Eli: The little things

Little things about Eli lately:

Shoe fetish - The boy has a serious shoe fetish. I knew he liked playing with our shoes, but when Yeh-Yeh and Nai-Nai came, he started playing with their shoes. When we went to Franknz's, he put on Vienna's toy pink plastic high heel slippers. He nearly twisted an ankle trying to walk in them on hardwood floors. And he gave everyone their shoes when we were leaving. He LOVES shoes.

Little Monk - He's got a little OCD in him. He likes things in their place. Kind of unexpected for someone as active and social. I would have thought the neat freak child would be the more uptight one. He always puts his shoes away in the basket and he holds them together a certain way when he puts them back. And after a little protest, he usually has no problems cleaning up and finishing the job.

Wooden puzzles - Related to things in their right place, he likes the wooden puzzles where you fit shaped pieces in their proper spot. He also is doing them quite well. I remember Tobey going through a phase of trial and error in fitting the pieces. Either we started Eli later on these or he just understood how to do them earlier. From the first time he did them, he got them right, actually looking at the pieces and trying to fit them. Where he doesn't do as well as Tobey is the fine motor skills needed to rotate the pieces into place.

Saying sorry - If Eli doesn't think he's in the wrong, he will NOT say that he is sorry. He seems to have a sense of "fault". Today he accidentally hit Tobey in the face with a toy rake. When I asked him to say sorry, he just threw his twisty tantrum. Even when I said I know it's an accident, he just wouldn't sign sorry nor would he give Tobey a hug. I've seen him in the past admit wrong, give back a toy he stole, give a hug, etc. But when he doesn't think he's in the wrong, he will not budge. This is sure to be a problem when he enters the two's.

Books - Eli is getting better about reading books. He'll often pull one off the shelf and bring to you to read. He'll sit and read most of it too, that is unless Tobey comes to read too. Then Eli makes a quick exit. It's still an improvement over trying to get him to sit 2 seconds to read a book.

Persistence - Eli doesn't have much persistence, in the sense that if something he's playing with doesn't work, he doesn't quite have the persistence and patience to make it work. He'll easily just drop what he's doing and move on instead. There's value in that too, to be a little laid back.

Doorknobs - Eli can now open all of our doors, including the bathroom doors and the door to our garage. And we have real doorknobs, not the lever doorknobs that he knew how to open long ago. Only the front door he can't open because it's heavier and stickier. I'm up for getting a few babyproof knobs, mainly for the bathrooms and the garage, since our main way of keeping him out of those places is to close the door. One of our friends' kids can't open doorknobs even when he was 3. We have the misfortune of our kids figuring our doors pretty early.

Sitting - Eli got a lot of training this week sitting at restaurants. Yesterday we were at the Elephant Bar for almost 2 hours and he sat the whole time. Okay, I held him for 5 minutes when he wanted ice water that we wouldn't give him without a straw. But otherwise, he ate well, he entertained himself well, we got some precious pictures of him trying a lemon wedge for the first time.

They say this is a fun age and I believe it.