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Eli has slowly been taking his first steps towards being able to walk (pun intended). This past weekend he took his first two steps by himself (and then promptly fell into my arms), and just recently he’s begun walking around while holding our hands. We thought this was so cool we had to share:

This update is a little belated, but we wanted to wait until Eli had his 1 year doctor visit and the Snowpocolypse delayed the appointment by a few weeks and then my computer crashed. But I’m hobbling along on a borrowed laptop and we’ve got good stats from the doctor to make this an informative update.

Our pediatrician was very pleased with how well Eli is doing. Eli has stayed fairly consistent in terms of growth: tall and thin. He weighs 23.5 lbs (55th percentile) and is just about 32 inches tall (90th percentile). Apparently the other babies’ heads didn’t grow quite as quickly as Eli’s though as he is now in the 97th percentile. This probably helps explain why he’s such an excellent linguist. The doctor called him a precocious child and we had to agree. About a month ago he started actually talking and he now says about 10-12 words (the amount of your average 18-month old). He says the basics, like “mama”, “dada”, and “hi” but also “ba” (for sheep), “cheese” (his favorite food), “ball”, “mail” (we have two toy mailboxes), “belly button” (sounds like “bebo”), “down”, “vroom” (for his toy cars), “balloon” (sounds like “boon”) and he says and signs “done” and waves and says “bye”. It seems like every day he learns a new word. And when he’s not saying words we recognize he’s still constantly babbling away. He’s quite the happy, chatty little boy.

As this past month was the month of snow, we weren’t able to get out much but we’ve been having a blast at home with Eli. Unfortunately due to the snow, we had to have a scaled-down version of Eli’s first birthday party. Eli continues to cruise all over the place and has even begun trying to climb up the couch and his large toys. He is not walking independently yet, but he loves to use his lion push-toy to walk around the house. This week he’s started taking steps while holding our hands and for the first time today he took two steps completely on his own (from the couch to me).

This month Eli has also decided to expand his palette. He suddenly loves whole blueberries and grapes and bananas (he only barely tolerated them before) and will eat pretty much anything he sees us eating. Soon we’ll be introducing Eli to peanut butter but the doctor said no shellfish for a while, so no crab cakes for Eli for some time. We started weaning Eli from breastfeeding and began transitioning to whole milk on his first birthday. It’s gone pretty smoothly and he now nurses just once in the morning and the rest of the day he gets regular, whole milk from a sippy cup with one bottle before bed.

We were afraid that we’d have to report that Eli still only had two teeth, but his third tooth finally popped through last weekend. There seem to be a whole slew of teeth ready to break out, which should make this a fun teething-month.

Sleep has continued to go well. Eli continues to go to bed between 7 and 7:30pm and wakes up around 7am. Some days he takes two 1.5 hour naps and others he skips his morning nap and sleeps for 2-2.5 hours in the afternoon.

This will be the last monthly update and elephant pictures we’ll be doing – we’re switching to quarterly updates so we’ll update again at 15-months. As usual, Nicole’s SmugMug site has all the January pictures and his 12-month elephant pictures and February photos, but here are three great shots of little Eli (click to see bigger):

Snowmageddon tried to ruin Eli’s first birthday party but Nicole’s family from Rochester wasn’t about to let a *little* snow stop them from coming down. Most made it into town before the storm and Nicole’s dad and aunt were able to navigate the un-plowed roads using his 4wd truck. Eli had a great time with everyone and he’s looking forward to celebrating again with my parents and Nicole’s extended family as soon as we can.

Yesterday Eli turned 1 year old. We’re having a celebration with our family this weekend, but we took some time last night to snap pictures with the Elephant and treat Eli to a birthday cupcake. He enjoyed some of it:

This is a little late, but in case you haven’t been counting, Eli turned 11-months old this month.  It’s been a pretty great month for all of us.  Eli practically learned something new every day and we were able to spend a lot of quality family time together over the holidays. We survived being trapped in the house for a few days by the Snowpocolypse and we even got outside to enjoy some of fluffy white stuff.

Eli has been cruising all over the place (standing and walking sideways while holding on to things) and he has even started climbing and standing on things (like toys, boxes, etc.).  Last month he would play peekaboo or hide and seek if we hid from him, but now he now will hide and wait for us to find him (usually behind a toy or ducking behind the coffee table).  He recently started waving, “giving five”, and he can push his train around the floor.  He climbed up stairs for the first time this month and he’s also started dancing and bouncing to music or when we sing or clap.  He has so much energy, at least until nap time.

Eli is starting to eat more table foods now.  Cheese is still his favorite by far, in fact we give it to him as dessert.  He also eats ham and turkey lunch meat as well as a little bit of meatballs and chicken.  He isn’t too keen on feeding himself fruit and veggies but loves them as a puree.  He will feed himself sweet potato fries, banana, prunes, and small pieces of dried fruits.  Just yesterday he started eating cheddar pasta with veggies, but if the veggie pieces are too big or not stuck to the pasta he’ll spit them out (baby steps, baby steps). We’re still trying to teach him how to use a sippy cup on his own but he’s getting better at it every day.  

I don’t want to jinx us, but Eli was a great sleeper last month.  He has been sleeping through the night again (for the last 5-6 weeks) and the week before Christmas he started sleeping even longer.  He now goes to bed between 7p and 7:30p and he sleeps until around 7am.  And best of all, he puts himself to sleep at bedtime and for naps with minimal fussing. While we’re a little sad that he doesn’t want to be rocked to sleep anymore, it’s made a world of difference stress-wise.

Nicole and I have also recently been abandoning entrusting Eli to a babysitter which has allowed us to get some adult time in with our friends.  We put Eli to bed and go out after he is asleep while paying the babysitter to basically just listen to the monitor. At some point soon we’d like to try leaving him with a sitter (non-relative) when he’s awake but I’m not sure if he or we are ready for that yet.

Eli now has two sharp little teeth! Seriously, they’re like razor blades, and only slightly crooked.

You can find our pictures from December and more elephant pictures on Nicole’s SmugMug site