Eli Thursday

Week 54

Eli's current favorite activities: messing up the rugs and swiping the kitchen towels from the oven handle so he can put them on his head. (The best is when he covers up his whole face and then crawls as fast as he can. It's hilarious to everyone involved, especially himself.)

Mom's current favorite activity: leaving the big open bag of rice on the kitchen floor instead of pouring it into buckets where it belongs. It's hard to do chores like that when I could be playing peek-a-boo with a shirtless baby on the kitchen floor though, you know? 

Little foodie

This boy loves food. 

Clearly, the apple does not fall from from the tree. 

Current favorite things to eat:

Grapes

Pears (he can eat a whole pear at a time if we let him!)

Veggie straws

Homemade bread + butter

Frozen greek yogurt bites

Homemade fruit popsicles (as seen in these pictures, popsicle mold found here)

Granola

Fruit snacks (the only way I can clip his nails nowadays)

Pizza

I'm really grateful to have a good eater. He's really good at feeding himself which means I can sit him in his highchair and have a solid 20 minutes (at the very least) to get stuff done without interruptions. It's pretty great.

We're still nursing, but he's almost lost interest completely and my supply is drying up. We're down to just morning and night already and I'm so sad about that. I really loved nursing and was hoping to do it for a little while longer, but at least we made it a year, right? 

Week 53

Cousin Levi has been hanging out with us for a few days every other week. It's pretty cute to see them play with each other. Here he's helping him walk back and forth in the living room, which Eli thought was hilarious. Maybe this will get him a little more interested in walking, which I'm not sure I want to encourage or not yet. Haha. :)

Eli Thursday

Week 52

He shoved the rest of his granola bar in his mouth just as I took the picture. The nut seems to think that the only acceptable way to eat food is to have your mouth stuffed to capacity (or better yet, overflowing). It makes me a little crazy sometimes. Even though I know how to do the Heimlich (yeah I know they updated the name but I also don't care... haha), I'd really rather not have the need arise at all. 

12 months

Little Eli, I can't believe you'e been in our family a whole year now. You are such a good little buddy and we think you're pretty much the best. Love you lots, baby boy!

Stats: 

Around 18lbs

Size 3 diapers

8 teeth (plus two molars coming in!)

Size 12m clothes

Likes:

Food! You still love to eat, and are pretty good about trying new foods

Climbing on everything, which is terrifying

Flipping light switches

Zippers

Books (Mr. Brown Can Moo is your current favorite)

Walking when we hold your hand (still no interest in doing it on your own)

Waking up early

Drawing

Dancing by waving your arms around

Clicking your tongue

Dislikes:

Brushing your teeth

Getting buckled in your carseat (although you're fine once you're in the car)

Happy Birfday to Eli!

Well folks, I officially managed to keep this little human alive for a whole year. I think that's definitely cause for celebration, no?

Eli's birthday was actually on Friday, but we were out of town so we did cake and such today. 

Dallin kept the candle at a safe distance while we sang "Happy Birthday" to Eli. Both sets of grandparents were there via Facetime too.

It took him a few tries, but he managed to blow the candle out by himself!

At first he tried picking off the sprinkles to eat, and then ended up shoving globs of frosting in his mouth. 

He wasn't much interested in the actual cake part... at least not eating it.

 It didn't take long for him to smash it all up...

 ...and toss it on the floor.

Silly goose. 

It makes me glad I didn't bother making a healthier cake since he didn't eat much anyway, just as I suspected. 

Then we ditched the clothes for present time! He made short work of this. 

Sure do love this little munchkin! I really can't believe it's already been a whole year since we became a family of three. He makes our home such a happy place and I'm so glad to be his mama. 

Memory-keeping for the non-scrapbooker

I have long since learned that scrapbooking, like with actual paper and glue and all that jazz, is not my forte. Like... at all. I have tried and failed many times in my attempts to become a scrapbooker. It takes too long, it's messy, and can be really expensive.

However, I love pictures. If you know me at all, you know that I take pictures of everything, all day erryday. Now that is my forte. But I don't want my pictures to be stuck on my computer or in my phone. I may have grown up in the digital age, but there is just something about actual printed photos that you can't replicate on a screen.

I'm a pretty busy person, but I've found a good system for memory-keeping and I thought I'd share it with you. A key factor in my success as been my iPhone. It has helped me become so much better at taking frequent pictures and recording memories, especially with the Project Life and Chatbooks apps.

I love Project Life because of how easy it is to make scrapbook pages with lots of pictures. I almost always have my phone on me so I can whip up a page any time I have a spare minute. Since I have a Macbook it's even easier because I can access recent photos taken with my DSLR through the photo stream on my iPhone. Pretty snazzy!

Here are a few examples of pages I've made:

Shutterfly often has free 20-page 8x8 photo book promotions, so once I have enough to fill one up that's how I plan on getting my Project Life pictures printed. Easy peasy!

Chatbooks is another app I've fallen in love with. It automatically uploads pictures and captions from your Instagram account and makes them into little books, which are only $6 (including shipping) for each edition. I'm currently on the one book per month subscription, but I've been wanting to switch to five per month so I can get caught up faster. It's going to take a few books, to say the least, to get the many pictures I take printed. ;)

In addition to Project Life and Chatbooks, I also keep an eye out for the 101 free prints promo that Shutterfly has every few months. They serendipitously happen to have one going on today through Monday with the code FREE4ME (Tip: Shipping is a bit cheaper if you order 99 prints instead of the 101 they advertise). I just slip them into a big photo album (I think this one was around $12 at Ross and holds a million pictures) and also hang them on the clotheslines I have in our dining room and nursery.

Have you tried either of these apps? What do you with your pictures? Any great memory-keeping tips I should know about?