Imagination Galore!

Eli is just turning into such a fun, imaginative, big kid!  He's doing so much better at entertaining himself, and is always telling made-up stories, singing his own songs, and best of all--coming out of his room dressed in some funny get-up. (He can fully dress and un-dress himself now, woohoo!)   Eli simply delights in playing dress-up.  He could probably spend all day putting together different costumes.

 

We enjoyed such a beautiful and wonderful Fall (for the short month and a half that it lasted).  We spent tons of time at parks, and every afternoon took long walks.  Every day, multiple times a day, Eli would say "I love Fall!"  Crunching the leaves, drinking the cider, eating the carmel apples, we thoroughly took part and soaked it all up.  It was glorious.  : )

This boy loves to play "pirates."  Daddy found a new pirate ship at Goodwill, and we create treasure maps, sail away on our "ship" (a stepping stool), and watch out for invaders with our fancy paper towel telescopes.  :)

I had to capture the cutest smiles he made when
watching Bambi for the first time.  He really
loved it!

Eli loves to make a mountain on his red couch, full of blankets and toys.  He will sit on top of or among the huge bumpy, and I'm sure uncomfortable, heap, for a long time, as content as can be.

I don't remember how or when it happened, but Eli is obsessed with swords and sword-fighting.  His first "sword" was a teacher's pointer, that he always wears attached to one of his belt loops.  We do a lot of sword-fighting around here, and it's a fun and quick way to expend some of that built-up boy energy!  For Halloween (post coming shortly), Eli was Captain Moroni.  David made him a helmet, and that's what David's wearing in the picture above, after the helmet pretty much bit the dust.

 

Showing off his "muscles," which he makes sure to do
at least daily.  :)

Eli and Clara both struggled with fighting some viruses lately.  All those colds caused Eli to have a lot of trouble sleeping, which resulted in him coming into our room a LOT.  Many nights he was waking up several times a night.  Such exhaustion insinuated in both him and myself!  He'd always want to sleep in our bed, so sometimes I'd let him fall asleep for a little bit, then carry him back to his room.  Thankfully he always falls back to sleep within a minute of being tucked into his bed again.  I can't imagine what it must get like when you have several kids in big-kid beds getting up throughout the night!  

 

 Eli is an awesome and avid reader.  No, he can't himself read yet.  But that doesn't mean we don't spend a TON of time reading every day.  He LOVES books, and I think one of his very favorite things is going to the library every Monday morning and looking at books, then bringing a huge stack home.  We love to read together, and he spends a lot of time looking through his books on his own.  I love how we can read books on so many topics, from construction to dragons, from fairy tales to folk tales, from bugs to dinosaurs, and so on.  Recently I also started checking out some videos from the library as well.  Eli's enjoyed watching Max & Ruby and Blues Clues, in addition to seeing some classic Disney films for the first time!  It was so fun and special watching old favorites such as Peter Pan, Cinderella, 101 Dalmatians, Bambi, and The Jungle Book with him.

One perfect Fall day, we headed to a park that's a bit farther that we don't get to very often.  No kids were there playing, so after some time we headed out on a walk to explore.  We'd never been out on these bridges, and so we didn't know there were a bunch of ducks!  Luckily we had sandwiches with us, so we tore the crusts off all our sandwiches and fed them to the ducks.  Eli was giddy with excitement.  I just had a ball watching him so happily take part in feeding the ducks.  Clara of course loved watching the ducks, too.

More dress-up fun.  :)

We do a LOT of sensory play around here.  Eli will
stay captivated with it for a long time, and leave it
and come back to it throughout the day.  We made
a birdfeeder with a pinecone, and then turned some
leftover birdfood into a sensory bin!