I was recently looking through some pictures from when I first had Eli, and came upon this here gem:
Laugh. Out. Loud. Such a horrible picture!
His birth still marks the most traumatizing experience of my life! By the time I realized I was actually in labor and headed to the hospital, I got there already 10 cm dilated! Too late for an epidural which, I realize people do natural labor every day, but most of them plan and prepare for it! I did not. After about 30 minutes of the most agonizing, horrific pain imaginable (except actually, far worse than anything I could ever imagine), begging and pleading for the sweet kiss of death, etc, out came this little guy! I was honestly too traumatized to be happy.
That's a little better... kind of? I can remember it like it was yesterday. And holy cow, now it's already been 2 years!!! I love my little boy so much but honestly, could he please stay little forever?
Moving on... Because Eli was born on a Thursday and this was a leap year, we totally got jipped of his Saturday birthday! It made me sad, but we just made a weekend of it anyway. On Saturday we took him to the Collera Train museum. He loves trains, trucks, busses, all that stuff and he LOVED the train museum! There was an hour long train ride we took him on that made him the happiest boy in the world. Then, it was an outdoor museum with a bunch of trains all over the place that you could just walk around and look at, climb on, etc. He probably could have stayed there for days! It was free, too. It was probably the best idea ever to take him there and of course, I have to give credit to Jason for thinking of it!
We kept telling him he got to ride the "choo-choo" becuase it was his birthday and to this day he sometimes asks "I ride choo-choo, birthday?" Ha ha, it's nice he actually remembers the exprience! I should probably take him back sometime.
Kyah and I were really sick, I felt bad even bringing her out but we didn't want to miss the occasion. She had an upper respiratory virus and pretty severe ear infection which she had been on anti-bitotics for 3 days for, but it took a long time for her to get back to her normal self. I went to the doctor after this weekend was over and it turns out I had walking pneumonia! It was awful. Thankfully, the birthday boy was healthy though!
Riding the train!
Happy boy. Kyah and I even look pretty sickly : (
Sittin' on the tracks.
Right about here Eli decided his shoe was bothering him, so he took it off while conveniently standing on top of an ant hill. In my naive Coloradan days, I would think, what's the big deal? Well, unbeknownst to us, ants in the south are EVIL and bite! When I went to help him get his shoe back on, dozens of ants swarmed our feet and legs! We still have scabs and even scars from all the bites! Seriously, biting ants? Not cool, Alabama. Not cool.
While I was throwing myself a pitty party over all my bites, Eli carried on as excited as ever about all the trains.
I know he doesn't look that happy in any of the pictures, but he was just so focused! He was in some sort of zone the whole time. It was the biggest tantrum of his life when it was time to leave.
And his actual birthday the next day:
We got him a bike (which he loves to sit on but hasn't figured out how to peddle yet) and his Grandma and Grandpa Glover got him a "shoop." That's what he calls a basketball hoop and the game of basketball. He loves it! Every time we drive through a residential neighborhood, he yells "shoop" as we pass any house with a hoop outside.
We got him this train track too. He likes it but Kyah keeps taking the track pieces and eating them.
The decorations- same ones we used last year... and for every birthday since : (
The cake! I would have baked it but I was on my death bed. SO I went to Publix... their cakes are amazing! But really expensive. He was obsessed with the fire truck. I tried to do a fire truck themed birthday but I couldn't find any decorations... there was a cool fire truck balloon at party city but when I went to check out it was 10 bucks! I told the guy I couldn't spend $10 on a stinkin balloon, he said there it a Helium shortage in America right now! Ha ha, are you kidding me?! I then went to the dollar store to get my usual $1 balloons instead and they said they could sell me the balloon but they coudln't fill it up for me... because of the national helium shortage!!! Soooo basically, if you've got cause for celebration, prepare to shell out some dough for balloons!
I just settled for these boring old, regular air-filled balloons instead. Such a shame.
Playing with the streamers. Kyah's antibiotics finally started to kick in, this was the first time she'd smiled in 4 days!
Eating his birthday lunch (macaroni and hot dogs) after church. Kyah and I stayed home from church and apparently this birthday boy caught on to the fact that "birthday" meant he was special and acted like quite a spoiled... well, you know!
Too cool to smile.
And finally, the most important part of the day, cake time!
Jason had to restrain him from practically pouncing the cake to get the fire truck. Notice the bottom right side of the cake? That was from him trying to take the fireman hat off the cake.
Blowing the candles.
Ahhh yes, finally, my fire truck!
He was really too consumed by the truck to eat much cake.
She ate more than enough for the two of them though! I kind of didn't want to give her cake because it felt like spoiling her first birthday. But I did anyway...
Mmmmmm.
Finally a smile!
We were tryign so hard to get Eli to put the truck down for just a second and eat a bite for the purpose of pictures, she was like an innocent bystander, so focused and quiet... when we looked back, she had gobbled it all up!
All clean and ready for "nigh nigh."
Mommy and her two-year-old!
As for Eli's 2-year well visit, he was 22.5 pounds and 33 inches. After two years in the below 0-3 percentile, he is officially in the 10-15 percentile! Yay.
Now that Eli's a big boy, he can do many things including:
-Count to 10
-Spell his name (when people ask him his name he actually says E-L-I, Eli)
-Use the potty (although I have not officially potty trained him yet due to all our traveling this summer)
-Throw a ball better than his Mom (and make a baskets when he plays "shoop")
-Jump off the diving board all by himself and go down a water slide
-Put on his own shoes (although he frequently struggles with getting them on the right foot), he's also learned to distinguish between right and left
-Buckle Kyah into her car seat
-Buckle himself into his car seat (but only if I have 10 minutes to stand there and wait for him to do it)
-Put the key into the ignition and start the car (we learned about this talent of his by accident...)
-Speaks really well and in full sentences, but he improves and is more and more decipherable every day
-Annnnd... do many other unique and impressive things!
Basically, he's awesome.
