What is Eli up to?

Here are a few things:

*Elias plays games with us. He loves taking his pacifier out of his mouth, shoving it into mine, and then taking it out and plopping it back into his mouth again. He plays ball with us, too. He chases after the ball and then throws it, sometimes to us, sometimes in the opposite direction. Another game is where I growl and chase him and he laughs his head off and crawls really fast- usually right to me! I guess I’m not actually all that scary.

*Eli is so sweet and loving. He comes up to Ben or myself and gives us a huge hug, and then pushes away to look into our face with this expression of absolute love and adoration, and then pulls in for another hug. I gotta say, this kid has stolen my heart, 100%.

*Eli loves to make messes. Example: One day, I had a major laundry day. Did tons of laundry. Washed, folded, put away. Eli wakes up from his nap, and within five minutes, he had pulled over his little dressers (well, they’re really plastic storage bins), pulled out every drawer, dumped it out, and was playing in all that freshly washed and folded laundry. Sigh. But, I remembered Ben’s sister, Amy, saying that she always takes a picture first, so she has time to cool down and not get frustrated. So…

*Eli’s sounds: Eli definitely knows what he’s saying when he says “mama”, “dada”, or “baba”. He also whispers to himself all the time, which is really funny. He has this funny laugh (Ben calls it his “weenie laugh” because it sounds so forced).

*Eli is walking. He takes several consecutive steps towards me or Ben (or towards whatever mischief he is planning on getting into), and he has this look of pride on his sweet face that makes my heart swell.

*Elias LOVES books. It doesn’t matter what book it is- at church, he thumbs through the hymnal. Literally, thumbs through it. He can sit and look at books for a really long time.

*Eli dances. He has many dance moves in his repertoire. Among my favorites are his “conductor’s arms” (wonder where he got that move, since I’m the ward chorister??), the “no way” (where he smirks and shakes his head no, which he actually does whenever we say something like, “I love you” or “You’re such a sweet boy”), and the “bounce” (self-explanatory, but especially funny when he has his pacifier in his mouth).