"I want to see Eli!"

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...

Big boy, big bed.

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!).