14 Months!

The time has come again . . . Eli is another month older!  14 months old, to be exact.  : )  Eli has really become a lot more fun, as he's interacting, imitating, playing, and communicating so much better.  My favorite thing that he's really picked up this month is saying "Mama."  = )  He said it once at 10 months, and then as hard as I tried, I could not get him to say it again!  Now he says it all the time, and I don't think there was ever a sweeter sound.  : )  Sometimes he just says "Ma."  He knows "Dada" too, and calls each of us the right name.

Another fun new thing is that Eli's been learning some body parts.  He points to 'nose' (his favorite), 'toes', and 'hair' (which he likes to comb) on his own, and sometimes gets 'eyes' and 'ears.'  We have fun practicing whenever we read a story that has a name of a body part in it.

He spends a good deal of time looking out the window.  We have a lakeview apartment, and Eli's always trying to look for the ducks.  When it's cold outside, he blows his mouth on the window

 to form a spot of condensation..  : )

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Enjoys playing "fetch" with his football!

Can ride on his horse all by himself!

Extra bundled for the colder temperatures.  He gets so excited to climb into his snowsuit!  It does the trick, and he always comes back from our walks still warm and toasty!

I really want to do crafts with Eli, but what kind of crafts can a one-year-old do that he won't try to eat or destroy?  Hmmm. We tried coloring one day.  He was really into it for a little bit, but unfortunately he couldn't push down hard enough to get much color from the crayons.  Mostly Mama drew pictures for Eli, while he sorted and (attempted) to eat the crayons.  : )

 Generally not one to sleep in the car.  He will only sleep if he is in our car and no one is back there with him.  He's occasionally fallen asleep on the way home from church, but not usually.  He's most likely to sleep if it's dark out when we're driving home.  One night he hit the zzz's as soon as we started driving home from G&G M's.  I never get pictures of him sleeping and I think it's sooo cute!

Eli finally started clapping this past month!!  I know, took him 13 months, can you believe it?!  He got a new book called Bye-Bye, Mommy, and in the book a little boy claps.  When we started reading that book was when Eli finally clapped on his own.  Ha!  It has got to be one of the cutest things I've ever seen.  That has now become his favorite book, and he'll start clapping as soon as he sees it.  He also claps when I praise him (such as below, when he started his ball popper toy by himself).  : )

Eli is very much into playing "hide-and-seek."  As soon as he hears David unlocking the door when he comes home, he moves quickly to hide.  It's his favorite game that they play together.  He'll hide behind a chair, under his crib, behind a door, in a different room, you name it.  He also loves when the other person hides and he does the seeking.  It brings on a lot of happy squeals, that's for sure!

I don't think there's a sweeter, easier, happier little boy out there!