Early Morning with Eli

One morning, Eli and I were up early together. Ben was already gone at work and Charlie was still sleeping, so it was just the two of us hanging out in our pjs. I love morning light and snapped some pictures of Eli making an elaborate drawing/map/story of some sort and then explaining it to me.

 

He loves drawing centipedes (shown below). Gross Illinois bug!

 

He looks so big to me in these pictures! I feel like he's grown a lot in the last few months (at least his legs seem longer to me lately). 

Telling me his story - 

 

And adding more details. Love this boy! I'll have to take some of Charlie some other morning when he's up first :)

Charlie at 12 Weeks

Hooray for 12 weeks!! It's amazing how the first few weeks of a baby's life feel SO long, but then things pick up and suddenly you have this big baby. I was looking at Charlie this morning as he stretched and he seemed so huge all of the sudden. He's not a newborn anymore!

I weighed him today - he's 14 pounds and busting out of his size 1-2 Pampers diapers. I love chubby babies!

Charlie has discovered his hands and loves to look at them, hold them, etc.
In case you're wondering why he's in pjs, my policy is if he blows out of his diaper in the late afternoon, I don't bother with a new outfit. He goes straight to jammies...

Charlie is on a decent sleep schedule now, going to bed between 7 and 9 p.m. (depending on if he takes two or three naps in the day) and just waking up at 4 a.m. to eat. Then he goes back to sleep and usually is up between 6 and 7 a.m. Hooray for more sleep!

Sad the Weekend is Over!

We had a fun but productive weekend, doing yard work, running errands, playing with the kids, and enjoying being together. Monday morning is almost always hard - Eli wakes up crying for DADAAAAA and it takes a little bit before he's adjusted again to the weekday routine.

Here's Charlie still getting used to the bumbo seat - he likes it for very short amounts of time. You can sort of see the dimples in his chubby cheeks...

I usually get the boys dressed first thing in the morning, but on Sundays I leave them in their jammies until right before church. I can't get enough of the matching pjs :) I thought it was funny - when I put Charlie in the bumbo this morning, Eli ran over to it and said, "Cheese!" I had to run and get my camera since he was actually eager to take a picture.

Love these boys!

Brushing Teeth in New Jammies

My parents and Gram came over tonight on their way to meet a friend in the city. They brought some fun gifts after being out of town for a few weeks... one of the gifts was this set of frog pj's/matching hat (I love things w/ frogs!). The size is 12-18 months, and we realized tonight that the next baby may get more wear out of them than Eli... I love these pictures - the jammies and hat barely fit :)

These pictures just make me laugh! I haven't checked yet to see if the hat is still on his head (now that he's been sleeping/moving around in his sleep for a few hours).

I'll post on the other things that my parents brought later - one was a DARLING, knit sweater that my mom made, and the cutest knit hat that looks like a dog, complete w/ cute strings on the side that hang down w/ pom poms.

Unfortunately, Eli already pulled one of the strings/pom poms off, so my mom took it home to hopefully secure the strings a little better. They also brought another pair of jammies w/ dogs on them. Eli loves animals, so he thought they were great!

Cutest Apron EVER!!

Today we received the most darling package from my Aunt Babz. She has a talent for wrapping things beautifully and for finding really neat things. The package was for Eli as a housewarming gift. I squealed when we opened it up and saw what was inside:

a kid-sized FROG apron!!

I absolutely love frog things. Isn't this apron so darling??

Eli was still in his pj's, but he had to try it on right away.

Thank you so much! It will be so fun for him to wear this cute apron when we cook and bake together. I think it made him feel like such a big boy and really special. We love it!

The Camera is Back!

I was so, so excited when Ritz called this week and said the camera was back from being repaired/cleaned. I really missed it.

Here are some pictures from the last few days. I'm realizing it's much harder to get good pictures of Eli now that he is mega mobile!

Kneeling in his crib after a nap:

Cruising around the couch

Look at all of those teeth!! He is getting his 8th tooth now, on the bottom left (looking at the picture)

He is such a sweet boy.

He's sweet, but he's also great at making messes, as shown in the background :)

Getting jammies on!

So big! :)
And for my random comment on this post... we finally bought a rug pad to put underneath our (blah) gray rug in the living room - it's SO much better than it was before!! It's so nice to have it be more cushioned. I can't believe we've lived here for 6+ years and never got a rug pad... we got ours at Target and it was worth every penny! (I think it was maybe $28 for a 5x8 size?)