Eli: Don't forget about me!

I kick myself every few days when I think about all the random little things I might blog about Tobey and then realize that I don't always do the same with Eli.

In contrast to Tobey's testing preschool stage, Eli is at the ultra cute, the world is my playground, 1 year old stage. I am tickled every time I realize that he understands or is aware of what's going on. For a month or two now, he will slam dunk his poopy diaper (nicely rolled up by Mommy) into a plastic bag for proper disposal. But more amazingly, when he has a poopy diaper and I call him for a diaper change, he comes. He'll even lay down if I'm changing him on the floor. He'll still sometimes squirm during the diaper change, but it's clear that he knows it's time.

Ah, if only Tobey would still come when we call like Eli does. Eli will come to the bath tub if he hears the water turn on. He'll come to his booster if he sees me walking with a bowl of mush in my hand. He understands "Give to Mommy" and Daddy and Tobey when he has something in his hand. Today apparently he knew to "Give to Auntie", even though he couldn't have really known who "Auntie" was. (We hadn't seen Cindy Fan in a while so I'm sure he didn't know who she was.)

My favorite (but occasionally maddening) facial expression of his is his "Ooo, you're in trouble" look. It comes complete with raised eyebrows and puckered lips and usually comes after I've scolded him for something like playing with an electrical plug. I've wanted to crack up laughing a couple of times but for the sake of preserving the seriousness of the offense, have tried to contain myself. But it's hilarious. "Eli, no, no!" "Ooooo!"

Eli is a man of few words. Angela says that Katie can say about 10 words and she's a month younger than him. I know better than to compare my kids to Angela's in the area of verbalness -- Christopher was an early too -- but at the same time, I feel like Eli should be saying SOMETHING by now. I can't make out any words. He's still basically saying, "GA GA!" really loud. He can say "da da" but it's unclear whether he means Tom or anything at all. The only thing I can tell is when he's yelling at us, upset at being offended or just wanting to be heard. His language is incomprehensible but the message is clear.

Eli does have a 1 year old tantrum. He'll get down on the ground and squeal an unhappy squeal. But we're usually too tired to deal with another whiner in addition to Tobey's preschool whining so we usually ignore him and walk away after which I don't even know if he's stopped because i've walked away. What's a poor guy to do for attention around here?

Physically, Eli is the funniest little thing. I assume he's still small for his age, last registering at the 6th percentile. But his belly is still humongous, enough for me to ask Dr. Moore, seriously, is this normal? I saw Eli buck naked from the back as he trotted off to bath and his hips are so narrow but his belly is so big and wide. His feet turn in a little, making his off balance tumbles to the ground that much cuter. And despite his lack of baby fat, he does have cute cheeks. He's up to 8 teeth now, just having cut two more on the bottom. His crooked underbite grin is cute for now, until we find we have to pay for braces to correct it. He still has remnants of old man hair, especially because his last haircut was pretty bad.

Eli is easily entertained especially when there's a lot of people around. If he's not walking up to completely new people and looking at them (like he did at the car dealership today), he's perfectly content wandering around and exploring by himself. He never has received and therefore doesn't demand a dedicated playmate although if Tobey's asleep and I'm just sitting on the futon, his activity of choice is to crawl all over me with mouth wide open saying, "Aaahhh.".

Actually, Eli's activity of choice is relocating small toys and toy parts around the house. It's maddening to find all the cups of a 12 cup stacking set in 12 different places in the house. It's changed my way of tidying up the house. I have to go around the house with a basket picking up random parts and reassembling toy sets as I make my way room-by-room through the house. I got Tobey involved by walking around with his shopping cart pretending to shop for small toys. And it's all Eli's doing.

Most people can see from the get go that Eli is an active kid. Active yes. Careless, not so much. When Eli learned to walk, it's true that he wasn't quite as cautiously conservative as Tobey was by the time he was ready to let go of our hand, but at the same time, he wasn't the Tasmanian devil style of movement that is his cousin Morgan. Eli's a climber and thanks to Anna, we have an indoor Little Tikes slide that he loves to go up and down on. I also thought "active" kids = disobedient kids. I thought my mom was just being nice when she said Andrew (the active one as a kid) was active, but fun and still "guai" (obedient). But so far, Eli's pretty good at obeying "no no's" whether it's climbing on the picnic table or touching a cord, considering he's just a year old.

Eli's also a clapper. He claps everytime Tobey pees in the potty. He claps when he hears music. Even the bad Chinese music I played for him yesterday. He even clapped after Tom played the violin the other day. Now that's music appreciation.

I often wonder if Eli's cuteness now is just a stage and that in a year, I'll be blogging about the same struggles of stubbornness and independence that we are having with Tobey now. But since I won't know until I get there, I will enjoy Eli in this cute stage now while I can.