Eli, Oh Eli.

While doing a number puzzle, this is what I hear. “Ok, we’ve got number 3. What comes after that? Four. You betcha! Now number 5. Then 6. Then 7. Then 8. Then 9. You’re right. What’s the puzzle missing? Number zero. Right, you got it!”

Eli climbed up on the couch and sat next to me the other day. I was wearing a green Penn State t-shirt. He leaned in and said, “Mommy, that’s a really nice shirt.”

I asked Eli to be a helper and throw away the babies’ diapers. He said, “I can do it because I am a super cake.” I said, “You’re what? A super kid?” He answered, “No Mommy, I am a super CAKE.”

When he’s getting ready to do something or wants someone else to do something, he counts to three and yells “Ready, Go!”

(Sorry about this one) When he has to go number 2, he tells us that there is “some-sing in my hiney.”

He calls fruit snacks “lollipop seeds.”

When I ask him if what he is eating is good, he always answers, “it’s scrumptious.” He’ll even take a sip of water and call it scrumptious. He’s actually very much into food lately. Kevin picked up takeout from a new restaurant in Urbana for our anniversary one day late. I was talking to my mom on the phone when he walked in with the food. I told my mom that the food was here and we hung up. Eli heard me and ran over to the kitchen yelling, “Oh the food is here! I love food! I need that food!” (He had just eaten dinner 30 minutes earlier).

Eli isn’t the toughest kid. He’ll barely bump into something, and come running over to Kevin or me saying, “I hurt some-sing, I hurt some-sing.” It sometimes takes him a minute to remember what hurts. Luckily for us, a kiss still makes it all better.

We’ve been going for a lot of walks and Eli likes to take his lawn mower to “cut” the long grass we pass. In his words, “What a messy mess. I need to cut this grass. I need my lawnmower. I need to cut that. I need to cut that too....” etc, etc, etc.

Eli has been coming downstairs with me while I’m exercising. While I’m using dumbbells, he’s doing dead lifts with my pencil. While I can’t imagine he’s building much muscle tone, I guess it’s good practice counting reps.