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.)