Regretfully Yours,...

And the Laziest, Rudest, Most Complacent (non-)Blogger Award goes to.....

I'll bet you can guess.

My deepest and most regretful apologies to you all. In all the craziness of life, and what with all of my other online obsessions, (i.e. Facebook and emailing and instant messaging far away friends, flittering about looking for recipes and solutions to all my problems, googling "chickenpox" to see if the strange rash all over Eli's bum and feet is what I think it is, but later finding that it is actually probably an equally as scary problem called hand, foot, and mouth disease, photoshopping my face onto the bodies of celebrities to see what my hair would look like, you know the obvious things one does online....) I have let my blogging, well, go extinct. I was on a roll there for a few months, but sadly, my momentum faded drastically, and I wish that I could say it won't happen again. However, I am going to put forth an effort, not just to blog again, but to try and recap all that we have missed. And then move forward from there. Most of you have seen Eli several times since I last wrote, but for those of you who haven't, he is now a giant. Not a baby, but a boy. A tall boy, who says "ummm, no!" and "yup" (a.k.a. yes ) in correct context when asked a question. For example, if I say, "Elias, would you like to have chopped livers for dinner?" He now knows to answer that question quickly and clearly, "ummm, NO!"

And if I ask, "Eli, would you like to have a sip of mommy's delicious cherry slushie, he responds with a very enthusiastic, "yup!", but in a kind of country boy accent that he doesn't use when he says any other words.

Other words in his repertoire are "mom!!!!" (most often yelled in the early morning hours), "dad", "mine!" (we have Grandma Bev to thank for that one), "up", "down", "out", "shoes", "choo, choo", "huhwoe" (a..k.a. hello), "bye, bye", "tank too" (which I'm sure you realize is, thank you), "wee wee" (which shockingly means please, and could also be misconstrued for oui, oui, which would be cute since he is half a frenchman), "duck" (which usually means truck, but often times does actually mean duck), "dog", and "dig" (which is pig). There are several other words in the works, but we are not quite sure exactly what is being said.

He is a boy who just recently turned 18 mos. old. He runs, he stomps, he climbs, he opens things, he dances, he takes huge bites out of apples, and he plays cars and trucks like you wouldn't believe. He loves to play with his trucks so much, and I believe it's actually just the wheels he's after, that he'll do so up until the final seconds before he has to go to bed, lying on the floor, exhausted from a long day of playing, pushing the truck forward and back, forward and back. It is a desperate attempt to keep the day from ending and it is extremely cute.

Since last blog, he has grown teeth. Four up top, three down below and one molar kind of halfway in. He has decided he is passionate about strawberries. He still loves milk, and oh, I hope his pediatrician isn't reading this, he still loves (and I mean l-o-v-e-s) his bottle. He likes spaghetti best of all the foods we have tried, which, may I say, is quite a lot, and you might suppose if you didn't know any better that he was indeed, Italian.

And just now he opened up his book called, "I Love Animals", pointed to the owl and said, "hoo, hoo!" I'm telling you, he's a genius. Okay, I'm mostly kidding there, but we have not covered owls yet. He also seems to have a crazily keen sense of hearing, as he can hear a train that is three miles or more from our house, sometimes before Jeff and I even hear it, and he shouts exasperatingly, "choo, choo!", with such intensity that you think he might lose his breath and pass out.

So speaking of which, the boy has awakened from the blessed naptime. And I have showered, eaten, swept up breadcrumbs (that E somehow pulled down from the kitchen counter, opened even though it was a brand new container, and poured out onto the tiles, then resembling something like sand on the beach,.... well, sand on the beach sprinkled with italian seasoning), made iced coffee, and blogged. I'll leave you with a picture of Elias the Spaghetti Lover sitting in his highchair reveling in the glory of a spaghetti dinner demolished.

Until next time (which will hopefully be in a few days, not a few years),

Megan