Thanksgiving, 15 month well check, snow, Christmas tree AND more walking!!! (phew!)

Thanksgiving was yummy, as usual, and we hosted having Eric's parents and my mom over. Eric's mom cooked the turkey & pies, I did casseroles & rolls, & my mom did a dessert & rolls. It was a good time had by all! Here's our Thanksgiving 2008 family picture:

Friday, Eli had his 15 month well check. He checked out great & has continued to level out with his weight. Amy, the Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Eli sees, was happy with his development in all areas. Here are his stats:

Weight: 26 lbs. 75th%
Height: 31 1/4 in. 75th-90th%
Head: 19 1/2 in. 95th%

After the doc appointment & lunch, Eli & I (Eric had to work) went to visit Grandma Bidney at HER place. She is always coming to our house & we hadn't been to her place in months! She had a few updates done so it was good to come see the place. Eli enjoyed exploring & I brought his push toy/walker with us so he could have a mode of transportation :) Here are pictures:

Saturday, Daddy went to the KU/MU football game with some friends and Eli & I invited our friends Sue & Kalani over for a visit. Kalani & Eli are about 10 months apart, which Sue was saying seems like a big gap now, but in the future hopefully they'll be best pals :) Eli wasn't TOO mean to Kalani, but he did pull his hair once (he has lots of it!). Eli enjoyed rough housing with Sue & Sue was a great sport, letting Eli pull her hair, too. Oh Eli!!! Here's pictures of the visit:

Today we had snow that actually accumulated for a little while. Eli has seen snow before but he was only a few months old, so it was new to him! I'm sure we'll have more snow pictures as the winter goes on but here are a couple of Eli learning that white stuff is COLD!!!:

Now that winter is here, we have to put back out the rugs for the our wet & yucky shoes. The rugs were put away for awhile because Eli would always get stuck in them with his push toys & walker. As soon as I brought them back out, he immediately had to play with them. Silly boy finds EVERYTHING to be interesting:

Today we (I should say Eric) put up our Christmas tree. This year is a little different than last year as last year Eli wasn't anywhere near mobile. So, we had to plan out where to put the tree & how to blockade our little man from destroying it! I looked up online ideas & found a few that were interesting such as putting the tree in a playpen, putting up a small tree on a table, or putting your couch in front of the tree. We decided to just do what we could to barracade the tree with 2 coffee tables (one from downstairs) & a foot rest. We'll see if it works :) So far the tree is just up, no decor, so we'll do that sometime this week!! We did let him explore the tree once we first put it up. He was of course facinated by the "ights" & loved touching them. I have a picture of me at around Eli's age standing in front of the tree starring at it. I'll have to see if I have it & post it. I tried to reinact the picture with Eli:

Okay, now what you all came to see.....more walking videos!! Eli is doing much better already & while he still crawls most of the time (or uses his push toy walker), he is becoming more & more brave about walking by himself without us even encouraging him. It's so adorable because he is SO proud of himself. He gets this look on his face as he starts to stand on his own & then starts smiling as he makes the attempt to walk. He's walked probably 8 or 9 steps at a time & seems to really enjoy himself! He gets so excited that he actually starts to almost run as he is walking to us. Enjoy!!

Lastly, Eli has a few new words this week: papa (grandpa), hot (for the heater in his room), off (in relation to lights) & doggie. At dinner today he said a form of the word "cracker", but only once & my rule is he has to say it more than once AND with actual meaning or connection to what he is saying. He's entering the phase of mimicking us which while he is saying words while doing this, it really doesn't mean anything to him or connecting it to anything, just a mimick. That's just my silly rule for his "first words". Soon he'll be saying many more words and we'll have a hard time keeping up with the documenting, but until then, I'm being "stingy" about documenting what words he actually says :)

Hope everyone has a great week!