Happy Father's Day! (we had no power all morning - a squirrel ate our transformer or something.. sigh!)	"Electric Man" is all done, bye bye!	Grandma and Grandpa set up a pool for Elliott
Surveying the territory	"Helper Boy" waters the grass	Yeah, this is way cool!
So funny!	Shower, anyone?	Elliott plays with Grandpa and Dad
Splash!	watering Grandma's feet	watering the flowers
Elliott "kicking" (I guess some of that prenatal yoga I did rubbed off!)	Happy birthday Mike!a	Mmmm, the last of Elliott's chocolate easter bunny
Gooey bunny! (why not, the more he wears the less he eats)	This is why guns shouldn't be kept in houses with children.	making peanut butter play-doh - yum!
"noonel in hand"	"thank you"	"noonel a mama hand"
Elliott's favorite activity - bath time!	Contemplating the meaning of a peppermint patty (he LOVES mint)	Walking a mile in dad's slippers..
hey goofball!	"hiding" behind the bar stool	awww.. slow dancing with Dada
Mama	a real skunk in our yard! (lousy picture, but it was moving fast)
For Mike's birthday, I gave him three tiny toy squirt guns, figuring we could have some fun outside. We had our first squirt gun fight this weekend. Mike, "The Instigator", started it.. the good news is that he wasn't too upset to see us drenching each other, but the bad news is, he thought it was hysterical and now he'll squirt us any chance he gets. Elliott got a hold of a squirt gun in the house, and ran around the house gleefully squirting everything - "squirt toy money, squirt saw, squirt truck.. squirt mama.." At least it's allegedly summertime, so I'm not so freezing as I walk around with little squirt marks all over my shirt, and drips of water dribbling off my face. Sigh! Next to Mama, he mostly likes to squirt it into his mouth. Luckily the squirt gun was clean, but this is a habit we'll have to work on, especially since he does the same thing with squirt bottles (think windex and shudder! All our squirt bottles are safely out of reach). Elliott can now say "backward", "forward", and "upside down" appropriately. He's getting much more verbal about his wishes. He will come over to me when I'm on the phone and point to it, saying "mama are you done?" or saying "mama done phone, down, play elliott!". How can I say no to that one? Top phrases of the week: readabook dada/mama find elliott mama nummy jump a bed He's been singing frequently.. he either gets the tune right, but the words are nonsense, or gets words, but just chants them in a signsongy way.. he will wander around singing "a toooooooy.... a baaaaaahhhhllll...." but mostly he sings "buh-dupa-dupa-buh-dup-up-dup-buh-dup" etc. We have been able to get a lot of yard work done so far this summer. Elliott's getting better about playing along side of us while we do things, so I actually got the garden planted, weeded, and got some annuals in. While I was getting the last ones in this week, Elliott wandered over to his plastic Little Tikes house, which had a flat of red impatiens on it, and promptly screamed a blood curdling scream. I ran over and saw a yellow jacket stinging him on his arm. ARGH. It definitely got him once, and was starting on another sting (or there were two). Poor guy. I've been stung by yellow jackets several times, and it REALLY hurts. We iced it, and he nursed and calmed right down. 10 minutes later he was running around singing old macdonald. He's amazingly resilient. We looked up photos of yellow jackets on the web, and talked about them. He was pretty clingy and weepy for the rest of the day, even with a dose of tylenol. He finally did fall asleeep, and seemed ok the next day. Now he's sensitized though, so next time he gets stung, we'll really have to watch him closely. Elliott seems to be unusually tasty - to mosquitos. We try to put bug spray on him and keep an eye on him, but it's hard, and several times he's been eaten alive before we realized what was happening. Unfortunately, he has a major scratch reflex, and many of the bites on his legs have turned into booboos because he's scratched them raw. He checks on them several times a day, and says, "booboo? rub it?", because we have been telling him to rub the booboo if it itches, not scratch it. His favorite activities are reading books (with someone), playing with matchbox cars, building and knocking down block towers, playing with trains, playing with playdoh and drawing, playing with water in the high chair or tub (or outside), and last but not least, hiding. His favorite spot is deep in the coat closet, which apparently was one of Mike's favorite hiding spots as a kid too. He stayed in there for 20 minutes once. He gets kind of mad when we "find" him, and makes us go away. Hmm. He "hides" by putting things over his eyes. We're enjoying his total childishness while it lasts - he's just adorable. He also likes to suspend himself between the sofa and the coffee table. I think he'll be a terrific rock climber (though the protective parent in me isn't particularly keen to introduce him to it). He'll be suspended there, torso on the couch, feet on the table, and laugh and say "fall down!" and then slip down into the crack. He showed his first use of verb tenses this week too, that I remember. He said "mama made tower!" about a lincoln log tower I had just built. Pretty cool. His longest sentence so far is: "mama - watch elmo a elliott a computer!".