9 months and oh my sit down!

Well our little mover is now standing. I knew this guy would be an early walker because he never wanted to sit even when he was two months old he would stand up in our  laps. I just never knew he would learn so quickly. Just before Eli turned 9 months he and I were in my room and he was intrigued by the fan plug. Yes I know you shouldn't let kids play with electrical outlets, but I just thought it was interesting watching his little mind work. So I pulled out the video camera to record him. Instead of playing with the outlet again he crawls over to a laundry basket stands up and begins to walk acroos the room!! What? You are tiny and have never even cruised the furniture little man. One thing I have learned about this kiddo is when he sets his mind to it he does it. Most babies crawl for a while then they cruise the furniture, then they hold hands with an adult and walk, then they get the courage to let go and walk alone. Nope Eli just figured out he could walk and started walking. He would stand up on the furniture then just let go and walk. It is kind of amazing. He doesn't even look like his little legs are strong enough to hold his body up. He is so proud of himself too! This is a whole new world. :)

6 months and he loves his Mama!!

Yep you read that right. This kid is a momma's boy and I could not be happier! The girls loved momma too, but they were both really Daddy's girls. Since the day Eli was born he and I have been quite attached. Well, it finally happened......After three kids I am finally a first word! That's right this little guy said his first word and it was "Momma". I was so thrilled!

7 months and really moving now!

So our little guys is seven months old and as tiny as can be. He is still wearing 3-6 month clothes and he is quite the crawler. He can get around pretty fast now, but of course he never has crawled like a typical baby. He has two crawling styles is on his hands and feet. He has been called every little animal name in teh world to this point. Each time someone sees him crawl they say "oh my goodness that is so funny he looks like a little ______________" monkey, spider, bear, dog,
Then his crawling evolved into kind of sitting on his bottom with one leg out to kick off and go fast. He is pretty speedy. He also figured out that he could put something in his hand like a cup or toy and slide that across the floor and use his other hand to push off with and really pick up speed.

11 Months and TALKIN'!

This month the little man is such talker. He has a few favorite words that he uses regularly like Mama, Dad, and Dog. Then there is his FAVORITE word! "Baba" or in adult language, bottle. He was not much of a bottle fan most of his life, but he has finally figured out that babas are not too bad. Now he uses this word ALL the time to mean just about anything. He says it with this high pitch tone at the end Ba (deep) Ba (All light and sweet). It is precious. He also says Ella a lot becuase he loves his sisters. At this point Ella means both Ella and Olivia. He asks for them when they are away and loves to run up and give them kisses.
He also has a new found love for dogs. We are dog sitting Tabitha's chuahua right now. He is in love with little Miss Lulu. Everytime he sees a dog he says repeatedly "Dog! Dog! Dog! Dog! Ruff! Ruff!" then he giggles at the dogs. At this point all little animals with four legs are dogs to Eli. We went on a golf cart ride with my dad last week and he saw baby deer and ducks for the first time. He was amazed by the ducks at first and of course called both animals "Dog! Dog!"
He just loves to learn new things right now and he seems to really listen to what I am saying when I talk. Yesterday our dog Harley ate some of Eli's food from the floor. I told him "Harley is eating your food", he looked at me with a very serious face. Then I said "It's okay you eat some of the dog food sometimes don't you" He gave me this very sheepish grin and laughed out loud! That little stinker knew exactly what I was saying. He is so much fun right now! I can't wait to see how reacts to his first birthday party!!!

Three months and giggly!

We have a little laugher! I will give you one guess who made him laugh for the first time. Yep it was his Daddy. He is definitely the playful one in the family. He was able to get Eli to big belly laugh for the first time. These days Eli is full of smiles. He is so sweet and just loves to play with everyone. He has also become quite a Momma's boy. He lovvvves his momma, which I love too! :) He is also sleeping through the night now and I love that too. I just never knew that a baby boy would be this much fun. Thank God for knowing that we needed a little guy in our family!

Happy Happy Happy Halloween!

So for those of you that are not on the Duck Dynasty band wagon I should probably explain our Halloween costumes this year. There is a hit show called Duck Dynasty that Chad discovered last year before the rest of the world knew about it. It is a wonderful mixture of red neck hilarity and good old fashioned Christian family values. We absolutely love it! We decided to dress up like them for Halloween. It is a huge family of men with long scraglly beards and hot wives. I play the role of the hot wife. hee hee! We even had Eli dressed up in full red neck with a beard. We went to visit some of the other babies who were all dressed adorably!

The girls are really into Annie right now! They love to sing "It's a Hard Knock Life" and stomp around the house. We have even managed to talk the girls into cleaning the house just by playing that song. :) It is not child labor abuse I promise.  So we felt it fitting for Livi to be a little red-haired orphan Annie for Halloween. Ella had a harder time deciding what she wanted to be for Halloween this year. She couldn't decide between Ms. Hannigan and Astrid from "How to Train Your Dragon". Finally the day of, she decided to be Ms. Hannigan. All throughout the streets of Round Rock you could hear these two playing the parts of Annie and Ms. Hannigan. They are quite the little actors. Ella also had an opportunity to dress up as a bride for their school Fall Festival.

2 months and goo

Eli has started making the sweetest little sounds. He says "goo". I told the girls that goo means "I Love you" so they are constantly goo-ing at him. It is precious. He loves it too. Well the little early childhood teacher in me decided to teach him to goo on command and would you believe it he can acutally do it! No kidding two months old. I say goo to him and he goos back. It is the coolest thing ever. This kid truly is something else!
This little man LOVES to talk! His favorite thing in the whole world is to sit with someone and just goo with them.  He can also say bbbb and blow bubbles and aahh. It is adorable. He is a very social little guy. At his doctors appointment he was 10 lbs and 6 oz, which is still skinny. It put him at the 10 percentile for weight.

Eli is such a sweet baby. I never knew having a boy would fill me with this much joy!! We are so blessed!

One Month and smiling

Eli has been such a little angel! He rarely ever cries and when he does it just a little yell then he calms down and waits for me to come and help him. I am so much in love with this little guy. He can now make eye contact and gives me little smiles here and there. He will look intently into my eyes with this very serious face then his whole face lights up in a smile. It is amazing! I love it.

 I haven't been able to capture it on camera yet. He also likes to play on his back with his little play gym.

He had a beautiful head of red hair, but some of it is gone. :( Daddy did not want him to get cradle cap so he scrubbed his little head a bit too hard in the bathtub and now the hair on top of his head his gone. He still has his pretty red hair on the sides so he looks like a balding old man. :) He is still pretty cute though!!

Since the Bumbo chair had a recall again I decided to take the monthly baby pictures in our chair












We also got together this month will all 6 babies in Dallas. It was absolutely hysterical to see them all together! Eli is the youngest and Elliott is the oldest, but only by two months. We lined all the babies up for a beautiful photo op! We quickly learned that it is

incredibly difficult to take a happy picture of 6 babies at one time. It seemed that someone was always hungry, tired or crying. Oh well we tried. It was so cute to see them all together. Elliott is sooo much bigger than Eli. His dad Jay joked that we used to have 7 babies but Elliott ate one of them. Ha! I love these ladies and these babies.

Newborn pictures

One of the parents in my class last year offered to take newborn pictures of little Eli. We took them when he was eight days old and still very sleepy. They turned out amazing!!

Our Little Miracle!!!

He is finally here!!! After waiting and waiting for the little man to come on his own I was scheduled to be induced on August 21st at 7:00 am. When we arrived at the hospital they checked me to see if I was dilating and of course I was not . :) I started to get a bit worried that this  may be a difficult labor and delivery. They started the pitosin at 8:00 am and I was only a 1. Then a couple of hours later they broke my water when I was at a 2. We decided this would be a rather long day at that point.
The girls came in at that point with my mom and I gave them their big sister presents. They had big sister shirts, some crafts and the new Lorax movie. Livi ran over to the couch and grabbed my Boppy pillow. She said "I am ready to hold Eli now!" Yes baby girl aren't we all. Unfortunately he is not here yet!! :) The girls were in heaven with their new gear and sat and watched the Lorax for a while.
After that the nurse turned up the pitosin as high as it would go and I started to have intense contractions. I was trying to wait as long as I could for the epidural but decided it was probably time. We sent the girls home for lunch and a nap. We thought he would be here around dinner time. When I got my epidural I was at a 4. After the epidural I started to feel some relief so I decided to take a nap. Chad fell asleep too. 45 minutes later we were both asleep and the nurse came running in saying "He is coming! He is coming!" Chad and I were half asleep and quite confused. We had no idea he was coming. :) She called the doctor and the team in and sure enough he WAS coming. About 5 minutes later our little man was here!!!!  After my third baby you would think this would all be normal for me. Nope! I was balling and crying when I got to see him for the first time. It was like being a new mom all over again. This pregnancy seems so different for some reason, maybe because he is our first boy. I fell madly in love with him from the first moment.  I was able to feed him right away then Chad's parents came back with the girls. 

As soon as the girls walked in Olivia ran back to the couch and grabbed the Boppy again and said "I am ready to hold my baby!" She was so excited to see him. After that we had lots of sweet family who came to see Mr. Eli. I still can't believe that we have our little boy. He is truly a miracle!!!