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Eli’s 1-year update, finally

Jed | March 1, 2010 | 8:04 am

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 2010

Jed | February 11, 2010 | 9:08 pm

Here are some pics from the recent storm that dumped over two feet of snow on the DC region:

Eli Turns 1 Year Old (pics)

Jed | February 2, 2010 | 7:15 am

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:

Eli is almost 1 year old, and I almost didn’t get this post done in time

Jed | January 14, 2010 | 11:03 pm

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

Eli turns 10 months old

Jed | December 7, 2009 | 4:09 pm

It’s been a big month developmentally for Eli. He’s now 10-months old and is quickly leaving his baby days behind. We’ve done some baby-proofing this month as Eli is really starting to roam around the house . One of his favorite activities is to play hide and seek- Nicole or I will crawl out of his sight and he loves to come find us. Soon after he figured out how to crawl he also began pulling up onto his knees, and then slowly to standing. Now he pulls up to stand on everything, including his crib. He’s still having a little trouble climbing back down. So far spreading his legs into a split and slowly dropping to land on his bottom seems to be his preferred method. This weekend he started slowing cruising (walking while holding on) on the coffee table and the couch.

This month we enjoyed a visit to Rochester to see Nicole’s family. Unfortunately Eli was a little out of sorts and didn’t sleep well. The doctor reported that his congestion had turned into his first ear infection. 10 days of an antibiotic helped greatly. We had a busy Thanksgiving – we traveled to see my family in Silver Spring and Nicole’s family and friends in Baltimore and Luray, VA respectively.

Eli’s appetite came back in full force this month. He still breastfeeds and now eats three full meals of solid s- about half purees and half finger food. He can’t get enough cheese and likes yogurt and waffles for breakfast. We’re slowly trying to introduce more finger foods as feeding him purees is becoming a bit of a challenge. Eli likes to steal the spoon and seems to prefer finger food off of our plate.

I am hoping that some day soon we won’t have to keep talking about sleep. With his ear-infection Eli was up several times during the night. Once that cleared up, he went back to sleeping through the night most days. He’s got a little bit of a cold right now, but it is still sleeping about 10 hours straight. He does wake up once in the early AM hours most nights but puts himself back to sleep pretty quickly. Going to sleep at night and at nap-time is another story. He really doesn’t want to be away from us right now (separation anxiety) so with his cold we’d been rocking him to sleep more since he was so congested. Now that he is getting better we’re trying to get him to put himself to sleep again but he likes to pull up to stand in the crib and scream for us. Going in and comforting him only seems to upset him more. So this morning he napped sitting up with his head up against the end of the crib. We’re hoping this too will pass soon.

On a more positive note, we now have a tooth!! We discovered one of Eli’s front bottom teeth had finally popped through last weekend. Boy is it sharp!

You can find pictures from November and Eli’s 10-month Elephant photos on Nicole’s Smugmug site. It’s a lot harder to take posed pictures now that Eli can move around! He does smile at the camera more though!