new house

As you have probably already figured out from a previous post, we moved. Ryan got a job at Trinity Church in Livonia, MI, and we moved into a rental house not far from the church and not far from the Grandparents with whom we spent the previous year. The house sits on a half an acre of land right next to a day care (which we are not using at the moment).

Elijah loves his new house. If a cashier at a store strikes a conversation with him, he immediately informs them that he lives in a new house and that he loves it. He also tells them that there are two fans in the house!

We (the parents) like the house, too. It has lots of natural light and is located in a quiet neighborhood. Most of the pictures below are from an online profile of the house when it was advertised for rent. The dining room picture is the only exception.

three years old

We were hoping to have a gathering of friends and family for Elijah's birthday, but schedules didn't quite line up this year. And even a small family celebration was thwarted by Elijah catching a stomach flu. He was just over his vomiting bouts by the time his birthday arrived, so we felt a cake was a bit of a risk still. Thus, the three candles went into his pancake. Below is a little clip.



Daddy ended up having to blow out the candles, although Elijah practiced on other candles earlier that week and was able to blow them out.

The breakfast was followed by opening of a new set of Lego's and spending the next 30 minutes building two construction vehicles with Daddy.

Aunt Chelsea came to visit the next day and we did have a small celebration with a cake. This time Elijah managed to blow out his own candles.

not quite a big boy yet

We haven't really started potty training yet. With our move and settling into a new house there were plenty of other things to keep us busy. Plus, we didn't want to introduce a new thing while everything else in Elijah's life was new as well (new house, new room, new bed, new fans). However, we have been preparing. First, we bought family toilet seats. Next, we bought a potty training book, since neither of us have any idea how to approach the project. Then we ordered some training pants from Amazon. And finally, the potty training date has been officially set for this coming Friday.

Meanwhile, we'd have Elijah sit on the toilet every once in a while before his bath. But nothing ever happened until two days ago, when all of a sudden he peed. Mommy was on the couch sick, but Daddy was present and made a huge deal out of the event. "What a big boy!" he said. "What a big boy!" echoed Elijah.

Two minutes later he was in the bath tub and... peed again. Noticing what he'd done, he looked up at Ryan and triumphantly exclaimed, "What a big boy!"

Well, not quite yet.

to Bethlehem!

Two wooden figures of Mary and Joseph from our nativity set are traveling from window sill to window sill of our living room. If you ask Elijah, "Where are Mary and Joseph going?" he will promptly inform you, "To Bethlehem!" (They will "arrive" to a stable on Christmas Eve, and Jesus will make an appearance in the crib on Christmas morning).

A couple days ago during bath time Elijah decided to stay in the tub until all the water ran out (he usually wants to get out as soon as we pull the plug). When all the water finally drained, Ryan asked him, "Where did all the water go?!" Elijah didn't hesitate for a moment, "To Bethlehem!"

Or should it be "Bathlehem"?

conversations in church nursery

It may be hard to see, but the little green thing on top of the rhino is a small turtle. Someone was talking to Elijah about this toy in our church nursery, and asked him, pointing to the turtle, "And what is this?" His quick reply was: "Guacamole!" (He usually pronounces it "guacakome").

After he played with a number of plastic animals and named all of them "mama," the woman in the nursery thought she noticed a pattern, and asked him, "Who is your most favorite person in the whole wide world?" My son's response? "Elijah!"

the Jesus song

sprinklers

Sprinklers are Elijah's new discovery this summer, and a new love as well. Here's a clip of him playing in the back yard. He says a couple things during the video. They are hard to understand, but the first one means "sprinklers", and the second one has something to do with "getting all wet".

reading Christmas books

Reading Christmas books in July may seem out of season to me, but not to Elijah. He has recently rediscovered this book that we must have read a million times over last Christmas season. This time he showed that all of those readings were not forgotten. He started quoting the book from memory right away. My camera can only record 30 seconds at a time, so here are three 30 second fragments.

want some tea?

Life is full or routine questions and often repeated statements. We don't even notice them, but Elijah does, and sometimes surprises us with an imitation. For example, almost every morning I ask Ryan, "Ryan, do you want some tea?" The answer is always yes, so I am not sure why I even ask.

The other day Elijah pulled out his toy tea cups, loaded them with corresponding color balls, and said, "Waya, wan' some tea?" Ryan doesn't really like being addressed as "Ryan" by his son, so he ignores the question for the first 10 times or so. Finally, when it doesn't seem to work, he goes up to Elijah, crouches down next to him, and says, "Elijah, who am I?"
Elijah: "My Daddy!!!"
Ryan: "That's right!"
Elijah (without skipping a beat): "Waya, wan' some tea?"

first ice cream

On July 20th (2008) Elijah had his first official ice cream. Nothing fancy, regular vanilla flavor. It's not that he'd never tasted ice cream before, but it was usually a spoonfull or two from Mommy's cup. This one was totally his own, and he even drank the melted remains before throwing out the cup. Ritter's Frozen Custard was the place.

ponchos

This is our family icon of Jesus. It is hand painted and we bought it in Russia at a monastery. Elijah knows exactly who it is: "Gheekah". In fact, seeing the icon often prompts him to request the Jesus song.

Before a fishing trip in Ludingon, MI, we were at a Walmart to pick up a couple ponchos. They promised rain the next day, and we wanted to be ready. Naturally, the poncho packages featured a person wearing one with the hood up. As we placed a couple in the cart, Elijah turned around to take a look, and exclaimed "Gheekah!" That seemed a bit out of context, so it took us a moment to figure out what he was talking about. I guess the halo does look a bit like a hood... I can't think of anything else that would have caused Elijah to think the guy on the package was Jesus.

In case you were wondering, the fishing trip was a success. Between the five of us on the boat, we caught 10 fish, including two 16 lbs salmon. Ryan's weighed a mere 0.5 lb more than mine, but was enough to earn him the "biggest fish of the trip" award. If you look at the picture below, the longer of the two largest fish is Ryan's, and mine is next to it, and it's fatter. I also caught a lake trout which turned out to have been hatched at a farm. They knew it from a missing fin near the tail. It's head contained a micro-chip, so I had to fill out a form and freeze the head so they could analyze which farm it came from. (For the record, it's the second fish from Ryan in the bottom row.)

counting to thirty

"... twenty six, twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine, twenty ten!" (in Russian)

plural

Last night marked another stage in Elijah's language development. He started using plurals! He was playing on his bed shortly before bed time, and somehow got a hold of both of his comfort sweatshirts. I don't know who started it, Daddy or Elijah, but at some point Elijah was clearly pluralizing his version of "sweatshirt" by saying "Two wha-hahs". He was so pleased with himself that he kept saying it over and over and over. This morning we heard him say "two cahs". He used the plural on some other word too, but I can't remember what it was.

go, dog. go!

We were reading an abridged version of Dr. Seuss' book this morning. I am not sure what the original is called, but our little kid version is called "Go, Dog. Go!" We've read it a million times by now, and were going through it again. After the first read, Elijah took it out of my hands and was looking at the pictures very thoughtfully. "Are you going to read it yourself?" I asked him. And what do you think happened? He did! He turned page after page, and said all the right lines at all the right places. Clearly, he wasn't reading it in the true sense of the word, but I was still pretty impressed. It doesn't take much, eh? :)

counting

Elijah has recently learned to count, and now we count everything: fingers, toes, teddy grahams, number of spoonfuls of yogurt in a container, cheerios in a bowl (believe me, there are many!) , spoonfuls of rice on a plate, eyes, ears, rubber ducks (there are two), you name it.

Now when Elijah decides to be a picky eater, all we need to do is start counting whatever is on his plate, and he opens his mouth for spoonful after spoonful of the food he had nearly rejected. It's been a nice side effect of his counting obsession, although it is starting to wear out a little.

Another side effect is that he instantly falls in love with almost any counting book that he comes across.

The coolest thing is that he counts in both Russian and English, depending on who's currently interacting with him. And he doesn't mix the two languages. If he starts in Russian, he'll keep going in Russian till the end. But Russian numbers can be tricky. It's not just one word for one number like it is in English, but two: one for feminine objects and one for masculine (plus one for neuter, but I try not to complicate the issue too much.) To make matters worse, this only applies up to a certain number, after which the numbers are the same for all genders, but the case (i.e. the ending) of the object changes. For the longest time Elijah insisted on counting all objects using masculine form only, but we have finally had a breakthrough a couple days ago. He still prefers to say "odin" (meaning "one") instead of "odna," but every once in a while he'll use the correct gender with a little sly smile on his face, before reverting back to the masculine, "OK, odin!"

He can count solidly till 10, sometimes 12, and we are starting to introduce numbers up to 20.

first apology

Allie is not only famous for being the first living being to be called by her given name, she is also the first to receive an apology. Elijah likes to push his umbrella stroller around the driveway, and Allie likes to lie down wherever there are people. Unfortunately, Elijah also likes to make her move by pushing things into her. So yesterday he pushed his umbrella stroller right into Allie as she was lying there, minding her own business (which usually consists of licking herself). She jumped a little and moved out of the way. Elijah didn't hit her hard (he doesn't have the strength yet), but we still don't like it when he is mean to the dog. And now that he is willing to repeat things, we made him say "Sorry, doggie." Which he did quite readily ("Fahyee, goggie") and went on his way. He, of course, had no idea what he had just said or what it meant, but at least it's a start.

Arizona '08

We visited Grandma Shannon and Grandpa Mike in Arizona in early April. It was quite a change for us as far as the weather goes. It snowed in MI less than a week before our departure, and it was warm enough to play in an outdoor pool in Arizona. Which we did, as you can see. We only ventured into the pool once, but Elijah played in the water quite a few times.

At some point we went and bought bubbles, and it immediately became one of his favorite things to do outside. We had to have three adults involved in this play, however. One to blow bubbles, one to stand guard by the pool so he doesn't fall in, and one to follow him around to make sure he didn't run into any cacti (for his and the cacti sakes) in the excitement of chasing the bubbles, or "babu" as he called them.

We had some fun activities along the way, too. One morning we visited the desert museum. We saw all kinds of snakes, lizards, scorpions, and believe it or not, even fish (go figure!) The was a skunk sleeping behind glass.

Elijah looked at it and inquired, "Goggie?"
"No, baby, that's not a doggie."
"Wa-hoo?" (That's his word for "rabbit," one of his earliest.)
"No, not a rabbit, either. It's a skunk."
"Ka!" he said and walked away. If it's not a doggie or a rabbit, it's not worth his time and attention.

We also had a chance to visit grandma's Chipotle restaurant, of which she is a manager. Elijah usually gets a large quesadilla when we go to Chipotle, and eats every bite of it. Or at least every bite that is neatly cut. He rejects any that are not even or have cheese hanging out on the sides. Zealous workers of the restaurant loaded his quesadilla with almost double the cheese, and I didn't think he'd finish it. Amazingly enough, he did, thanks to grandma who cut it into perfect squares for him.

We found a great little park next to a school across the street, and spent an evening there, going down the slides (grandma got seriously zapped by static electricity!) and playing in the sand. When we were walking back to the car, I couldn't resist taking a picture of Ryan and Elijah walking hand in hand.

Travelling with a young child can be difficult, especially when it comes to sleeping. Once again, our super tent saved the day. I love that thing! We didn't skip a single nap and bed time was never a problem, and that's with a 3 hour difference between Tucson and Detroit. Even still, the trip wore Elijah out enough to take a two hour nap on the plane during our flight home.

Every trip has been marked by a noticeable jump in Elijah's development, and this one was not an exception. All of a sudden he finally started repeating words and even short sentences after us. Before, all our attempts to encourage him to speak were met with a stare. Not quite blank, not exactly defiant, but no words came out. Now he'll happily repeat anything we ask of him, or at least make an attempt, and sometimes he picks out random words from our conversations. One of the first was "metaphor" and "groggy," and the latter has evolved into "gwoggy goggie" (meaning "groggy doggie").

first hair cut

On April 16th, 2008, at the age of 2 years, 4 months and 5 days, Elijah had his very first haircut. It's not that he needed it badly, but there were a few stray hairs getting in his eyes and some others looking funny around his ears. So Daddy put him in his high chair on the deck, grabbed some scissors, and called Mommy for help. The final result was definitely not a designer hair cut, but it looked a little neater, and we can probably go another couple years till he needs his second one. :)

air plane

The other day Daddy pulled out a box of his old Legos and made an air plane. It was an instant hit with Elijah. He calls it "ee-pe" and carries it everywhere. He was so taken by the idea, that two days later he sat down with his own legos and made his own air plane, without anybody's help. The difference between Daddy's and his is that Daddy followed instructions, so it was easy. Elijah, on the other hand, had to invent his from scratch. :)

snowy spring

This picture was taken on March 2nd (I am playing catch up). I would normally not post such an old picture, but I think this one is pretty cool, so here it is.

"wa-ha"

Many kids have a blankie they are attached to. Elijah has a "wa-ha," which is his name for a sweatshirt. Actually, he has two. One for comfort during the day (blue with green stripes pictured above) and one for night time (gray with orange stripes - his favorite). He will not go to sleep without being able to suck his thumb, and he will not suck his thumb without holding a sweatchirt with his other hand.

names

The first living being to have ever been called by name by Elijah was Allie the dog. He calls her "Ah-yee." Seven months ago it sounded more like "Ai" and it took us a while to realize what it actually was. The next one was aunt Chelsea ("Ah-oo"), then uncle Tim ("ET"). The recent addition is pastor Michael ("Maku") to whom Elijah frequently talks on his toy phone, imitating Daddy. He starts with "E Maku" (translation: Hey, Michael!), followed by a long string of gibberish interrupted by an occasional forced laugh, and concludes with "Ah-ya-bah!" (translation: OK, bye!), after which he pushes one of the buttons to hang up (not necessarily the correct one).

18 five year olds

Read this first: http://wittingshire.blogspot.com/2008/04/friday-fun_18.html

18
All right, this doesn't have anything to do with Elijah, but every once in a while I want to post something unrelated, but there is as of now no other blog. So I hijacked Elijah's this time. After all, I am the blogger, so I can do whatever I want! Ah, is that freedom, or what? :)

bright future

When your future is so bright, you've got to wear shades!

family members

Over the last few months Elijah discovered that he has more family members than just Mom ("Mama") and Dad ("Dah-dy" or "Papa" depending on the context). Every once in a while we catch him reciting everybody's name to himself out loud. It usually starts with the two of us, and then moves on to "Pahkah" (Grandma) and "Pah-(long pause)-kah" (Grandpa), followed by "Ee-Tee" (Uncle Tim) and "Ah-Oo" (Aunt Chelsea). Then comes "Goggie" (Allie the dog), and the list invariably concludes with "Gee-ka" (Jesus).

old macdonald and his amazing farm

Every once in a while Ryan sings Old MacDonald with Elijah, who has by now figured out what's going on. He gets to choose the animals on the farm, and he invariably chooses "Goggie!" the first time. And the second time. And the third time. And so on. After a while, Ryan protests. After all, Old MacDonald has got to have more animals on the farm than just dogs. Elijah still can't say the names of most animals, so he designates them by the sounds they make. Turns out, Old MacDonald has quite an eclectic farm. Besides having a sheep (requested by "baaa"), he has a Russian goose ("ga-ga-ga"), a lion ("arrrrr"), and... a light ("tla"). Unfortunately, we are not quite sure what sound lights make, so the song usually stops at this point.

"professional" photos

We had to wait a few weeks for Elijah's cut to heal up a little bit. In the meantime, we decided not to go to a professional photographer after all. I personally don't like the fact that I have to buy paper copies of the pictures and then be forever limited by what I bought. Plus, the places I am willing to afford don't always produce amazing pictures, and the ones that do charge way too much. Thus, we grabbed a white sheet and set to work. Out of a couple dozen photos we took, only a small number turned out decently, but it's pretty good for our first time. If nothing else, we had a blast doing this, and the price was right. :)

P.S. For those interested in getting prints of these pictures, I posted the original high resolution photos on Picasa Web. Feel free to either download them to your computer or order straight from the website (look for a button saying "Order Prints").

harry potter

I was thinking it would be nice to have a professional picture of Elijah taken every year around his birthday. But he seems to have other plans. Last year he fell on the morning of his first birthday and got a nice red mark under his eye, which caused me to put off our trip to the portrait studio for a few weeks.

This year I've had a late start. He's been two for almost a month (minus a day), when I finally called and scheduled an appointment. A few minutes later Elijah tripped on something, fell, and hit his forehead on the corner of a piano bench (which has since been exiled to the storage room). I heard the sound of the fall, and then a scream. Blood was rushing out of his forehead down his nose, into his mouth, onto his shirt, and into my hair. I panicked. We were home alone. I ran into the bathroom and turned on the water, but wasn't sure quite what to do with it. Clean the wound? But it'll get all bloody again faster than I can wash the blood off. The simple solution of applying pressure to stench the blood flow did not occur to me. But it did occur to me to call Ryan. After all, I couldn't even take Elijah to the ER without a car. Plus, I figured since he wasn't there to see the blood and hold the screaming child, he'd be able to keep his cool and tell me what to do, or rush home. Ryan didn't pick up. Instead he walked into the door.

Elijah calmed down pretty quickly and was ready to play again after just a few minutes, but we felt like a half an inch cut in his forehead that kept opening up each time he'd screw up his face required medical attention.

After a few phone calls and a preliminary examination by Grandpa, we took Elijah to a pediatric urgent care facility. We figured it'd be faster (and cheaper). Turned out, it was an after hours only place, so we had to take our child with a head wound to a real ER. We were hoping they wouldn't have to stitch him up, and they didn't. They glued the cut instead. Of course, Elijah screamed each time a nurse or a doctor touched him, as he always does. It didn't matter if they were checking his pulse, taking his temperature or cleaning his wound. His response was the same: SCREAM. I have to say that it was the fastest ER trip I've ever had. We were out of there in little over an hour from the moment we walked in.

The best part is our insurance doesn't cover ER. Well, technically, it does, but after our $2,500 deductible, so this one's on us. We haven't gotten the bill yet, but Elijah's resemblance to Harry Potter will probably cost us over $1,000. If he had just told me he wanted to look like Harry, I would have bought him a costume at a party store or something, and it would have been cheaper. But he doesn't speak very clearly yet. Oh well, maybe he'll get the lead role in a school Harry Potter play because of his scar. :) Meanwhile, there may not be a professional photo of a two year old Elijah.

24 months check up

Weight: 33.3 lbs (93%)
Height: 36 in (83%)
Head Circum: 19.25 in (54%)