Elijah Spunkman Porta

Elijah's fancy chair and desk. :)

Apparently pregnancy equals motivation for me because I could not stop myself from being productive all weekend. Laundry, cleaning, Christmas shopping (almost done!), organizing...I was a crazy woman!

Another strange thing that appears to be happening (because me wanting to clean all the time IS strange) is that Elijah is needing less sleep and he seems to have more energy to exert by the day. We are still dealing with very early wake-up times (this morning was 4:45, woohoo!) and it really doesn't seem to affect him much. He gets a little tired and grumpy by nap time, but is otherwise the spunkiest little boy I know.



He loves to shut himself in a closet (or bathroom, or laundry room, or any room) and yell out at us, "PEEEK-A-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" That is our cue to come tickle him and have a gigglefest. Then it starts all over again and if it were up to him we would repeat this 5,309 times. Sometimes we have other things to do, though, so we get the sad Elijah face. Or the kicking and wailing and hitting.

Elijah's speech continues to blossom and we could not be happier about this. He is now saying 3-4-word phrases and he has also started including verbs in his speech. Like, "Daddy geddin' wipes!" or "Mama goin' 'a store!" Six months ago we never imagined he could possibly be where he is at now with his speech. He has totally blown us and his therapists away with all of this amazing progress.



Two months ago we had a plan to put him into a special education pre-school program once he turns three. Back then it was almost certain that he would qualify since he would need obvious assistance in two areas: gross motor and speech. Now that his speech is developing so rapidly, we don't know that he will be eligible for pre-school anymore. This is GREAT because it means he is doing really well. At the same time, we would really like for him to be a part of the pre-school program that I believe could really be good for him. We will find out for sure on December 17th when we get the results from all of the testing he has been going through lately.

This week is a busy week at work that concludes with our winter company sales meeting on Friday and Holiday Party on Friday night. Elijah will be spending the night at Grandma's house on Friday night so Dan and I can (hopefully) sleep in on Saturday morning after a long week. Yeah right, I'll be awake at 5:00!

I forgot to mention that Saturday was Dan's birthday! He turned 31! We did some fun things and even got out for a Dan-Megan dinner while Elijah had a blast at Grandma's house. I will have to write more about that later. Elijah has a new appreciation and love for Dan's parents and I LOVE THAT.

Ok, enough for now. Have a great week, everyone, and thank you so much for checking in on our spunky little boy.

Spunky cuteness

Is my belly button still there?

All of the pics in this post were taken by our awesome friend Ronda, who generously offered to take Elijah's two-year pictures. Thanks Ronda!

Elijah has been super spunky this week. I think someone flipped on the Spunk Switch. He is crawling at lightning speed, absolutely everywhere, getting into everything. During the first 21 months of his life, when we thought he might not ever crawl, many people said to me, "Just wait till he's into everything and then you'll wish he hadn't started crawling." Well, those people were wrong. I have prayed so hard for "normal" stuff for him that I don't care how many times I have to run back and forth and around in circles. I LOVE IT.

Along with the spunk, there has also been a lot of whining. It really gets old some days, but again, it's another "normal" thing, so I really can't complain at all.

We've seen some good progress with speech development this week. He has started saying BOOOO and pointing at his stuffed bear, who is named Baloo (and who is also blue). I think that smart boy has caught on to the meaning of Baloo's name because he has started pointing at other blue things and saying BOOOO. He is also saying Mama and Dada a little bit more consistently. I mentioned none of this to his speech therapist tonight because she would have tried to work on these specific things with him and I'm afraid he would stop doing them. We don't ask him to say words or do signs at home anymore. We verbally label things and do some sign language as an example for him, showing no expectations for him to do it, and that seems to be a much more effective way of getting him to communicate. He does not like being told what to do.

He's still coughing, but it's not interfering with sleep too much anymore. We're still doing nebs twice every day.

We have a few little fun things planned for the weekend, so we'll hopefully have some more fun pics to share very soon..


I could just kiss on that beautiful face all day long.


Belly button happiness!










Monkey kisses.


Mr. Potato Head kisses.








He wasn't a happy boy when it was time to get out of this.

Blur

Wow, what a quick and busy weekend! Dinner with friends on Friday night was fabulous. It was so nice to see everyone after a long, cold, skydive-less winter (that is not yet over).

We spent Saturday morning with Elijah and then brought him to my sister's house. She conveniently lives two miles from my favorite ski resort in MN, so we drove over to Welch Village and skied for the afternoon. Aaaahhh, it felt so good to have skis on my feet again. We had a really fun day. The weather was perfect, low-twenties and sunny, the snow was fabulous and I even got to see some old friends of mine from when I worked there who I haven't seen in YEARS. We picked Elijah up at Auntie Lissa's when we were finished and went home and crashed. We were exhausted!

Yesterday we laid low, went to meet the gorgeous new little baby of some friends of ours, and had a nice quiet day together.

Elijah's cough is still hanging around, but it is getting better little by little. Yesterday morning he woke up with this level of energy that I have NEVER seen in him before. He was EVERYWHERE, all over the house, babbling like crazy, getting into everything.. My head was spinning! But, I loved it. I've prayed for this energy so many times in the past two years. THANK GOD for my spunky little energetic boy.

March is our last month of doctor freedom. In April we have cardiology, urology, pulmonology and genetics. It will be good to get them all over with, but I just hate anticipating the appointments. For now I'll focus on the March freedom and pray for an early Spring, too!

Have a good week, everyone! Thanks for checking in on our little monkey man.. xo