Eli at 14 monthsJune 27
I struck me today that Eli is doing many new and interesting things these days so I would write some of them down. Where do I start? This is going to be a bit random.
Eli is starting to mimic. Mostly verbal mimicking... sometime's he'll repeat what you say, but often only the first two letters of a word. It's very cute. He also mimics intonation. So if you so "WOW!" in a more excited, higher pitched voice, so will he sometimes.
On Friday we were driving and he was delighting in being goofy and getting our attention. He was smiling while looking at upwards and making this forced laugh. When we'd look back and laugh at him he loved it. Meredith calls him a little "ham", as per his last name.
When we're out of the house socializing, I will put him down and he will proceed to lean back against me with his head between my legs. I think it's his way of being shy and staying close. When we were at Paul's retirement party, he was standing a couple of feet away from me and some ladies were smiling at him. He quickly did this cute little side shuffle and then grabbed onto me.
For some reason, in the last couple of months, Eli has been pretty consistently upset when we change his diaper, and we can't figure out why. It's partly triggered walking into his room, but most triggered by setting him down on the change table. He gets upset, cries, squirms, and it's often not until we get his new diaper on or sometimes even after that that he will start settling down. Very strange.
Lately his favorite "toy" has been the wooden stick/pole that is used as a secondary lock for our sliding door. We call him little Moses the way he runs around with it as his staff. Sometimes he'll hold it more like a sword and swing it around, or bang it into our hard wood floors, so we've decided it's not a good thing. Today when I hid it in the closet, he noticed that I had gone around the corner and not come back with it. He was convinced that it was in the washroom, just beyond the closet, and so it was so cute to see him looking beside and behind the toilet without any luck. He is at a stage where he gets very upset when we take things away that he loves. Another example of this is the computer. He loooves putting his hand on the computer mouse and typing on the keyboard. When I took him away today, he got very upset, and sort of screamed. Hopefully this will pass, but I have a feeling it will get worse before it gets better.
Just this week he has started expressing interest in feeding himself with a spoon. He's pretty inaccurate with it, but does manage to get a decent portion of a spoon full of food into his mouth. (And of course, the rest on his shirt)
When I go into the garage (from the house) in the morning to get the bike out, I tell Eli to wait in the house and then close the door. I then wheel the bike outside and by that time Eli has walked over to the front door and is looking out the little window beside the door. When I look up and he sees me smiling at him, he gets a big grin on his face and is very excited. I then open the door and grab him and his things and get him settled into the Chariot. It takes about 12 minutes to Bike the 3 km to the baby sitters, and these days he seems pretty happy the whole while. His helmet is big enough and heavy enough that it tends to pull his head forward somewhat, but if I turn around on my bike and say "Hi Eli!" then he'll look up with a big smile on his face. Last day he had his "Mamma do you love me?" book open and it looked like he was reading the newspaper. Adorable.
Eli's favorite food these days: strawberries. After a huge breakfast this morning, we finished off with a few cut up strawberries. He looked to be slowing down, so I got up to take his tray off, and realizing that I was about to take the last few chunks of strawberry away, he quickly grabbed each of them and stuffed them into his mouth. On Friday when we were out at the CSA for the first time to pick up our locally grown veggies, we stopped for a few minutes to pick some strawberries. I saw with Eli on my knee and bent down to find a nice red berry. It was so wonderful to pick one and immediately offer to Eli. He took a bite and immediately pointed downward at other nice looking red berries that he could see, and he could barely keep himself together waiting for me to get another strawberry for him. The berries were very sweet and little more sour than usual... wonderful! It felt a little bit like a garden of Eden experience. (The farm is organic / pesticide free)
We've enjoyed this last month and a bit taking Eli to the park some nights. A couple of times, we've gone there FOR supper instead of after, which is fun. We pack a quick supper for him and then Meredith goes up the hill to get pizza or something else, and then we sit under the gazebo there and eat, enjoying the summer weather. Then we play on the swings and slides. Eli, even at 1 year of age, likes to go down the big slide head first, all on his own. Pretty adventurous!
A game that we have started playing in the last week is that, when he's standing at the edge of our bed, I will throw him upwards and then let go of him so that he has half a second or so of free fall, and then I get my arms underneath him just in time to break most of his fall as he lands on the bed. It's perhaps a 4 foot drop from the apex of his trajectory down to the bed, and he seems to love it. Then he crawls to the edge of the bed and tries to dive off head first. But this isn't new -- he has this bad habit of diving off of things head first when he knows that I'm around, since I obviously always catch him when he does. A few months ago I tried to teach him that this was dangerous but ended up hurting his head and giving myself nightmares... so hopefully he wises up on his own, because I'm not sure how to teach him that this isn't a good idea.
Likewise, he gets up on our couch and runs around on it, sometimes standing right at the edge. Not good. But it's hard to know how to teach him that this isn't good. We tell him sternly to sit down, but that doesn't always work.
Eli is still going to bed at 7 most nights, although has not been able to get to sleep until 8 the last two nights, which is the first time I remember this happening. Hopefully that's not a trend, but the two nights he has done this, he has slept in until 7:30 rather than 6:30, and I have to say, it has been
wonderful.
We're looking forward to our two weeks of RVing in July out in BC/Alberta. Hopefully Eli enjoys that strange new mode of life!
Very coolJune 25
Way to go Kevin Costner.
http://gizmodo.com/5573165/bp-begins-fighting-oil-spill-with-kevin-costners-oil+separating-centrifugesSelf resistanceJune 13
I'm not sure what to call this, but I've been having fun experimenting with a form of exercise that involves creating your own resistance. What you do is imagine that there is a force opposing your motion, and then you slowly overcome that imaginary force, or conversely, slowly allow that imaginary force to overcome your resistance.
Ok, so perhaps that's not the clearest picture. To use an example: From a standing position, I might pretend to do a bench press. By imagining that I am actually pushing a weight away from me, what I believe happens is that your body contracts the muscles in your back which would normally be used to pull something towards yourself. And by overcoming this force, you are contracting your chest muscles -- the muscles you actually use to do a bench press.
I find this interesting because:
  | You are using not just the typical muscles for a given movement, but also the opposing muscles. This is a good thing, as I've discovered from times when I would only, say, do pushups, and after a few weeks you start to feel like your body is actually becoming misshapen because your chest muscles are overly tight and your back muscles can't resist them, when you're at rest. |
| It doesn't require any equipment. |
|  | It is efficient, You don't need to go anywhere. You don't need to swap machines, or get or put away anything. |
| | It is inexpensive / free. |
| | You can do it almost anywhere, whether you're at home or traveling. |
| It involves using your imagination -- which is kind of hokey, but also kind of fun. |
More generally, it's fun to think up exercises that you can do without any equipment by using your imagination.
For example, pretending there's a 2 foot high fence in front of you and then jumping over it, either forwards, or to the side.
Another example: Pretending to throw a ball forwards, or upwards, overhand or underhand. Or kicking a ball, etc.
As I said, kind of goofy it would seem, but I have found it to be kind of fun and mentally refreshing.
One last thought: When you practice a motion of the body without the physical thing you would normally do it with, whether that be a ball, or whatever, I find that my mind focuses more on my own body and the various motions or muscular contractions involved, whereas if you were to actually throw a ball (etc) your mind becomes very fixated on the actual object and the resulting motion of that object, almost as if the object were a part of your body. (I've heard a similar thing said about how the human brain thinks about a tool that you're using) This change in focus from external to internal is notable and is perhaps useful for learning motions from another complementary perspective.
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