Climb Every Mountain

When you are 13 months old everything looks like a mountain. Eli has taken the Sound of Music lyrics very seriously, and he tries to climb everything! This includes our bookshelves, his jumper, our tall kitchen chairs, into the dishwasher, off our bed (it is at least 6 inches taller than him, but he mastered climbing off the bed all on his own a few months ago!), over Mommy and Daddy, on the vacuum, I mean everywhere!
As mentioned before, we love going outside, and with such an active boy I've learned that outside is the safest place for him (well,  safe for our house at least). Eli has discovered the joy of the toys at the park. He is still enamored by the plants, but is willing to play with the toys now too. What he loves is trying to climb up the slide and cruising all around the play gyms. The slide was a bit of a problem becuase he could climb onto it but didn't know how to get down. At first he tried just stepping off, and of course he stumbled off a few times in his climbing, but he's finally figured out how to climb off as well. The nice part is that this kid rarely cries. Even when he falls backwards off the slide, he'll usually just jump up and start climbing again. It helps that he figured out how to hold his head up when he falls many, many months ago. I swear, this kid has had six-pack abs forever! Today, however, he finally met his match. He was just finishing lunch and Mike opened up our sliding glass door to the backyard. This set Eli off and he immediately started trying to climb out of his chair so he could go outside. I came over to get him down and clean him up--he did have some messy oranges with lunch. As soon as I took the tray off he started to wiggle. Of course, I held him down and started to wipe off his face. I certainly did not expect what happened next. Eli jumped over the SIDE of his seat and onto the tile--face first. I screamed and grabbed in time to catch his foot, just as his noggin was meeting the tile. I think my scream upset him more than the fall did, even though he did get a nice goose egg on his forehead. He needed me to snuggle with him for a minute and reassure him that everything was fine and he was ready to play. He didn't forget Daddy had opened the door and was determined to go outside. Now Eli has a huge black and blue bump on his head and I feel like an awful mom. The good news is that we are taking family pictures next week, so this mark will be immortalized for posterity. At least we are going with a blue color scheme, the bruise is sure to match!
(pictures of the bump to come soon, these are all I have downloaded for now)
Admittedly, he was a little stuck when I took this picture, but he put himself there. SuperEli!

Why yes Mommy. I would love to help you vacuum!

Backyardigans

We have grass!

Mike has been working incredibly hard in the backyard, and Eli loves to be outside supervising while Daddy works. This is all the grass we have so far, but much, much more is coming. Eli absolutely loves it.

Along with the grass we have an incredibly fruitful backyard. And yes, that is a pun. I'm not sure how many trees and plants and bushes there are in totaly, but it's got to be upwards of 30. Included are ...

Apple trees

Peppers (ahem, super HOT peppers!)

Peach trees

Blueberry bushes

Orange and grapefruit trees

Avocado trees

Rose bushes

Basil 

And so much more. Let's see...what isn't listed is the plumb tree, apricot tree, pear trees, cherry trees, blackberry bushes, raspberry bushes, strawberry patch, tomato plants, grape vines, gardenias, a pine tree, and some random kind of bush I don't know but it's pretty. I'm surely forgetting something, or things, but this is what we have going so far. It is all young, but we are hopeful that everything will grow and be happy little trees and plants, and, of course, be absolutely delicious! 

We don't only love all of this and hope to be somewhat self-sufficient, but it is amazing how motivating it can be to have a kid. Eli, we're doing this all for you!

A Walk in the Park

This is from the week after Eli's birthday. He absolutely LOVES being outside and he absolutely LOVES riding his trike. I try to take him on a walk or to the park every day. It's been raining a ton down here, which has put a damper on things (pun intended, heehee) but he still loves to go out. He does so well holding onto the trike that I can just go on a really long walk and not worry about him falling off or anything. The only thing he does is grab for flowers when they are close enough to him. He loves to smell flowers--something his Daddy taught him. Oh, and we get tons of comments, and even a few car honks, becuase of his cuteness. I mean, how adorable is it to see a little 12 month old riding a trike?


Pretty Darn!!


Climbing the rope tower with Daddy


Eli is much more interested in the plants at the park than he is in the toys.


Looking at some leaves with Daddy.




While he loves touching the plants and rocks, he hates touching the sand. If he isn't close enough to cement he'll fuss until I come help him get up. Here he is being so careful not to touch the sand.


He even had a problem touching the grass at first, but we got him used to that pretty quickly.




The puppies got to come, too!

Flower Power

We have this big window at the front of our house with a huge windowsill. It is the type of windowsill that is just begging for a flower box. I've been wanting to put one on there for a long time, but was intimidated becuase I didn't know exactly what to get or how to plant it all. I finally decided to just try something and see how it works. So we all headed down to Home Depot. While Mike went around getting all he needed for our backyard (he has been working so hard back there and making some incredible progress. That post will be coming soon!) I went to tackle the flower stuff. I was excited and nervous, and decided I need to ask an expert for help. Naturally, I called my mom. After some good advice and a confidence boost I was ready to pick out my flowers. The only problem was that I couldn't find a planter big enough for the windowsill. It took a few trips to a few different stores, but I finally settled on this big natural redwood planter, mostly becuase it's the longest one I could find. But also becuase I liked the look of it too. Here's a look at our newly potted friends:

The windowsill with dark purple and white petunias:



The driveway pot with blue-ish/purple-ish and yellow pansies:

The sun pot with primulas.


And of course, no post would be complete without a picture of Eli. He actually helped me while I planted all of these. He even has his own shovel and had fun putting rocks and other things in the the water while Mommy was busy. Now every morning he helps me water all the plants. This is him this morning checking on everything while I grabbed the camera.