Halloween!

Halloween started for us on Thursday of last week, when everyone in Eli's music class was encouraged to 'dress up.' Eli went as a 1930's inspired train engineer...

 

Then the rest of the weekend continued to be festive with lots of listening to 'monster mash' and being silly...

silly Halloween jammies

ninja at the trash can

For Halloween Day-Eli was a Chicken!!!

so, naturally Scott and I went as 'urban chicken farmers.'

and sometimes...you just want to be free :)

Hope everyone had a safe and fun Halloween!

pumpkin patch time

so many pumpkins... & ocean in the view

here dad, let me help you with this wagon. :)

didn't like this so much. ;)

eli in the grass

sick bunny

Eli has not been feeling so great the past few days and so we've been cooped up inside for the most part trying to make do. A few things that do make him feel better (besides being held by mom ALL the time, sheesh!) are...

playing outside for a bit, in the front yard.

Bubble Baths!

we'll take a few throughout the day, if necessary. and as my mom would say, 'you can totally see how he isn't feeling well, just look at his eyes.' :(

And when things get really bad, we will watch this episode from 'Classical Baby' a few times, it's Eli's favorite.

What do you do when your little one is under the weather? I'd really love to know, truly.

a little bit of life lately...

beaver teeth! ;)

trucks and blocks

what's with this face?

I often find these two snuggled together, sleeping in Eli's laundry basket in the closet...not sure what happened to June here, he looks as if he lost his eye and half his arms in the war... haha!

scott and eli welcoming back the monarch butterflies at the beautiful natural bridges

beautiful lone butterfly, there were swarms of butterflies up in the tree tops and sometimes they would all fly around at once, it was so magical!

AND...Eli got his first hair-cut! He cried the whole time, poor buddy! But it looks cute and he still has his curls, yippee!!!

crying and eating. hahaha!

much happier at home playing the cupboards, looking like a big boy!

vintage

Hi! Here are a couple quick shots of Eli in some vintage clothes. These were Scott's clothes when he was a little guy and his mom was awesome enough to keep some things and pass them along to Eli. Some of you may remember the shoes he was wearing on his birthday, those were also Scott's and sadly Eli has already grown out of them, but we have these cool shorts and overalls to wear still. :)

a little bit of our weekend...

Hello- hope everyone had a nice weekend. We had a fun one, did the usual walking, eating etc... Scott and I also had a date Saturday day and rode bikes and had lunch down on the wharf. Sunday we took Eli to 'Happy Hollow Park' up in San Jose. Eli very much enjoyed the petting zoo and thought it was hilarious when the goats and miniature horses would kiss his hands. :) The rest of the park has some small rides and other small zoo animals, but Eli is still too young to appreciate those, but nonetheless we had a good time!

p.s. Eli can now say 'cat.' Hahaha, go figure his first 'real' word would be cat!

my crazy hair blowing in the wind!

goats!

this goat liked kissing my knee?

lucky 13!

dear eli,

today you are 13 months old. i feel like in the last month you have grown leaps and bounds! you are now not only the fastest crawler in town (seriously, you're starting to get a bit of a reputation for your 'fastness') but you are now pulling yourself up to stand on everything and are cruising all over the living room furniture. it is so much fun to watch. another one of your new favorite past-times is to crawl all over mommy, I've become your own personal jungle gym. also, right after your first birthday you finally began to babble all the baby words, which include baba, dada and goo-goo-gaga. then...on mommy's bday you said 'mama' and it melted my heart. now you are starting to look at me and say 'mama' and this morning you looked at 'dada' and crawled to him. :)

your favorite things, songs, books, etc... are:
-your bunny/lovey that you sleep with (pictured above)
-'hey wake-up' is still your favorite Sandra Boynton book, we read it every morning and I know that you know the story by heart now, because when you turn the page to the part where we shout 'good morning sun, happy morning everyone,' your eyes get even bigger and brighter with excitement. you also love her book ' belly button beach.'
-you love the cd from music class and favor 'all the pretty horses' and 'tiny tim.'
-you still love to go to the pool to swim and play at the park and play with your friends, even though you're not really playing 'with' them yet...
-you love to play with your car, your wooden puzzle and train
-you love animals, especially our cats and you LOVE dogs, so much that it breaks our heart we can't have one in our rental (maybe someday.......)

-you do not like to have your face wiped, your diaper changed, when we don't let you pull the drain stopper in the tub, and you don't like getting in and out of the car for errands, although you are liking the car so much better these days. and i don't think you like watermelon?

love you to the moon and back my 13 month old eli!!!

just because...

my birthday weekend...

Hello friends,

Hope everyone had a great weekend, we did! It was my 32nd birthday on Sunday the 7th and so we just hung out mostly and did relaxing stuff with Eli, like eat pizza and go for walks. But, Scott and I also had a date Saturday night and we went to our favorite crazy Italian place 'Cafe Lucio' (formerly 'Al Dente' for you Santa Cruz peeps,) and then afterwards we went to the boardwalk and rode a roller coaster and did the bumper cars, it was SO much fun! I felt old and young all in one, HA! I'm pretty sure the roller coaster almost gave me whip-lash...and I screamed at the top of my lungs the entire time, mostly to frighten the children in line, hahahaha, just kidding!

Sunday was mellow and we had a little brunch at our favorite French Bakery 'Kelly's' and then after that I had some leisurely time to myself and shopped, mostly trying to find shoes for my sisters wedding. It was a great birthday and I feel relaxed and settled into my 32 years of age. Thanks again for all the birthday love, here's a pic of me and E at brunch, not the best picture but Eli looks funny eating his strawberries. :)

a little bit of our weekend

mom, i'm not a cat too, the cats are over there...

We drove up to the cute little beach town Davenport (which is 10miles north of Santa Cruz) on Sunday for a little outside/beach time, it was quite lovely.

crawling into the ocean...

so, so busy digging!

swim class

So Eli started swim class last week. It's 4 days a week for two weeks and it's just to get these little guys used to the water, not to swim, obviously. We keep hearing all over the place that when you live near water it is super important to have your child comfortable with water. Plus, it's a fun thing for us to do together and Eli loves the bath and the pool! I usually go by myself with him but since Scott has Fridays off he joined us and we were able to snap some pictures and capture this quick video here at the end of Eli being dunked. He had been dunked before and doesn't seem to mind and in this particular shot the teacher is showing Scott how to do it by yourself with your baby vs. passing him to another person under water, which we had already done. Enjoy!