11 Months!

Those of you not entirely preoccupied with Advent, Christmas, Hanukkah, cookie making, holiday travel plans, celebrating your husband's (30th!) birthday, job/post-doc applications or dissertation writing will notice that I am late with this post.  Although I could claim most of these distractions as my reason for posting 2 days late, I have the much less glamourous excuse of food poisoning.  Bleh.

Regardless, here is our handsome little man at eleven months.

It's hard to believe his next post will be marking a full year!

10 Months!

And now, already, Eli is 10 months old.  

I feel like he is HUGE - particularly when I look back at his teeny tiny newborn pictures (which were simply not taken that long ago!) but the charts and scales tell me he is in about the 25th percentile.

He's becoming more and more frustrated at being immobile and whines and fusses until we stand him upright.  

He loves to babble - quite the chatterbox!  But he has to be in order to keep up with Nora.

At 10 months he has still only rolled 4 times.  3 of those times were on his 10 month 'birthday'.  I think he may skip the rolling and crawling stage and go straight to cruising.  He loves to walk (holding our hands of course.) 

Still cute as a button and sweet as can be.  Except for those wretched teeth which are trying to break through his top gums and which turn him into this...

This is how Nora feels about it.

 "Don't worry." we console ourselves and our pain-sticken son, "Only 14 more months of this teething business."

9 Months!

This is a big milestone for me.  Eli has now been ex-utero just as long as he was in-utero.  Amazing.

And while it feels like these last 9 months have FLOWN by, the aches and pains of carrying a big baby in my belly seem eons away.  In fact, I can hardly remember them.  Dangerous ground, this is.

In other news...

- Two little white buds are breaking through Eli's pink and swollen lower gums.

- During this photo shoot, for the first time (except that once which doesn't really count), of his own accord and initiative, Eli rolled over!  Woohoo!  (Not that we were worried in the slightest.)

- Today marked the official first day of Michaelmas Term at Oxford and more than likely this is our last fall in Oxford.  It's bittersweet for me.  Bitter because it will be sad to leave this city we have learned to call home and all the dear friends we have made here.  And although sweet may seem a strange way to talk about it (since we have ZERO idea where we will be next fall) the sweetness lies not in the fact that we know where we'll be but in that we know God is with us and leading us, wherever we may go.
We have a busy term ahead full of lots of good things and lots of hard work but I'm determined to enjoy it all.  This is the day that the Lord has made.  Let's rejoice and be glad in it.  Psalm 118:24

8 Months!

It's that time again folks - monthly photo shoot time!  Don't pretend like you didn't notice that I'm 2 days late on this (or that you haven't been pacing the floor for the past 2 days waiting for this moment to arrive.)

You wouldn't know it from our recent blog posts but we occasionally do things other than take pictures of Eli.  And we occasionally take pictures of those other things too.  In fact, life is so full these days that it seems I don't have enough time to write blog posts about it.  It's a bit overwhelming to even think about it actually.

But somehow these monthly photo posts of our growing boy seem manageable to me (if barely).  And so, for those of you who want more than the boy-on-quilt over and over and over again, bear with me.  Perhaps the start of term and the routine of fall will bring with it more varied blog posts and a better sampling of the rest of our lives.

But perhaps not.  And I've decided I'm not going to feel guilty about it.  Call it motherly pride and affection or whatever but I kinda feel like the world should be writing me a big old thank you note for sharing this cuteness with them.

But I realize, the rest of the world is busy too.

So I'm just going to assume that if they had the time, my inbox would be flooded with thank you notes. And for that I want to officially say, "You're welcome."

I cannot stress enough what a content little boy he is.  This is a huge blessing 99% of the time.  Because of his contentment, he is yet to roll over.  That's right.  8 months old and he does not go from back to front (or vice versa).  He probably could but he doesn't.  Does not even try.  He sits well (as you've seen) but we have to put him in that position.  He can't get himself into a sitting position yet.  So when we need to set him down we can either lay him down or sit him up and we do our best to guess which he would prefer.  

This is the face we get when we guess wrong.

7 Months!

Swimming, Alice Day, and Solid Foods

Our kids continue to grow-up. As with many life-changes, there is some bitter mixed in with the sweet…though the sweet clearly predominates.

Grandma and Grandpa Edsall have been in town for several days (with a few more to go) and we have been trying to make the most of it despite the uncooperative weather. We took the one almost sunny day to go swimming at the outdoor pool and on Saturday we took Nora out for some fun events on the 5th annual Alice Day, in honor of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (which was written here in Oxford).

At the pool.
This was the first time Nora had been to a pool since she was 18 months.  She liked it back then but has had some minor water fear since so we weren't sure how she'd take to it this time around...

Nora's getting used to the water…it didn't take long.

Notice how empty it is - it really wasn't a particularly warm day but we work with what we have.  Luckily the pool was heated a bit.

Eli…just chillin' by the poolside.

Nora seemed to take to the water well.

This happened over and over and over again.

Bonus Photo: Nora as a lion, reading "Library Lion" with Grandma.

Alice Day.

Nora had her face painted at Blackwells bookshop.  She chose a butterfly.  And she asked the lady making balloon animals for a butterfly balloon as well.  Not particularly Alice-themed, but cute none-the-less.

Nora came home and checked herself out in the bathroom mirror.  This was her reaction.

Butterfly balloon.

Solid Food.

In other news, we have started Eli on some solid food and he seems to take to it quite well. It turns out that he is a big fan of mashed pear.

"Hey guys, what's that you have over there?"

Mmmmmm.

Bonus Photo: Happy Eli on a Walk in Port Meadow.

posted by:  Ben (Daddy) Edsall