Weekend Highlights and Lowlights

Another action-packed weekend in the Eliason house! Friday night we had our bi-weekly small group get-together. Eli and Maddux always enjoy the opportunity to get together with some of their friends from church and play. Even though I fed Maddie before we left the house, she ate another full meal with the adults. Obviously she is going through a big growth spurt because the double-meal thing is becoming a trend with her. I'm noticing more and more that Eli is aware of how much he can and can't get away with when we're outside of the house. In an attempt to reign that in, I carried out a time out during community group. (I figured I had to take advantage of having other sets of hands to care for Maddux while I tended to Eli. This is not usually the case when I'm out with them.) Eli was obviously going to carry on, so I took him out to the car and had him sit in his car seat until he calmed down. Then I started a 2-minute TO. This worked pretty well, and hopefully it sent Eli the message that the rules are the same regardless of where we are.

Saturday morning I took the kids to Costco which went surprisingly well. It wasn't a great trip, but no hitting or toy-time-outs resulted. I'm noticing more and more how much Maddux is trying to engage her brother though. Most of the trip in the cart was spent with her grinning and laughing and leaning against Eli. He wasn't too excited about it, but at least he kept his cool. "No, Max...no touch E-i!"

After a short nap, I woke Eli up so he could attend a birthday party. One of his (best) friends from school turned three and had a party at the local Little Gym. It was neat to see how much has changed in Eli since he used to take classes there last year. I found it quite interesting how much Eli tried to emulate the older kids jumping off the spring board, yet he didn't appear to be too much of a follower. (I know...contradictory!) He seems to follow the heard to a point, but if/when he finds something he likes, he sticks with it, no matter what everyone else has moved on to. The party was great, but Eli had a very rough period right before we went to the party. I'm sure it had to do with interrupted sleep, but he was out of control all the same. That seemed to be the theme for him all weekend....too many time outs to recount at this time. We are having better luck with him staying in time out since we started using a chair instead of a carpet square for him to sit on, but this is an ongoing process and we've not mastered it yet.

This afternoon we made a dinner trip to the pool with Cooper and Finley. Eli was so excited to have his friends over to the pool in his 'nay-br-hood'! Although I brought the camera, I did not get the ultimate photo op because I never saw it coming. Eli jumped off the diving board, all by himself! He has been standing on it and threatening for almost a year now, but today was the first day he actually took the plunge. He jumped in the water and Lehr pulled him up and helped him 'swim' to the side. Eli obviously wasn't scared off by the experience because he jumped several more times before the night was over. My day job just got that much more difficult!

No more walking for Maddux. I tried all weekend to get her to reproduce those steps, but she refused. She's going through a clingy-Mommy phase right now that I'm chalking up to teeth. I can see two spots up on top that appear to be teeth coming in. On a positive note, she is completely weaned and doing very well with whole milk.