Ups & downs!

This week has had it's ups and downs.... but thankfully we had a mix so it wasn't all bad!! Here's how our week went....day by day :)

Monday: The week started innocent enough with a fun visit to Toddler Town! No pictures, but fun nonetheless as we met up with Callie, Brody and Cheryl! Oh wait, I forgot, Eli did get jumped on by a little girl in the ball pit....that wasn't very fun!

Tuesday: On Tuesdays I work in the morning so we had the afternoon to go to the park. It was a nice day and Eli LOVES swinging. Here's some cute pictures:

Eli has a school bus toy and he likes to play with it at home. He also likes to see the school bus go by our house. While at the park, Eli saw the school bus and started running towards it. Thankfully the park is quite a ways away from the road. Once the bus left, he just stood there and watched it leave:

When we got home, I thought it would be funny to put him in his jumperoo for old times sake:

Eli also figured out how to stack his shoes on his dump truck....very talented!:

Eli loves to practice going up and down the stairs....here he is having a conversation about this experience with daddy while mommy was at work:

Now for the bad part on Tuesday. On the way home from work (he works 12-9pm), Eric hit a deer. Thankfully he is okay and he was able to immediately pull off at a gas station and check the damage and drive home. Here's the damage:

The car is currently in the shop and should be fixed in a couple of weeks (if not sooner). Oh, and the deer didn't make it :(

Wednesday: Nothing major happened on Wednesday....thankfully! We did miss out on Music with Mar due to having to deal with car stuff :(

Thursday: Eli had his craniosacral appointment in the morning which went well.

Friday: Eli had his 18 month well check Friday morning and he is a healthy boy! He had one vaccination which he hated, but otherwise was a good visit. Here are his stats:

Weight: 26 lbs. 3 oz. (50-75th%)
Height: 33 1/2 in. (75-90th%)
Head: 19 5/8 in. (90-95th%)

Eli showed off his letter recognition and she was very impressed. I also asked her opinion of potty training due to him identifying when he poops and she said with his excellent language abilities that we could start to introduce him to the potty chair and the process. I'm doing some research now about it and it looks like 18 months is a great age to start if they are showing signs of readiness.

After Eli's nap, we went to Target with Grandma Bidney (I took the day off because he was feeling needy after his shot). I made the grave mistake of not putting him into the cart until AFTER we got into Target because he wanted nothing to do with the cart. He thrashed his body around to the point that I swore I was going to drop him on his head while I tried to put him in the cart. So, I let him help me push the cart, which seemed fine, until he started to throw fits if we didn't go the way HE wanted to go. Let's just say we were in Target a total of about 15 minutes and everyone there knew Eli was there! He continued to just drop to the ground and almost smack his head on the ground numerous times anytime I tried to redirect him so I gave up and asked my mom to pay for the stuff we got and I picked him up as he thrashed around and took him to the car. AHHHH!!!! Once in the car he was fine and thought it was fun to play with the light on the ceiling. I said to him "Eli, mommy is NOT happy with you!" and he just looked at me like "what did I do?". We will have to have a better game plan for future store visits that is for sure!!

Later Friday evening Eli's Aunt Sarah and Aunt Stephanie came down from Iowa for a visit. Eli was shy at first only standing next to me but then became quickly re-aquainted after about 10 minutes. Here's a picture of Eli's aunties reading him a bed time story:

Saturday: Saturday we woke up to snow and mommy decided to not brave the white stuff and stayed home instead of going to the craniosacral seminar.

This seemed all good until Eli decided to take a dive into the corner of the wall in our room after tripping over daddy's shoes. Eli's forhead IMMEDIATELY swelled up with a nice cut. It looked terrible as it was about 2 inches long vertically and a 1/4 inch wide-it looked like a black and blue tumor! He was VERY upset and wouldn't stop touching it and it just seemed to get bigger and bigger. He hated the ice pack and I decided to call the doctor (who has urgent care hours on Saturdays) and they said to bring him in. I was thankfully able to settle him down and nurse him and he was better for the car ride. The doc said it looked okay and he didn't need steri strips or anything. All his vitals were fine and the swelling started to go down. We were probably more scared and concerned than needed but it looked so terrible! We are deligently putting Neosporin on it to help reduce the chances of a scar but I'm sure he'll have a faint one. I know....many more to come!! The coincidence was the last time I rushed him to the doctor it was also a yucky snowy day! Here's a picture of his boo-boo that evening:

Counting trains is fun!

Sunday: Aunt Sarah had not yet met Cousin Chloe so Emily, Josh, Mallory & Chloe came over for a yummy breakfast prepared by Eric (and some yummy donuts brought by the Suttons). This way the kiddos could play and we could talk easier then in a restaurant. Eli and Mallory played well together (they are about 15 months apart) but I can see Eli is starting to get a little possessive of things he has or wants. He kinda whines when he wants a toy another child has and pulls away if another child wants what he has. Oh boy, here we go! Teaching sharing is so hard as they don't understand it well enough yet but you want them to share and be nice to others! Here's some cute pictures from the morning:

Here's a picture of how much better his boo-boo looked on Sunday. Today it is a little more at the blue & yellow bruise stage (which always looks bad) and it is still raised but so much better:

Aunt Sarah & Aunt Stephanie left mid afternoon and we did our usual Sunday activities (grocery shopping and weekly food prep for Eli). It was fun to see Eli's aunties and I'm sure they enjoyed our low key lifestyle (no going out for us!!) :) We hope to see Aunt Holly & Uncle Chris at the end of the month....weehee!

This last week Eli learned the words wall, "fower"=flower, "jewo"=jello, snow and "pane"=plane. Eli continues to amaze us with how he identifies letters and shapes in the most abstract of places. We had Starbucks this weekend and he kept tracing the lid and saying "circle" over and over. He says "v" when he sees the tongs in the kitchen and when looking out at tree branches. He usually catches us off guard and we have no idea what he is talking about and then when we look around, we see what he is saying!

So, as you can see, we had our share of ups & downs this week. Hopefully this week will have more ups :) We hope to attend Toddler Town on Friday and have a playdate with a college friend on Saturday. We look forward to another 1-2 days of warm weather (to melt all the snow!) later in the week.