Brian and Krista: I'm bringing him up well

I gotta say, for me, one of the greatest things about having kids is watching their little personalities evolve. Watching how they deal with situations, their temperment, their quirks, and likes/dislikes is so much fun (most of the time). Not only that, but its fun to see the little quirks they pick up from you.

I just gotta say....I'm raising him well:) I'm not talking about how he deals with things, because at 2, his methods kind of stink. I mean seriously, throwing that fit doesn't get you want you want (one of these days (maybe in 18 years) he will figure this out for himself!). What I'm talking about is the things he picks up from me and Brian. I love how Eli has adopted Brian's love for life; his love for fun and play and his passion for things he loves. Truly amazing. I'm not so sure I like the stubbornness he's genetically received from his mommy and daddy, but you gotta take the good with the not so good:) From his mommy......he's learned so many things.....good things too:) When Eli spills or makes a mess on the floor, he runs into the kitchen, grabs the dishtowel, and "cleans" up his mess. Makes me smile every time. That's my boy:) He also LOVES the vacuum. We don't usually let him actually vacuum, but I bet he would willingly if we let him. He walks all through the house with the little vacuum just cleaning up the floors. Now, I don't actually really like vacuuming, but I do love clean floors, so the vacuuming is necessary. I can always count on Eli to help me out. He's a boy after his own momma's heart.

I gotta say, one of the greatest things Eli's gotten from me is his sweet tooth:) Probably would be better for him if he was more like his daddy on this, but I'm sure glad I have a partner in crime. Eli will never turn down a good sweet; ice cream, cookies, cake...you name it. I had some cake in the house a couple of weeks ago and every time I asked him what he wanted to for breakfast he told me "cake". Sorry buddy, not gonna happen...but it was still cute. I can always count on Eli to eat a cookie with me when I get the craving (who am I kidding...get a craving... I could eat cookies everyday!) for sweets. Since it's summer, we've been big on ice cream around here. Ice cream sandwiches are the best this time of year. A couple of weeks ago Eli got to have his first ice cream sandwich all to himself (usually stuck sharing with me) by the pool. Life can't get much better than that.

Papa was there to supervise and help out when he needed. The nice thing about being by the pool is that I could care less if he gets messy. This was the first time he was allowed to hold his own sandwich too. I think he was pretty pumped to not have to share and to be able to hold it all by himself to control the amount of ice cream going into his mouth:)