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We recently had a visit from the handyman (courtesy of some of Grandad's clever pre-Christmas negotiating with Santa) and he built us a fine new path in the backyard. The best thing about the path is that it links up some of our previously disconnected play areas. This has pleased Eli greatly, because it not only means that he doesn't have to wear shoes all the time, but it has also opened up a whole range of new activities for him to enjoy. In fact, to celebrate the new path, Eli has embarked on a trio of new sporting pursuits, namely 1. track sprints, 2. soccer skills training and 3. cycling.
The first new activity was track sprints, where Eli would start at one end of the circuit and 'hot foot it' to the other end. He did this a lot when the path was first laid, to the point that he often got 'all hot and bothered' from running around too much. I've recently learnt that the cure for such a condition is ice blocks, so now I just have to make sure that I have plenty of fruit juice ice blocks ready and waiting in the freezer.After conquering the track sprints and learning all of the new path's nuances, Eli then embarked on a soccer skills training program. This involved some slick passing between the two of us, at least until the ball went 'out of bounds' whereupon Eli would retrieve it from the garden and start up the passing drill again. Here's a short video showcasing his slick footwork.
Finally, and owing to some recent growth spurts which have enabled Eli to finally reach the peddles on the bike he got from his grandparents last Christmas, he has been testing his riding skills on the new path. He's only being doing this for a short while but he's already getting pretty good - we tend to only have one or two crashes into the rocks each session now...Here's some photos of him looking comfortable on his bike...
...and some footage of him doing a great job until he crashes into me (on purpose). I think we're in for an action-packed summer.
I could probably say a few things about this video, but I'd rather let the action speak for itself...
Our trips to the beach are always punctuated with fun and games on the sandbank in the middle of the river. On one recent visit, Eli, Alora and I had a great time marauding through the shallow sand bank puddles before heading into the deeper water for some aqua aerobics, Eli style.
Eli had great fun being thrown up in the air and twirled around at great speed. In fact, we only really stopped after I'd had enough - I think we'd still be there if he had his way. I particularly like this video of me twirling Eli around, because it highlights Eli's fearlessness and my Mum's tendency to get scared by some of the things we get up to (you'll hear her screaming in the background).
For just over a year now, Brisbane has had a big wheel. And not just any big wheel - this one has held Eli's attention like no other. Every time we drive into town he has to see it out his window and if it's at night time we have to try and guess what colours it will be (it's normally white, but was once all pink for a fund raising event and on the odd occasion it has also been blue on the outside and red in the middle). The big wheel has become such a distraction for Eli that he typically won't fall asleep in the car (no matter how late it is) until we've seen the big wheel and discussed, at length, it's colour.
Given Eli's fascination with the big wheel I decided that we needed to experience the wheel up close. So when Grandma Susan came to visit we headed down to Southbank to take a ride. Eli was very excited about it and chatted about the big wheel all the way into town, but I don't think he realised quite how big the wheel is until we were at it's base. I think he might have even been a little bit anxious at that point too - here's a photo of him studying the design and structural integrity of the big wheel before we climbed on board one of the gondolas.I snapped this next shot as we headed up on our first rotation on the big wheel. As frequent visitors to this blog will know, Eli's not normally quite this subdued. 
Here's a shot of the two of us together at the very top of the big wheel; and one with Eli peering out the window while sitting next to Grandma.
As you might expect, Eli took to the ride really well and didn't seem at all worried about how high we were. He had great fun spotting the buses, trains, trucks and CityCat ferries that we could see and he agreed that people down on the ground looked a lot like ants, which might explain his general eagerness to stomp on both people and ants when he's down on the ground...
By the time we'd been around the loop a few times Eli was so comfortable that he even started looking straight down and was starting to find new and inventive ways to sit in the gondola. In some ways I think it was good that the adventure ended soon thereafter, because I imagine he would have started jumping up and down or rocking the gondola from side to side if we'd been on board much longer...
I really don't think that these videos need any explanation...
Watch out superheroes, there's a new, more diabolical and more fearsome villian ready to wreak havoc on the civilised world...Yes, Eli loves hangers - we all know that. But when does a healthy admiration become a deadly obsession? He's so smitten with them that I'm beginning to wonder. First, he happily lays down on the ground and lets me cover him, head to toe, in hangers. Then, like some kind of new age Frankenstein, he emerges through the hangers (only to request that the whole process be repeated, again and again and again). Actually, now that I think about it, it might be better when he's subdued like that, because when he's up and about that's when he's at his most dangerous... just check out these moves! So if you ever come to visit, just watch out for the stray hanger in the back of your head...
The previous owners of our house left us with a hole in one of our outside feature walls, courtesy of a fountain they took with them. Until recently, I'd resigned myself to the fact that it will always be a hole, as I had no plans to fill it in or cover it up. All that changed when Eli found it and decided that he had a great way of filling in the hole...with rocks!
Here are a couple of short videos of him solving our little problem...he gets it right in the first one, but in the second video he discovers that it's actually more fun to push the rocks all the way through the wall. And yes, there is now a growing pile of rocks at the base of the wall as testament to his devotion to this task.
The new digital camera has been a real hit...especially with Eli. Anytime he spies me with it, he's onto me with his plea "I want to see Eli!". He actually gets a bit upset when I can't make the photographed Eli 'move' and he really just wants to watch and re-watch videos of himself all the time. Whilst that in itself is fine, it's now gotten to the point at which he won't really let me video him at all, which means I now have a fine collection of short videos of Eli saying "I want to see Eli!".
Below are just a few of the more recent examples...
During our beach trip Eli developed a new skill, one that I knew had existed for a long time, but that had, thankfully, laid latent. That's right, he started climbing out of his cot. He was so incredibly proud of that achievement too - so much so that when he escaped from his cot and his room one day he came up to me and whispered 'I climbed out of bed'. It was very cute and Eli even gleefully showed off his technique to my parents and I. He had some nice climbing form I must say and I actually found it hard not to feel proud and excited too, even though it obviously meant the beginning of the end for Eli in cots.
To further reinforce 'the end of the world as we know it' Eli brought his cot-climbing skills back home too, so, after hearing the occassional thunk as he flopped onto the hardwood timber floors in his bedroom, my hand was forced and it was time to move him into a big bed. Fortunately, we had a big bed ready and in waiting, courtesy of Jonty's recent growth spurts and the generousity of Fran and her family, so all I needed to do was buy some linen and bite the bullet.
So behold, the transformation of Eli's room from this:
to this:
Then it was just a case of letting Eli loose so he could familiarise himself with his new bedroom and, of course, making sure that his doggie, his bear, his coat hangers and thomas the tank engine were comfortable too.
I can also confirm that 'becoming familiar' includes the customary jumping on the bed. No injuries yet!
Moving the furniture was the easy part, because the first week of the new big bed was testing - it took up to 1.5 hours to get him to sleep, with countless failed escape attempts because Eli has found it impossible to resist the temptation to jump out of bed, run to his door and swing it open once I've left his room. To date, I've always been there, waiting for him and ready to tell him to go back to bed. He's actually been really good about it and he usually turns around and races back into bed. Fortunately, the last couple of weeks have been much better and the bedtime routine now involves no more than three attempts to escape his room and generally, the whole process is over in less than 5 minutes and he's down for the count, so I consider that to be a small victory to me. It's also been nice having Eli wander into my room and wake me up in the morning too (but only when it's after 5am!).
