honest, coloring Easter eggs once a year is about as crafty as I get. We had fun. The weather is supposed to be warm and beautiful this weekend, so we will probably hide these outside on Sunday.

Just a few snaps.




This was our attempt at a group shot. Eli was not having any of it. He didn't mind having his picture taken, but he was ticked about having his sisters in there with him.