with butterfly wings

Disclaimer: I wrote the bulk of this post on 6/5/10, which is like 2 years ago in baby time. I am just now getting back to it to it. So it goes.

I have about a dozen things to write about, all of which could be posts unto themselves but they won't for lack of time so you get bullets.

• Elliot is at a freaking awesome stage right now. He is picking up new actions, words and skills by the minute - literally. He learned "uh oh" last weekend and now stops at nothing to create situations in which he can use his new word. He has become pretty adept at copying our actions. The other night, I was cutting up strawberries for him and I stuck one of my fingers in my mouth to lick off the juice, then pulled it out with a smack of my lips. Guess what Elliot's new favorite trick is? (It's way cuter when an almost-15 month old does it.) M brought home a new set of hand weights and he's obsessed. He watched her do a bicep curl and now tries to imitate it (as best one can when lifting roughly 1/12 of one's body weight), complete with a dramatic exhale at the top. He has decided through no prompting of ours that a certain large, heavy blanket is his "ring-around-the-rosie blanket" and he won't perform unless he's standing on top of it. In fact, if we start singing the song and the blanket isn't down, he'll go to the basket it's in and heave it out for us. I gave him a bite of a chocolate truffle and he clapped his hands and said "Mmmmm!" He is crazy good at sucking his cheeks in for a fish face and he's all about the hugs and kisses right now.
• Elliot is at a freaking challenging stage right now. Tooth #7 is newly in and we're waiting on... lord knows what. First I thought molars. Then I thought tooth #8. Now I've decided there's a submarine periscope trying to push it's way through. All I know is that teeth 1 through 6 weren't nearly this traumatic and if we ALL don't start sleeping better, none of us are going to make it out alive. Then there's the biting. We've asked the pediatrician for biting cessation tips on our last several visits as this has been going on - to some extent - for months. Each time she tells us the same thing - firmly tell him no and put him down - but it hasn't worked yet. This latest round of teething has catapulted his bad habit to new heights. The other day, I picked him up at daycare a little early and he was sequestered in a crib "to give the other kids a break from him." I'll admit to being a little miffed... until I saw the face of the little girl he bit. The poor kid had a puffy blood blister on her cheek where our little monster had clamped down. Nothing like that experience to ruin an afternoon. Any tips to stop the biting are more than welcome.
• Speaking of daycare, I'm not quite as over the moon with E's daycare now that he's moved into the toddler room. I used to feel like we'd won the lottery in finding the best daycare in the world and now I realize it was just the infant room, not the whole center. Where he is now is more like "slightly-above-average" which is still plenty to be grateful for. I really like his main teacher, but she leaves about an hour and a half before I pick him up and I'm less enamored with the care he's left in during that time. No serious concerns - just noting a difference. Wow, this is a useless bullet. Nothing to see here, folks. My apologies.
• Also speaking of daycare, M and E are both down with a nasty cold this weekend, courtesy of Elliot's classmate Charlie. Thanks, Charlie! Fortunately, they taught him to blow his own nose at daycare, too. He's really good at it. Maybe better than I am. Edited to add: That "cold" morphed into a double ear infection for E and tonsilitis for me and it knocked our entire house flat on its @ss for two solid weeks, hence the delay between writing and publishing.
• M and I are a week into Jilli.an Mic.haels' 30-day Sh.red. That #$*@ is hard.
• Oh, Elliot has another cool trick: He uses the clicker on my keychain to make the car horn honk repeatedly in the driveway! I'm sure our neighbors are loving it. He also pops the tailgate 9 out of 10 times, so our new morning routine involves me getting halfway out of the driveway before noticing the dashboard indicator is on and hopping out to re-latch the tailgate. If only I could catch on to things as quickly as he can.
• And one more: If he gets his feet onto the tile or hardwood during his evening naked time, he creates his own personal slip n' slide... with his pee. No joke. The first time we thought it was a fluke, and it probably was, but now that he's discovered how much fun it is, he does it frequently and at will. First he makes the puddle, then he lays down in it on his belly and splashes and spins around, laughing hysterically the whole time while we curse and run for towels. I am fully aware that this peeing-on-command business is going to help us when it comes to potty-training time. I just have to figure out how to channel it...
• My co-worker salvaged a little red convertible from the dumster behind her apartment building and she gave it to E, who thinks it's the Best Thing Ever. Witness:

• I have another cloth diaper post brewing. It's a post-script to my previous post. The last few months have seen some changes in my opinions on things. I've typed and retyped a bunch of things here but deleted them all, so I'm going to leave it at that until I have a chance to think through what I want to say a bit more. Rest assured that I love cloth-diapering as much as before, if not more, and I'm still so glad we went that route!
• June marks the two year anniversary of our successful IVF cycle. It feels like much less time has passed, and somehow, much more, too.

I don't know why I've been such a crappy blogger lately. I think I'm mostly just tired. I'm still not 100% well and I'm in the middle of an extra-curricular project that consumes my weeknights and will continue to do so until mid-August. I miss blogging, though. I miss knowing that no matter how hectic things are, I'm creating an archive I can look back on to remember this blur my life has become. Just some thoughts - neither here nor there, I guess.