Sorry again...

So as many of you know, I've recently gone back to work full time. I had an Epiphany the other day. My babysitter is a good friend of mine, and she's totally wonderful. She sends me pictures all the time on my phone so I can see how Elliott is doing and all that good stuff. She's awesome. Becky asks for more pictures, and I always forget to send them to her. And I realized that that's like me asking Rachael to send me pictures throughout the day and her not doing it. I felt terrible, because I was depriving my far away family of pictures of my awesome baby! Please forgive me, I have a goal to do it at least once a month. You have my permission to use forceful coercion if necessary. ;)

Here's what's been going on:

I finally met Ben. His grandpa died in February and I felt like it was time, so I went to the funeral. It was a beautiful service, and so wonderful to see him! All the family, both Ben's family and all the extended families, were just so wonderful and caring. He is a cutie, and so rambunctious! He and his family came over to our house for dinner the next day, it was so great to see all of them. Ben took a real liking to Elliott, it was so sweet. When we were all sitting down for dinner Ben sat down first and everyone thought it was a bit funny how he chose to sit at the very end of our huge long table. When we asked him why, he said that it was because Elliott's baby seat was down there and he wanted to sit by him. I have a few pictures of them playing, and I hope they'll continue their friendship. It was such a blessing to see them all, I loved every second of it. :)

Elliott got his first real haircut! I think it's a bit short, but it'll grow. His next haircut will be in the summertime when he'll get his first mohawk. He'll be such a cute little hell raiser. :) Oh, and the story with the headphones... I'd like to say that Elliott is ahead of his time and that he's into Dylan and The Beatles, but it's just him liking to accessorize. He does the same thing with my headbands. Seriously.

On a particularly hot day, we decided to give Elliott an ice cream sandwich. He loved it at first...

Literally. He LOOOOOVED this ice cream sandwich.

But then something happened.

His first brain freeze.

We had a baby shower for my sister Cecily (who, incidentally, is having her baby even as I type this blog), and a good friend of the family made both Elliott and soon-to-be baby Isabel quilts. Elliott loves his.

Here are the shower treats. The balls on top were delicious! You just bake store bought cake, crumble it up and mix it with frosting, and roll it into melted chocolate. They're sooooo bad for you, but oh so good. For the cupcakes we made little binkies out of Life Savers and Jelly Bellies. We were pretty proud of ourselves. :)

Elliott LOVES to go outside! He'll tell me, "Go, go, go" and run to the front door and start knocking on it. He goes out every chance he gets, and he just explores all over! Whenever anyone goes outside he books it to the door and asks to go with them. He's a fast little dude! We have a swing set in our back yard and he likes that pretty well, but I think he's too young still. He mainly likes to walk around and touch things. It's so sweet to watch him learn and grow.

Doing some more exploring. I love this picture, it makes my heart happy. :)

Swinging

Earning his keep by helping his Granddad with the yard work.

Breakfast. He still hasn't figured out the whole spoon thing yet... :)

He sure knows how to make a mess!!

Here he is with his cute little cousin Taz watching Finding Nemo while the grown ups watched conference. At least, most of the grown ups watched conference... These guys were cuter to watch. :)

Hunting for eggs on Easter,

and afterward enjoying the fruit of his labors. By the way, take a gander at my husband's eyelashes here. Sometimes I hate him.

Doesn't this face just melt your heart? He is so sweet. I swear, Jacob and I totally lucked out with the whole baby thing.

Ok, so things have happened that we haven't taken pictures of also. Elliott's vocabulary is growing every day! He can say tons of words, I won't be able to remember them all, but some are the following:

Go go go; all gone; mom and mama; dad and daddy; amen; car; ball; baby; dog; ummm (he says this one a lot); shoes; juice; granddad (daddad); banana (nana); more; bye bye; and he's almost got Jenna down. When he says Jenna's name it kinda sounds like his banana though. :)

Jacob is doing really well in school. He discovered that in order to get into his major he'd need to take not two classes during the summer which he originally thought, but four. Two of which are math classes. So he's decided to just get into his major for the spring semester, take the summer off, study math like crazy, and hopefully pass out of the math classes that he would need to get out of the way. Luckily we have a friend who is a math genius so we've asked him to help Jacob out.

Like I said earlier, I've started working full time again. It's just as hard as I thought it would be. The actual working part is a piece of cake, I've been doing it for ten years. It's so hard to be away from Elliott. It's nice to have money again so we can actually buy groceries on a day that isn't payday, and it's nice to talk to grown ups during the day, but I miss him so much. It'll be good though. I keep on reminding myself of what an amazing babysitter he has, and that he's young enough to not be affected too negatively by it, so I'm slowly coming to terms with it. :) People do this every day, I'll eventually get over it.

And finally, we have decided that there is one more kid up in heaven for us. We're being really careful about this decision because of my health, so this kid may end up being an adoption, but he/she's up there. But it won't be for a few more years, just in case there are any gun-jumpers reading. I just thought you might like to know. :)

Thanks for reading! And you really have my permission to nag if I don't reach my at least once a month goal. If going back to work has done one thing, it's made me more productive with the time I have not working. I think I can do it. Have faith, all ye doubters. :)