My New Favorite

It's been a while, I know!

Eli's memory astounds me these days. Everything I read tells me that kids this age have a shorter memory, but that may be because I'm reading a lot about how to help Eli 'transition' into being a big brother. These articles are designed to make me feel better, so they contend that Eli has a short memory and he won't remember being the only kid for too long. Either way, his memory is cool to me. First off, when he sees anything in the house that is primarily associated with Lehr or myself, he says "mommy" or "daddy" in correspondence. Not so impressive when it relates to a pair of shoes we wear each day, but pretty cool when it is something we've only used/worn once or twice in his presence. Example: There is a Tupperware of flat bread crackers sitting on our kitchen table right now. (Hey, when you're in the middle of a move, nothing gets put away because you're trying to clean out the cabinets, right?) So over the weekend I ate two crackers in front of Eli. Today at lunch he pointed to the tub and said, "Crah-kar. Mommy." I assure you he was not asking for a cracker as he does not like them. He was telling me, 'those are crackers and mommy eats them.'

What prompted me to label this as a favorite thing was something that happened in the car today. There are two billboards near our house that Eli has taken a likening to. One is a picture of a dog and the other is a (small) picture of a monkey. The monkey one is not on a route we use often, but he has seen it more than once. When he first saw it he was in the back seat chanting "ooooh. eeeeee. ooooh' like a mental patient. Finally I said, "Eli, that is what a monkey says, but there is no monkey in the car." Less than 30 seconds later, I saw the billboard. Great. My son is more observant than me! So over the last three weeks or so, he's seen this sign maybe four times. And the last time was at least a week ago. Today we drove past the street that leads to the sign and Eli pointed out his window (in the correct direction) and shouted "OOOOH. EEEEEEE!" First I scanned the road to see if I could see the sign (negative), or if there was anything else relating to a monkey nearby (nada). I can only speculate that he remembered the sign and (somehow) remembered that it was located down that street.