Elliott's first trip to the playground this year
ready to go down the slide with Dad	Weee!	What separation anxiety?!?
Elliott's excited about the mulch
The annual UVM Sugar on Snow party - maple syrup on snow, pickles, maple doughnut holes, coffee, and great music! A bunch of our friends came, and Elliott had a blast running under the pine trees with Jasmine and playing with all our buddies. He and Jasmine liked the pickles more than the sweet snow!
Jasmine and her buddy	Elliott and his buddy	Have doughnut, will run!
Let nothing will come between a Real Vermonter and his sugar on snow!		Elliott plays fetch with Rachel
pine dohn! gedit!	our little explorer is off again..
Mama makes a "fan" out of toothpicks	Elliott loves playing with water in his high chair	(he totally looks like Mike as a baby in this one)
A trip to the pond at our local Mills River park to collect frog eggs and survey the wildlife
Extra bonus points if you can find the pair of ducks!	Jamie and his mom catch salamandars!	ooh, all wet!
Jamie shows Elliott his catch	No, you can't squeeze the salamanders..	This is Elliott before he did a face-plant in the pond (no kidding, and I was holding onto him at the time! Luckily I brought several changes of clothes for him)
Ball! (rescued from the shallows, it was Elliott's favorite treasure that day)	Houdini the froggie	tadpoles - big and yiddow!
	Elliott helps mama rake in the yard
Some notes from this week: Elliott continues to enjoy climbing. He had a blast at the playground Sunday, climbing up the "yadduh" and down the "yide".. and up the slide and down the slide. He says, "hand!" when he wants us to hold his hand. In general, he seemed very safe, though we spotted him pretty carefully the whole time. I can already feel all the future anxiety I'll have when he walks on top of the monkey bars, and does crazy things that I loved doing as a kid.. you just have to let go, somehow. Not when they're this age, but I can already see the need to brace myself, watching the older kids climbing on the roof of huts 15 feet in the air. As if climbing wasn't enough of a challenge, he almost always has some favored object in his hand at the time. At the playground, it was a little plastic funnel, which he carried everywhere until I convinced him to put it in his coat pocket. At home later, I lowered the high chair so he could browse on some snacks, and he immediately climbed into it.. and out, and in, and out, etc. almost giving us a heart attack. The whole time, he had a plastic toy in one hand, so he was doing the climbing one-handed. Because you know, climbing over the tray and in and out of the high chair with two hands would be cheating, right? I have to give him credit though - he usually manages to not fall and hurt himself. He sometimes gets stuck and yells for help, but there have only been a few bad spills - mostly jumping and falling off the bed, or slipping on the wet floor and falling backwards. He's very aware of booboos, what they are, and how to keep from getting them. He will start climbing onto the back of the couch, and when we say, "no, get down please" he'll say "booboo!". Elliott LOVES this better weather, and chants "outdied" ALL DAY LONG. I really enjoy the time outside, and I look forward to getting our gardens back in some kind of shape after a year of total neglect, but it's tough when every time ends with him pitching a fit about coming in. I wonder when he'll be old enough to understand temporary set-backs. Even if I just bring him in so I can use the bathroom, or to get a new coat or water or something, he completely flips his lid, sobbing "outdied!" like he was begging for air. I always hoped I'd have a kid who likes to go outside, and we should enjoy this lovely pre-mosquito weather while we can, I suppose. I'm always on the lookout for the elusive "sentence". He still doesn't speak in many "real" sentences, but he uses streams of words in more complicated ways. Elliott knows sequences of related words and says them one after the other.. he can tell a story just in bursts of words. This week he started saying, "hello tractor, byebye tractor" over and over as he rolled it across the table. He is also starting to use adjectives in front of nouns - like "green tractor". He can also say "dump it out" - an unfortunately common statement. His closest thing to a sentence so far is, "apple? Elliott? Eadit? Gedit? Biteit? Mmmm, nimomommm!" (cinnamon). Not bad. He is really interested in possession, and will hand me a ball and say "mama", then take it and say, "Elliott", and so on, over and over again, while I reinforce with "now Elliott has the ball", "now mama has the ball". He points to our tea or coffee, and chants "mama" "dada" then "Elliott, no". He's definitely getting it. Sometimes he'll name an object, and then state "Elliott!" - that's his way of saying, "I want that". We love to see him improve his language skills, but we're also really enjoying his silly ways of saying things.. most parents can remember a few words their kids mispronounced in cute ways. It'll be a little sad when he finally figures out his Ss, Fs, etc. and no longer babbles incoherently or calls things by their ewok-klingon-russian-vietnamese equivalent name. He's already lost a few of his cuter babbles - he never "yodel dodels" anymore, and he rarely says, "who did it?!" like he used to. Elliott's starting to make up games. He played a fairly complicated game of mimicry with Grandpa this week across the dinner table - he'd put a hand on his ear, or head, or swipe it across his chest, and Grandpa would do the same.. Elliott would do the same thing several times, then suddenly switch what he was doing to try to trick Grandpa, and we'd all end up laughing. Grandma came to visit on Wednesday (school vacation this week). We had a great time playing outside, and Elliott made up a new game. He runs into the woods, glancing back toward us with a grin on his face, and then says, "get you!" and goes tromping into the leaves and trees.. he expects one of us to go running after him to get him (we scoop him up and smooch his cheek or tickle him and toss him into the air). Then he squirms and says, "down!" so he can get away and do it again. It's great fun for him - I just wish he would choose the lawn to run in, not the woods - the ground is bumpy and full of rocks and thorny berry bushes. I guess he'll figure that out soon enough! One somewhat funny thing - I guess every parent has to decide at some point what to call certain bodily functions.. we want to use the proper names and avoid cutsie silly names, but we also don't want our kids to blurt out embarrassing things in front of strangers.. In general, we're doing ok in this department, but Elliott surprised us by coming up with his own word for fart - "beep". When he (or anyone else) farts, he says, "beep!" with a big smile. Hmm. Could be worse, I guess! Pepere and (great?) Nana came up Friday and stayed for dinner. He warmed RIGHT up to them, and within minutes was handing all of his toys to Pepere for inspection and playing balls with him. Nana brought a great book too, which has several of his favorite subjects in it - rockets, fire, planets, boats, motors and fans, just to name a few. He's been a picture of health lately, which I've been very grateful for. Unfortunately, I miss the instant conk-outs that I enjoyed when he was sick, where I'd be able to put him down for a nap after 5-10 minutes of nursing. He fights sleep like it's his last day on earth, sometimes taking more than an hour before he'll give up and fall asleep. I'm pulling my hair out in frustration. I can only hope it's a phase that passes quickly.