The merry merry month of March

Unlike our favorite sister and brother-in-law in New York, March brought pretty stellar weather to these parts.  Naturally the first thing to do was to go out and buy some hot sunglasses so that Eli could cruise the neighborhood in style.

 Then we hit the parks.  Where have these marvelous things been for the past 4 months?  We go, I enjoy the sun and idealistic images of my child's childhood, and Eli gets dirty and wears himself out.  It's a win for everyone until it's time to pack it up and go home.  Then the world ends.

Somehow even with all the fresh, healthy air we still managed to catch March Misery.  So.  Many.  Fluids.  I felt I was sufficiently warned about blowouts, spit ups, drool, and surprise pee squirts while I was pregnant, but I honestly could not have anticipated how many tissues and boogie wipes we could run through, or that my child would wake up as an unrecognizable lizard with scales all over his face.

 Our friendly household pharmacist dosed him with Zyrtec to try and plug the leaks, but it merely turned him into a leaking, staring zombie for 6 hours.  Zach checked and rechecked his dosing, but apparently Eli just can't handle his meds.

March is also the month that Zach gets old(er).  Because Zach feels the love through good food, we headed home to Utah to celebrate his birthday.  Elko is a little short on said love.  And we got to hang out with family, which is always a plus.

Note all the kiddos hanging around to make sure Zach is capable of blowing out his own candles.

Eli and Ollie, the two popsicle lovers

Swing with Grandpa

Swinging with Dad

Coolest uncle with the nephews

Zach's second family birthday dinner at the new Magleby abode

Grandma finally got Eli to sleep via Popular Science

To wrap Zach's birthday celebration week we saw Les Miserables at the local Elko theatre where my friend Carson did a marvelous job playing Cosette.  Val Jean is also pictured here, looking much cheesier than he did on stage.

Entering the Terrible Terrific Twos

Eli had a birthday.  This kid is now two. 
Did he notice? 
I don't know. 
Does he feel different now that he's officially not a baby anymore? 
I doubt it.
Did he have any kind of opinion on what he wanted to do to celebrate? 
No. 
So Zach and I threw a toga party with our favorite people and with our favorite cake because this is the last year that Eli won't have his own ideas.

Eli threw himself into the terrible twos with vigor, starting with a night of no sleep and ridiculous grumpiness on party day.  He flat out refused to wear the toga and helmet he had been so excited about the day before, so I apologize for the lack of birthday boy pictures.  Luckily we had plenty of cute nieces and nephews to make up for it, and Chanel modeled the helmet admirably.

Thank you to everyone that came and made Eli notice just how loved he is!

To wrap up the birthday weekend we took a hike up Rock Canyon with Grandpa.  It was slow going, with lots of pauses to pick up rocks and throw them, but it was popular all around.

 

Whenever I think back on life before Eli I get the sense that I'm forgetting or missing something.  Now I can't even imagine a future without him.  We love this little stud!

Shem

Yesterday at Story Time, I asked my friend to pass me the "shem" book.  This was after having shem juice for breakfast and counting all the shem construction cones on the road.

Eli's vocabulary is corrupting mine.  He's been obsessed with colors lately, and has them all down: yewhoa, beu, wed, gween, white, back, peenk, and poipull.  Only orange eludes him as unrecognizable: shem.  Zach and I catch ourselves using "shem" all the time.  We're developing quite the family dialect around here.

Eli is also big into shapes.  He points them out wherever we go.  Soickle, skare, chiangle... he loves them all and wants to share his passion with me.  Honestly, I never knew how many tattoos have stars and hearts in them until Eli started pointing them out.  Loudly.  Everywhere.  All the time.

Ah, the joys of a somewhat understandable toddler.

Growing up too fast

Eli's first kiss.  November 2014

Eli and his best girlfrenemy had their first sleep-over this weekend.  In separate cribs of course- we do try to keep up appearances.  Miss Gwendolyn's parents went for a weekend of fun that did not include their toddler so they asked if we could watch her.  We were honored they would trust us so much, even if it meant putting Eli on a stricter curfew than usual.

Eli and Gwen have a very intense relationship.  They either love each other or, in Eli's case, are trying to pull out each others eyeballs with their bare fingernails.  The picture below captures a rare moment where they are both engaged in the same activity and not fighting over a particular item or trying to stop the other from doing something.

 We did not try to keep up appearances during bath time.  While they both agreed that the bath itself was the best thing ever, getting one's hair wet is the worst mortal experience you can be put through.

I love having Gwen around because she is much, much tougher than Eli.  She cries about a twelfth as much as he does and is always "otay" after any fall, bump or bruise (emotional or physical).  She brings out the man in Eli, who has lately been scared of the medium and large slides at the playground after loving them only last summer.  But, after watching Gwen go down (face-first I might add) he decided he had to prove himself.  It was a proud moment for all of us.

I feel like having a kid divided my brain in half.  One half for what I used to use a full brain for, and half for Eli.  Having Gwen turned everything into thirds, and I shudder to think what my processing power will look like after a few more kids.  Still, it was fun to have people at the grocery store tell us how adorable our twins were.  Worth it.

You'll always be chasing her, kid.

Eli Speaks

Eli: "Pink.  Monkey.  Dance.  Funny!"

Now repeat.  And repeat.  This phrase is like supercalifragilisticexpealidocious.  It fits every circumstance, makes every occasion better, and is always HI-LARIOUS.

We met this seemingly harmless little guy in the Valentines Day aisle at Kmart while we were visiting Zach a few weeks ago.  Now he is a mandatory stop, often before seeing Daddy, and we must listen to the song and dance the dance a minimum of four times.

Not since he saw Santa sitting on top of a fire truck steering reindeer at the Elko Christmas Parade has something made this big of an impact on the kid.

Only 25 days until Valentines Day is over.

They Get it DONE

Every few months or so, we get a visit from the much beloved grandparents.  They spread their love in numerous ways- watching Eli, taking us to dinner, playing with Eli, touring our town with us, and hanging out with Eli are just a few.

I look forward to every trip for another special reason: when Mom and Dad come to visit, things get DONE.  So not only are we left with happier souls and a more spoiled Eli at the end of a visit, but also a physical improvement to our never-ending project, the house.

First and foremost was to get a new kitchen faucet (Dad the plumber, above) that actually gave us hot water.  A serious improvement in any culinary or cleaning enterprise.

Next was to update the major lighting fixtures.  These are all the small, relatively inexpensive but labor intensive procedures that make a big difference in the way I feel about my house.

Before and after.  From ugly old ceiling fan to LIGHT in the living room.  What a concept.

I loved getting rid of the globe lights in the living room and halls.  I honestly believe it makes the ceiling look taller.

This most recent trip was all about light switches and outlets.  Old, painted over beige plates don't look good with gray walls and white trim.  While changing them out we discovered some rather impressive wiring tricks that weren't exactly to code, but were effective.  The things you learn when you own your own house.  Also, 12 gauge wire is a beast.

So much cleaner looking.  5 down, 42 to go.

Thanks for a great and satisfying weekend Mom and Dad!  Next up: the garage.