Food + mom = happy

Eli usually comes with to drop Grace off at school, and this morning, as I was busy putting the key into the door to lock it, Eli waves goodbye. And then loses his balance. But where is he standing? Right at the top of the stairs. He loses his balance, falls, knocks his head on the stoep on the way past, and then rolls down the stairs (there are three stairs) – tumble, tumble, tumble.

I got to watch this happen without any way to get to him on time and save him. I just had to pick him up, cuddle him and have a look at the ding he left in his head. Fortunately a little bit of magic mama’s milk and he was laughing and smiling again. My nerves on the other hand were shot for the morning.

Grace apparently decided tumbling down stairs is fun and took a fall down the stairs at school today, with just a few minor scratches to show that it happened. I don’t understand why Grace and Eli feel the need to keep the fall-score even.

I wonder if by default a second child just has worse (and better) parents. I think with Grace we would have just made sure that situation never happened by keeping her away from the stairs, whereas now I’m carrying Grace’s school bag, trying to get her out the door and lock up at the same time. It is just different. The flip side of that also counts though: Eli gets a lot more freedom to try things, mostly because we’ve been through a process with Grace which makes us more relaxed. Eli can climb up the jungle gym ladder and slide down the slide entirely independently, which is something that took Grace quite a while longer to master (Eli has been given more freedom to experiment, and also has a greater drive for this type of thing). More freedom just comes with its own set of consequences.

Eli was standing at the window and a hadeda went, “HAA!” (because in Cape Town, for some reason, the hadedas only say “HAA!” instead of the usual, “Ha-ha-HAA!” – life under the mountain has clearly affected them). So the hadeda goes, “HAA!” which Eli thinks that someone is shouting “BYE!” to him, and he lifts his hand, waves and says “By, by.”

Eli is very into handing things to people: credit cards, food (fresh or from his mouth), toys, cellphones, and the likes. He has also been waking up somewhere between 05h15 and 05h30 which means I need to get up and try to stop him from waking Grace and disturbing Donné (who has been doing night shifts…no, he’s not sleeping through yet). Put these together and his way of encouraging me to get out of bed is to first hand me my cellphone from next to the side of the bed, pass me my clothes from the floor, and then open my bedside cabinet draw, pull out my glasses and hand them to me (which I really don’t like him doing because I don’t have a backup set of “eyes” at the moment…and glasses, all glasses, are a no anyway). Needless to say, saving my glasses from baby hands gets me up and going quickly in the morning. Fortunately he really is just handing them to me, not squishing them in any way. His way of saying, “Up you get Dad! Time to feed me and play.”

Everyone seemed to have lots of energy to burn before bath time. The more I watch this the more it seems like our kids really are crazy.

When Eli sees a dog he (1) gets very excited, and then (2) starts waving his arm in a wide circle while saying, “Ba, ba, ba,” which translates to “Back, back, back,” in adult language.

This all started in Jeffrey’s Bay. When Gogo and Gramps leave or arrive in the car, one of them generally tells the dogs, “Back!” which is part of the training they had to learn to stay inside when the gate is open. Eli picked up on this and now calls dogs, “backs.” You always know if he has seen a dog, because he shouts at the top of his voice, “Ba, ba, ba!” while waving his arm.

He seems to really love dogs and is very excited to go and give them a hug. Unfortunately he is not quite as gentle as Grace and likes to grab on tight and lean into the dog with his head, and tries to lie on top of them.

Grace has become quite outgoing in her willingness to talk to new people, like today when a new person came to collect their Ethical Coop box. I was busy getting the box and Grace says, “Hello, my name is Grace,” and then carries on, “This is Eli….I wanted to name him Nick, but my mommy and daddy decided to call him Eli.” Quite willing to share…

Cashing up after breakfast

Eli really does seem to love chocolate. He is enjoying the left overs from some melted chocolate for a dessert.

Eli helped Sam to water the garden this morning

I’m not sure there is much more I can say about this – enjoy Grace’s whistle.

Eli had his first babyccino today! And he loved it.

The aftermath