Weekend Work and Play!

You know how vacations are the absolute greatest?
Unpacking and getting your home back on track after vacation absolutely stinks!

I think that we have finally crossed the hurdle of having all of the suitcases put up, laundry put away and we're back in the swing of our ordinary life. Ultimately, vacation was well worth all of this putting-back-together ordeal. We're all good and I promise to be more timely with my beloved Elaina stories from here on.

Since I've also taken a little vacation from blogging for the time being, there are so many short snips of our daily life that keep us both laughing and that are definitely worthy of sharing. You guessed it-- they all revolve around Elaina.

Since these have all come about in the past few weeks and in no particular order, I'll just save myself the creative imagination of trying to piece them together as a congruent storyline and use my favorite of all time; *stars*! (For the technically sound, *asterisks*)

* Lately, Elaina has been asking for a "hand" to hold as she leads her subject to retrieve something for her or show her something. She most often will come up to me, reaching for my hand and say "hand," and leads me to her goal. I love being lead around by my favorite little guide.

** I've discovered that when I leave Eric and Elaina alone for any length of time, she is bound to learn something new and I don't necessarily mean a good "new" all of the time. Elaina has loved to jump from the top of the cedar chest we have at the foot of our bed over the sleigh bed frame at the end of our bed. She thinks that this is the greatest thing since a binky and performs her stunt daily. Eric decided to kick it up a notch. He has volunteered his assistance with Elaina's jump and launches her regular jump to about three feet in the air and yells "Superfly" to which Elaina hollers, "Snooka!" Apparently, "Superfly Snooka" was a WWE wrestler in the '90's and his jumps rival the skills of our precious baby girl. I'm so glad that she picks things up so fast.

*** We were heavily reliant upon the binky for most of vacation to ensure that a good time was had by all minus any fussy requests of her prized possession. Additionally, we encouraged her binky on the flight so that she wouldn't be subject to any discomfort by her ears popping. Since we've been home, she will often put her binky aside while she's playing and even when we're reading books. She definitely knows that when the binky drops to the floor, it's going to have "uckies" on it. If such an instance occurs, she picks her binky up, hands it to me, saying, "Uckies. Waash it." She won't accept it back until it has gone under running water and will do without for a short time before needing a fix again.

**** Elaina is having yet another vocabulary explosion. She comes up with more and more words out of the blue on a daily basis. Eric was hanging a new picture for me tonight and Elaina spied the hammer and pointing her finger, said "hammer." Who taught her this? There are so many other times that she throw our random words in proper context which just blows me away.

***** The other night, Elaina was rolling around and being silly on the floor before she went to bed. She has been great about bedtimes so I offered to wind her up a little more by helping her to learn to do a somersault. When I asked her if she wanted to do a somersault, she nodded as if she knew what I was talking about. (Who knows, maybe she did.) I asked her to kneel next to me and touch her nose to her knees. Umm... this is the part where her watched her IQ points drop before my eyes. She looked at me as if she was going to mimic my position and instead, touched her nose to the floor and lay her body flat out; arms and legs as long as they could be, flat on the floor. I did my best to put her in a ball and toppled her over. Her first somersault! She loved it. She nodded that she wanted to do it again and quickly got into her pancake pose once again. Nose to the ground and all. After three days of putting the somersault trick on the back burner, I assisted her tonight with the same feat. Incredibly, she kneeled with her legs in the air and her head touching the ground and I tumbled her over as smoothly as could be expected. Now I'm seeing some promise!

On a different note, my subject line would suggest that I did some work this weekend too. It's true! We had a family date night on Friday followed by some solo shopping time which helped me to be able to commit myself to projects all weekend at home. Somehow, my obsessive-compulsive behavior kicked into overdrive this weekend and once Elaina was in bed, I tore into random, necessary, cleaning projects into the wee hours of the night on Saturday. Today, was a different story. We all took a family nap after a wonderful meal. (Oh yeah, Elaina refused to eat much of the day. Luckily, she lay down anyway.) And I ordered 210 pictures from our online photo albums of Elaina. Some were clear back from late 2005! As if I hadn't spent enough money already, I ordered two leaning book shelves for our living room. Finally. The same ones that I've had my eye on for over a year and the same ones I'm tired of waiting on Eric to find time to build for me. They'll be here in 3-4 business days! Yeah!! Do you see how my two purchases worked hand in hand tonight? Since I ordered so many pictures, I need a place to display them, so why not order book shelves? My reasoning exactly!! I can't wait! I'll post pictures of the pictures soon!