Up the tempo!

When we got home last night Eli declared that we should make some music. He grabbed his guitar and he told me to play either the harmonica or the keyboard. I chose the keyboard, but not being blessed with any musical talent, I decided to play with some of the features on the keyboard that really don't require any knowledge of music at all. My favourite game is to alter the rythym, bass and chord volumes for the pre-programmed tunes and if you add in some changes in tempo, well it creates the illusion that you are being musically creative (at least Eli and I think so).

Anyway, after playing around for a while and noticing that Eli played his guitar and jumped around according to the style and speed of my background music, I filmed a short piece of him strutting his stuff as I upped the tempo - here are the results for your viewing pleasure...

Bring on summer!

It has been a while between posts of our adventures at Noosa, but now that we're into spring and enjoying some warmer weather (and since I've often been accused of being a fair-weather friend), it's time to get back to the beach. So, that's exactly what we did last weekend. We paid our customary visits to the sandbank in the river and although we had to contend with high tides, Eli managed to entertain himself by climbing over the vegetation covered dunes and running and jumping into the water.

Here's some of the dune vegetation, with North Shore in the background.


Eli enjoyed jumping into the water, especially when waves created from the wakes of boats came ashore.


On Sunday we had better weather and it was much warmer. Eli was up for plenty of fun...


...and he'd brought along some toys from some previous sandbank trips...



It was another beautiful day on the river.


The high tide provided Eli with some great opportunities to jump off the dune grasses and into some waist deep puddles.



This particular puddle is Eli's favourite spot on the sandbank and he thinks that he owns it. In fact, he took great pleasure in telling me that he was going to chase away another group of people that had arrived at the sandbank and were starting to show some interest in this spot. He was delighted when they passed through without stopping on his turf. I'm not sure how, or when, I'll be able to convince Eli that he doesn't own the sandbank, but I'm thankful that he didn't have to deliver on his promise to chase the other people away...

Here's a happy Eli after reclaiming his territory!


After some great fun at the sandbank, Eli finished the visit off with some sprints along the freshly dredged beach on the canal.

Eli writes Eli!

Eli has recently really taken to drawing. He's always enjoyed it, but has only just recently opted, without prompting from me, to sit and draw at his table quite a lot (and I must say that I've been very thankful for his interest in this partly sedentary activity).

Now if I had to characterise Eli's works of art I'd have to say that they are predominantly a) blue, b) scribbly, and c) did I mention that they were blue? Here's a typical masterpiece...



Eli's favourite media are crayons and pencils - in fact I think he'll be a sketch artist and not one that works with paints, because he still claims that "painting is too messy" by virtue of his obsessive compulsive perspective on cleanliness. Having said that, he has just graduated to washable marker pens (which tends to mean that I am met with requests to wash his hands more often) and has recently also expanded on his style, most notably by mimicking an aboriginal dot painting that hangs on one of our walls.



Finally and very significantly in my mind, he's also recently mastered writing his own name. Here's his first legible effort at "Eli", with limited coaching and no physical assistance from me. Pretty impressive for a 3 year old I think - although Christy and I did grant him a short and rather angular name to work with...nevertheless, I think this is a pretty solid effort.