Living the Life

We've been up to lots of fun lately. Here are some highlights:Eli considers this event a huge highlight - when the garbage man comes on Tuesday. Simple pleasures.
The boys are interacting a lot more these days. Amos loves to watch Eli and Eli likes to point and giggle when Amos does Amosy things. Any time Amos cries, Eli says sweetly, "Don't cry Amos, it's okay." Ahhhhh, melt my heart.
Amos is still sleeping a lot - even some at night. Yay!
Eric usually drops Eli off at school. I just thought it was too cute watching him toddle off to yellow jeep, jabbering away with Harry peeking out of his back pack. Eli looooves to ride in yellow jeep.
This is Eli's "special bench." It's where I ask him to sit while I'm getting Amos in or out of the car. It's pretty safe because it's between gated parking lots, so there are very few cars nearby - and it's far from the street.
Oh sweet Amos. He's changed so much. He looks much older than a three week old baby to me. He's a lovely fellow.
Sunny embroidered this rocking onsie for him. Thanks Sunny!
zzzz.
Friday night we had an impromptu picnic with about 15 school friends who live in our building. It was a great time!
Saturday we took the boys for a lovely day in Boulder. We walked the Pearl street pedestrian mall for hours playing in the play areas and visiting fun shops and restaurants.


We tried to get Eli to play in a fun flat fountain in Boulder. He wasn't really into it - the water was COLD. But he was a big fan of public nudity. That's our boy!
Amos showed Boulder all his facial personality.
And...we'll leave you with that. Enjoy!

Eli's First Day of School

But first...some playground fun from yesterday.
Eli and Inara get silly.
Eli talks Yaya into sliding Harry over and over and over and over...
Contemplating the slide.


OK! Now for our big excitement for the day (no, not childbirth). Today was Eli's first day of two day a week preschool. He was soooooooooooooo stinkin' cute.
He's been wearing his back pack empty all week. When I put it on him this morning full of school stuff, he toppled backward. Classic.
Backpack...check. Tiger lunch box...check. Harry...check.
My boy's all grown up.
He looks jazzed doesn't he?
Jazzed or petrified?
Delicious.
And...he happily went to playing. We said our goodbye. No tears from Eli. No tears from Mama.

Then, here's what we found when we came to pick him up. Notice Eli in the assistant's lap in the background weeping, and the teacher with that, "No really, he was fine most of the time." face.

He missed his Mama.
Here he is showing off the pink bunny he got for being a new member of the bunny class.
I think the caption to his photo includes some choice words. You can interpret for yourselves.
Wild-eyed survivor.
After pick-up Yaya and I took Eli to the park. He proudly clutched his Bunny Class bunny.
And, enjoyed a first-day-of-school Sunday.
Sweet sweet boy. I keep reminding myself that he's still just my little one-year-old. He's not off to college yet, even though he felt so grown up today. He still needs me and I still definitely need him. A lot. Even though while he was at school I got a leisurely lunch and saw a movie with my Mom, I still prefer to have him around.

And in other news...still no Tummy Baby.

Super Fun

Eli's new favorite thing to do is be Super. Super Eli throws his arms into the air and runs around being super. Today, I made him a cape to match his superness. It made me feel super.
See? Super! (FYI - pants are not required to be super).
Super Eli showered in magic bubbles.
As we were leaving tonight, Eli took a little rest on the top step. He does this a lot, although it usually happens on the way up, not the way down.
Eli is getting ready to start preschool in a week and a half (unbelievable!). We bought a little fall jacket and sweet REI backpack for him today. These items made him (and us) perfectly giddy. He ran around REI celebrating his big-boy-ness.
He's ready for school - or to hike to A.T. He LOVES that his pack has buckles in front just like Dad's.
On CT result day Eli helped me bake a little celebratory cake. He ate it very seriously with a little fork. Cake, apparently, is no laughing matter.
But noses are.

Eli is full of tricks lately:

• This morning he sat on the train table with a Sesame Street book and recited one of the jokes Ernie tells, complete with gheee gheee gheee Ernie laugh at the end.
• He also loves to do the piggies on his own toes or on Harry's. He goes through all five, from market-going to wee wee weeing.
• Tonight at the Spaghetti Factory (yum) we heard the wait staff sing Happy Bithday at least four times. All the way home Eli sang himself and Harry Happy Birthday.
• He asks us every ten minutes if we're "Ready to Go?" He loves our new place because there's so much to do - as long as you're willing to scale the three flights of stairs. He has figured out the key - frequent rest breaks - and as soon as I can get down that low again, I will join him in his little sidewalk naps.
  

What's Going On?

There's not much to report on the baby front. As of today we're 9 days away from the due date, and while there are lots of signs that labor is impending (contractions, sleeplessness, nesting), none of them suggest that we should cancel dinner plans, or anything like that. Jessa's taking the opportunity to try to get one more order made before he comes--mostly she spends her days making mugs at this point.

I (Eric) am 2 weeks into school, and loving it. We're on the quarter system, so I'm only taking two classes. One is one of the core courses required for all PhD students, Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion. That one's a very theory-heavy course--we're reading all the heavyweights, and class is basically a 3 1/2 hour discussion with a ten minute break. After that class, my brain feels a lot like what my body feels like after a half marathon. It's sheer exhaustion, and you know that you were definitely not in control most of the time, but somehow it feels good. Each of us has to choose a book from a list titled "books you should have read by now but probably have not" (I have read 0 of 34). I chose one from the list based on the fact that it has an interesting title; it turned out to be well over 400 pages. Brilliant.

My other class is called Women in Early Christian History, and it's sort of a look at canonical, apocryphal, and pseudepigraphal early Christian writings and their depiction of women (and how those depictions might or might not correspond to reality). Even though Biblical Studies isn't really my field, it fits my interests in the first couple of centuries of Christianity. It's a very big class, which isn't great, but I'm excited about writing the paper for it.

The major drawback to starting classes is that I now only have one day off a week--Saturday. I'm working Fridays now (if you can call blogging "working").

Be sure to stay tuned...only 9 days until the due date!