large and in charge

Eli is 4 months old today. One thing about being adopted, you keep great records for the first six months of life! We have to send pictures and a letter to our birthmom every month for the first six months, then yearly to age 18. Well, when you have to write about your baby every month and send pictures, you really see how they change and grow, and how significant the "little" things are. I love keeping this record, it has been a lot of fun, who doesn't like describing every detail of their baby? Especially to someone you know will appreciate every tidbit.

Here's our little stud muffin all ready to go see the doc:

Here's after the doc, a little more sober.... he had three shots today. Will was worried that he was being sad and had to check out the owies.

After the owing inspection, Will felt much better about the situation. Now, onto those rolls and the "largeness" of this child.

The doctor described Eli has "smiley guy" which he is, he just smiles and grins at everyone whether they are looking at him or not. They weighed and measured him of course and here are his stats:

weight: 17 lbs. 9 oz. - 90%

height: 26 inches - 85%

Now I know why my back hurts and why he barely fits into his infant seat! He's large and in-charge and we just can't get enough of this little guy. He is such a sweetheart and is going to be so fun to see grow up! I keep telling Will though he better watch out because Eli is getting bigger and bigger and someday might not like the hugs he gets from his big bro..... oh this is going to be so much fun!!

sweet as a sundae

I found THIS idea on one of my crafty blogs I check regularly. I thought it was so cute I wanted to try it out. Although I changed things up a bit. Here's what I did:

First, I enlisted the help of my buddy. He made a great candy tester/sorter/messer-uper. Hehe

Then we got all our supplies. Instead of using Valentine M&M's, I found Ice Cream Parlour flavored Jelly Belly's that looked super cute and fit our theme perfectly.
I let Will put all the candy in the cups. Then we tried glueing the popcorn on the styrofoam balls but it did NOT work. The popcorn kept breaking and the glue wasn't drying fast enough so it was falling off. Anyways.... plus I thought, how fun is it to get popcorn that you can't eat? Not fun. So, instead, I made white chocolate popcorn (but put red food coloring in the white chocolate to make it more valentiney), and put that on top of the candy. Now we can eat the WHOLE treat! Oh, I also bought little plastic cups instead of having to buy real dessert cups.

I also couldn't find pixie sticks at Target???Weird, but I couldn't. So I used popsicle sticks to look like our spoons. Theses were super fun to make and I can't wait to give them to my friends and family!! I attached a little not that says "You're sweet as a sundae, with a cherry a top! Happy Valentines Day!"

pittsburgh

Last weekend, we decided to take a little road trip to Pittsburgh. It is only 2 hours southeast of us and claims the closest IKEA. Worth a little trip, right? We loaded up the car, kids were super excited, and we met our friends in our drive-way.

As we got closer to Pittsburgh, the snow started falling..... and kept falling steadily all night long. We woke up to over 20 inches of snow! It was crazy, we had to dig our car out and thought for sure there was no way we were getting home. I was glad I had everything prepared, snow clothes, extra food, etc. in the car. We did make it home and once we got out of Pitt. the roads were dry and bare.... mostly. :)

Apart from the snow, we had an awesome time and tons of fun! We played games, laughed a lot, and had lots of good snacks! It will be a very memorable trip, standing at our hotel window watching the snow fall all night long, calming down the kids every time the power went out, and trying to find a restaurant open the next day.... ahhh, it was a trip full of great memories!

Cute Eli, hanging out on the hotel bed.
Cute Will and Jack in PJ's eating breakfast and watching UP.
The very lovely snow, view from out our window.
Luckily, this is what the day started like. As we drove a little ways, it was bright and sunny and really pretty from the fresh snow. I was glad we didn't drive in this (above) all day long!

brothers

The other morning I heard a shout from Will. He said "Mom! I need some help!" and I said "What are you doing?" He wouldn't tell me, he just kept saying he needed help, so I went to find him and found this:

He needed help because he couldn't get out of the crib. They were having a great time in there, laughing, talking, and Eli was getting lots of squeezes and squishes on his head and face.
How can you get mad at that? You can't. So I didn't, I just laughed, grabbed my camera and kissed both boys. Will loves being a big brother, he's taken on the role great, and I am glad he's Eli's big bro, their going to have alot of fun together! I can already tell Will's going to be looking out for his baby brother always.... not like Eli's going to need it, he's HUGE. Chugging 8oz bottles and wants MORE!!! What am I going to do, I'm glad I can start rice cereal here soon, because we can't fit more than 8oz in a bottle.

Day two. I had a slight relapse this morning. I'm trying not to be too hard on myself, it is only my second day of getting up earlier. I figured out why I didn't make it out of bed. Two things. Eli slept from 8:30pm to 5am. I know, AWESOME. But, when you are trying to get out of bed at 6:30, and you just crawled back in bed at 5:30 from feeding a hungry baby, that one hour just doesn't cut it. I know, I'm wimpy and I should have still gotten up, but oh well.... on to my second excuse. I don't have a car on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so we don't ever go anywhere (during the winter). So, I have absolutely zero motivation to get up and get going.

So there you have it, my excuses. Day 3 will be better, I will get up at 6:30am!

I just had to get my pregnant belly from being the first thing I saw when visiting my blog.

It's Monday morning and the sun shining!! Yay, a rare occasion here in Cleveland. It really is amazing what a little sunshine can do. I just finished my 30 day workout goal, I happily made it to 30 days, only missing three times. My February goal is to start waking up earlier. Day one, so far so good. I was up at 6:30am, said my prayers, worked out, got the kids breakfast, took a shower, all before Will left for pre-school at 10am. It is a good feeling. We'll see if I can keep it up. The best part of waking up early was that I actually got to say good-bye to Scott before he left for work, that was a nice start to my day!