When he knows I'm only halfway paying attention

Earlier Elliott and I sat down and he water painted while I messed around on my computer. I was pretty engrossed in whatever I was reading, and I could tell instead of narrating his painting, he had apparently asked me a question that I hadn't heard. "my eyes are beautiful, momma? My eyes are beautiful?" Now, Ell has very pretty blue eyes, and he has been told this a time or two and has started to comment on other peoples eyes lately, so I thought nothing of this comment. If I'm honest with you, I said "Mmhmm" without looking up at all. That was a mistake, however. "my eyes are beautiful, momma! My eyes are beautiful?" then I finally looked up at him, perhaps a bit exasperated. And I see this.

Randomness from ell

Lately, these are how all of Elliott's goodbyes go:

Elliott: "Okay, Mom, I'm leaving. See you later!". Shuts door for .25 seconds then opens it again. "Bon appetit! Bon appetit, mom! Bon appetit!"
Me, finally: "okay, buddy, Bon appetit!"
Ell: leaves

I couldn't begin to tell you where this came from or why he thinks it means goodbye.

Elliott's contribution

We are getting in the Christmas spirit here. This is ell's contribution- which I swear I didn't coach him.


The star on the top is my star shaped cookie cutter. Daddy did help him reach the top though.

This boy

A couple of things that make me smile:
Toddler ingenuity. Elliott really wanted to ride this stuffed horse, but whenever he sat down on the horse it wouldn't budge. So he stuck it on a school bus and rode it around that way. There, I fixed it.






His love for his " shows". This one was wonder pets. He needed to wear the backpack for some reason. He also dressed himself in too-small backwards sweatpants and house slippers. Comfort is key around here.





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Happy Halloween, y'all

Elliott chose his own costume this year, and then I helped him modify that choice into something I could actually pull off. You see, there is this random man who rides around downtown (like through the streets of the business district) on his horse for some reason. We see him all the time, and one day we went over to say hello and show Elliott the horse. We found out that the horses name was Topaz, and after refreshing Elliott on the whole costume/trick-or-treat thing, he told me he wanted to dress up like Topaz. Now, I do realize you can buy those horse costumes where the kid is the cowboy and wears the horse part like a pair of pants with suspenders, but so far I have made Elliott's costumes and that is a bit beyond my scope of things. So after some subtle redirection, we decided he would go as a cowboy. Thanks to Aunt Lizzy, we had most of the stuff already, so I made him a vest and a hobby horse (which we abandoned after a dry-run at the church trunk-or-treat, because I had to carry the dang thing around).

Anyway, Enjoy!

Settling in

We are finally finding our way around Bartlesville, and have even had the chance to meet the new pediatrician since ell is under the weather this week. Since things are pretty quiet this week, here are some of the few pictures I remembered to take.


When we brought home Loki, we brought this crate with us. It took a lot of convincing someone that it was for the dog though. I guess it is just his size.


He loves the new bathtub, except when it is draining because I made the mistake of reading him "the tub people", which is a story about a wooden toy getting stuck down the drain. I had to show him several times that he is too big to get sucked down the drain.


And here is the little bit of time he felt up to working, where he colored a sheet about the letter "c". I am trying to start to work on letter recognition with him, but I am trying to learn the Montessori way to do this. I found a great app on my computer that does this, and I am thinking about ordering some sandpaper letters for him too. Out of seemingly nowhere he knows " w" and points it out all the time, so I am going with it.


Lastly, here is some of his latest artwork, and I am convinced he is a budding artist. This is his drawing of drums (bottom left), a guitar, a trumpet (top middle, the lines are the keys), and the yellow curvy line is a saxophone. He just doodled this and showed me his band. Also, he will turn 2 1/2 next week. Crazy.

Loki

This is our newest family member.


He is trouble. Especially combined with Elliott.