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!