Snow Day!

Remember how, in the last post, it was 79 degrees and we were having picnics in the park?

Here's Eli in his church clothes the next day, which was also a beautiful, sunny, high-70s day.

Well, so much for that. Yesterday morning, it started to snow.
We ended up with somewhere around 14 inches (it's hard to say exactly, since the wind was blowing and there were drifts).
It's really pretty, but Colorado weather can make you a little crazy.
There's a 7-passenger SUV under there, believe it or not.
Jessa actually braved the elements (9 degrees + lots of snow = very cold) to go to her normal swimming group this morning. Here's the beginning of her efforts to get the snow off of Red Car, as Eli calls it.
Since he was already in his Christmas monkey pjs, we didn't think too much about fashion when dressing Eli for the elements. Jack O Lantern hoodie, bear snow boots, green hat, green mittens.
As usual, Eli is not a fan of the snow.
He just stands there, whimpers, and eventually...
....starts crying.

By this time next year, though, Eli will probably be begging to go sledding any time a flake falls.

On another note, this is the 11th anniversary of our first date. On March 27, 1998, we decided to grab some dinner before a play at school, ended up at a lake watching a sunset, and the rest is history. This is us dressed up for a formal a month or two later. Here's to 11 more years!

Deer, Peas and Carrots, and a Brand New Swing

Wondering where we've been the last week? Ugh.

Jessa has come down with a pretty nasty case of (we think) the flu. If it's not the flu, it's something equally insidious. To make matters worse, since she's still breastfeeding, there's almost nothing she can take for it. She's limited to motrin and some cough medicine that doesn't work because it has no actual medicine in it. So she's pretty miserable. So far Eric and Eli haven't gotten it, but we've both developed mild coughs that we fear may be the harbingers of things to come.

Eli has had his share of trouble too. He had a couple of his 6-month immunizations yesterday, and last night he spiked a fever. That's apparently pretty normal and harmless, but it made for a long night. You can tell he feels awful, but he's being a good sport about it for the most part. We even got him to laugh at his own reflection a little bit.

So mom and Eli are still in the bed this morning, comforting each other. It's a good day for it--we've got a couple of inches of snow and are expecting another 6 or so.

Here are some photos from the last week:

This is Eli waiting in the lobby for his 6-month appointment. He likes to do this standing thing where you hold his hips and he just looks around. We put his hands in his vest pockets to make him look suave. He did great at his 6-month appointment, by the way. He's almost exactly average on height and weight and still in the mid-90s on head circumference percentile.
The biggest change in the last week: lots of solid foods. His favorite so far is carrots. Here, he makes a face, but don't be fooled. He loves them.
He especially likes carrots when they're coupled with rice cereal.
Christa baked Eli a 1/2 birthday cake last week. They don't sell 1/2 candles (they should!), so we improvised. While Eli is eating some solid foods, unfortunately for him chocolate cake is not one of them.
Peas! Eli has a love/hate relationship with peas. Well, maybe a tolerate/hate relationship. The first time he ate them, badness ensued. More recently, they're growing on him. Frankly, I don't like peas either.
Eli got a new swing! It's in the shape of a car, and he just absolutely loves it, as you can see.
I had one of these toys when I was a kid. It was the best.
Dooo...doooo...doooooo....lookin' out my back door....
Wearing mom's glasses. And going a little crosseyed.
Always tethered to the floor with a strand of drool. He has two teeth now, by the way. We've tried very hard to get pictures of them, but that just ain't happening.
Since he was born, Eli has had this one crazy-long hair. See it there, sticking off the back? He's like our very own Homer Simpson.
We have a herd of mule deer that comes to visit all the time. Here, Eli and the deer have a staring contest out the back window.
Eli's hair has been doing this thing lately where it sticks up in the middle. We think it's just about the greatest thing of all time.

Where Have We Been?

We've been moving!

That's right...after buying our first house, doing months of repair work on it (including a full kitchen remodel), and getting settled, we've moved. There are several reasons for this, including the fact that 900sf is smallish for 2 adults, a baby, and 5 cats. The main reason, though, is that we had an opportunity to share a house with our friends Megan and Christa (links to their blogs are on the sidebar). Christa's parents own a house in the foothills (which, at 8000 feet, are higher than NC foothills, to say the least) that they plan on moving into when her mom finishes her PhD. In the meantime, though, Christa and Megan have been living there. There's WAY more room there than those two take up, though, so we're renting the basement and two bedrooms.

The benefits of this are numerous: a safer, more exciting place for Eli to explore (ten acres of land, no cars whizzing by on busy streets), friends to keep Jessa company, more space for us to move around in (the basement and the two bedrooms have more space than our house did), and a much prettier environment to live in (see the pictures below).

So this past Saturday, Megan, Christa, and our new friend Mattie came over, and together we moved our junk out of our Yuma house and into what we're calling The Mountain House. (We also moved about 40% of our stuff into a storage building, but that's another saga).

Since we know you don't come here for the writing, here's the photographic documentation:

The last days of the old house. Eli, as you can see, is growing like a weed and is now sitting up happily in his bumbo chair. He even sits up without it for 10 or 15 seconds at a time if you set him up properly. Usually his sitting session is done in by a desire to chew on his feet, which propels him forward.
Eli also loves his exersaucer, especially the fake cell phone attached to it, and the blue/green thing on a stick in the foreground, which he LOVES to chew.
Moving is HARD. Here, Eli is tuckered out from a day of getting our new spaces ready before we moved. This is in the big living room space, which is usually closed off in the winter so we don't have to heat it. Yes, that's a Christmas tree in the picture. Don't ask.
The moving crew breaks for lunch. Note the weather: it was a gorgeous, 73-degree, sunny day. More on this later.
Eli got his socks really dirty walking around on our driveway (with some help from dad, of course). We think he's going to be an early walker; he's been doing this since he was weeks old. He was also really interested in our Subway; its going to be time to break out the rice cereal soon.
Here's the house (photo credit: Elisabeth). This is the outside of the room you saw above. Our bedroom is the last thing on the upper back side, in the top left corner of the shot.
So remember that 73-degree, sunny moving day? The next day it snowed 14 inches. That's how it is in Colorado. So while we got the stuff moved from our old house to the new house, the stuff that was going to the storage building got delayed (there's just no way to drive a moving truck through 14 inches of snow). Here, Eli is bundled up for a venture out to the driveway. Clothing by our friend Selena's mom.
Eli, of course, was very helpful during the move. He LOVES books....
....they taste great.
Jessa organizing our tv/play room. This is in the basement, and this is where all of you who come to visit can stay, in accommodations far exceeding what we had in our old house.
The view from our bedroom, looking south-southwest. The deck is in the foreground, and if you squint you might be able to make out a trampoline and small playground under all the snow. By the way, there's a deer that sleeps under the deck at night.
The view from our bedroom, looking southeast. Just over that hill, on a clear day, you can make out the southernmost parts of the Denver metro area.
Eli hanging out on the bed in his mom and dad's (still not put together) bedroom. The wall is for passive solar heating, and the loveseat in the corner is going to be a reading nook. Also, the bathroom is amazing...trust us on this (no pictures).
Eli approves.

Come visit us!

Warm Weather and Kitty Time

The highlight of this week was Eli's 4-month visit to the pediatrician. Everything checked out normal (we even interpreted the sheet they gave us to be saying that his blowing of raspberries is slightly advanced for his age). The statistics, as always, were interesting. Eli is in the 45th percentile of 4 month olds for weight, 55th for height, and the 95th for head circumference. He's had an above-average head since he was born. We're not sure what that's about...do our families have a history of large-headed babies? We're simply taking it as early evidence of the Nobel Prize for Physics he's going to win in 2041.

We had our first warm day in a while on Wednesday (it got up to about 55), so Eli and mom spent some time out on the deck, enjoying the fresh air.
You can see the snow in the background...even on warm days, the snow is ubiquitous. The day after this, we got about 3 inches, and we're expecting more tomorrow. March is supposedly the snowiest month in Denver.
Eli conked out on our bed.
Eli playing on our bed with Finnegan and Wendell looking on warily. The only one of our cats that routinely associates with Eli is Obadiah...which leads us to the video below. You can see how much Obadiah likes hanging out with Eli. He's kind of like that good family dog that lets the kids ride him, even though it probably hurts. Eli grabs a fistful of fur, but Obadiah doesn't seem to mind. We only wish Obadiah would be more discerning about where he sticks his butt (see the end of the video). This morning Eli got into our bed at about 5; we woke up at about 7:30 with Eli awake and scratching Obadiah, and Obadiah licking Eli's face.

Brrrrr

We've heard from several of you lately how cold it is where you live the last few weeks. Western NC even got a few inches of snow! Well, we hate to burst your collective and individual bubbles, but there is a good chance that we are not impressed with your weather. Today the high here was 14 degrees, and a while ago our car told us that it was -1 degrees. Here's the photo to prove it. Some of you may not be impressed by this (particularly those of you in the upper Midwest or Northeast). But geez. One below is one below. Cold enough.

Eli photos will be forthcoming, of course. But we had to put this out there.

Some Photos From Sunny

Greetings from snowy Denver! We've had another 3-5 inches in the last 12 hours. Everything is really beautiful right now. It's definitely easy to get into the Christmas spirit when everything is covered in snow! Also, Eric bought John Denver's Rocky Mountain Christmas CD the other day, so that helps too.

Here are a bunch of pictures taken by our friend Sunny last week while she was here visiting. She's quite the photographer.


Eli and mom.

Eli wearing a (fake) coonskin cap. This was in Estes Park, which is the gateway town for Rocky Mountain National Park. Lots of cheesy touristy stuff there, like coonskin caps.

Eli bundled up for the Colorado winter. His new mittens (pictured) are coming in handy.

He really enjoys naked time (or in this case, semi-naked time).

Smiling Eli. He's SO CLOSE to laughing.

Another good smile picture, featuring his new, very-cute overalls.
Mom and dad both agree that this might be one of our favorite Eli photos. He's in the front pack ("Jeep Carrier," after its branding), which he loves. He's also wearing one of his new sweaters, which is still slightly too big for him, but becoming less so each day.