ode to a neglected baby book

The NaBloPoMo rules are one post per day. They don't really address when that post gets published, right? Yeah, this one is late. Moving on.

Sticking with the theme of running late...

I've fallen behind on updating Elliot's baby book lately. I've missed writing down his last six teeth (up to 14!), and I'm woefully behind on documenting words, favorite activities, etc. I'm going to scan back through the blog and see if I can fill in some blanks. So that I will have this post to look back on next time I need a reference point, here's what Elliot is up to these days. My apologies for the boring you all with this nuts and bolts-y post.

Favorite books: Go Dog Go, There's a Wocket in my Pocket, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, and the San Francisco book I can't remember the name of right now.

Favorite toys: Trains, trains, trains, and puzzles. Oh, and trains. The kid is obsessed. He has a bunch of different train toys, train puzzles, train books... you name it. My parents bought him a few Thomas engines and cars the last time we were out to visit him and he loves them. The seal has been broken on the branded toys. We had a good run. ;-)

Favorite songs: His faves to sing are The Old Lady Who Swallowed The Fly, two versions of If You're Happy and You Know It (especially the shouting Hooray part), and the Alphabet Song. He sings the last word of each phrase in these and it's so cute. His favorites to listen to and/or dance to are all of the songs from All Aboard (an album M had as a kid), The Vowel Family and Roy G. Biv (both TMBG). Oh, and The Sign by Ace of Base. I kid you not.

Best trick du jour: We toss all of his sippy cup parts into a big bin in a cabinet and pull out pieces as we need them. It's a tall (5 foot?) pantry-style cabinet with pull out bins, so not super easy to get into. Still, Elliot has learned to open the cabinet (by pulling the dishtowel that is hanging on the cabinet opener, which is at the top of the tall cabinet), pull out the wire bin, find a matching cup and lid (including by color), close everything up, stand on tiptoe to place the cup and lid juuuust on the lip of the counter top, come to us and take our hands, then lead us into the kitchen requesting juice along the way. He does this every day when he comes home from school, and a few times a day on the weekends. It's pretty impressive to watch, actually! M decided to see if he'd do it in reverse so she handed him the pieces of his cups straight out of the dishwasher. Sure enough, he took them to the cabinet, opened it up, put the pieces away, and closed everything behind him. The funniest part is that he'll only take one or two pieces at a time, and he closes the cabinet between each trip. This means the activity generally takes long enough to get the whole dishwasher unloaded while he is making his trips. Surely our time with this is limited. I know it won't be long until he realizes he can leave the cabinet open and the bin pulled out between trips, but it sure is handy for now! 

Runners-up for best trick: He can identify all 26 letters by name and/or by the name of the item pictured under the letter on his ABC puzzle, and when we count from 1 to 10 with him, he says about half of the numbers on his own. 

He mimics everything we say. Everything. Neither of us swear very often, but there have been more than one sh!t choruses after something was forgotten or dropped, so we're working on cutting that out completely. I love, love, love the way his toddler mouth sounds wrapped around octopus, butterfly, Oh no!, please (peas), thank you, bless you, again, spoon (boon), and of course, I love you. He also mispronounces blanket as "bacon" and meow and "laooow" and I really hate to correct them because they're just so cute. :-)

Last week, he went through this really funny hat obsession. He came home from school one day and I tried to take off his hat as we came into the house, but he grabbed it back, crying "My hat! My hat!" He placed it back on his head and there it stayed through playtime... and dinner... and right into the bathroom to be taken off with the rest of his clothes for bathtime. The next day, we went through the same routine upon arriving at school. I told his teacher about the night before and said he might demand to wear his hat all day. (He was wearing a brightly striped hat with a pointy spire on top and one of the other kids was following him around saying "Nice party hat! I like your party hat!" LOL!) I left him sitting at the table eating cereal in his hat and picked him up sitting in the same spot coloring, hat on head. I pulled it off for a moment and his hair was damp and matted underneath. His teacher confirmed that he had worn it all day. This lasted for 2-3 more days and then it was done. Not sure what it was about but we got some good laughs (and pictures) out of it!