As Eli gets older and more expressive, his face shows more and more complex emotion every day. I love this picture, not because he's happy and shiny, but because he looks so irritated. And terribly rational.

I can't imagine what ridiculous thing I must have said to evoke such a look, but I should have written it down and vowed never to repeat it. Ever.

Sorry for the abrupt post stoppage. We've been having some internet problems here at Casa York-Simmons. Hopefully we've got them all sorted out.

So I'll back up...

It's summer, hooray!

We've been doing all sorts of great summer things around here, most of them involvong sun, sand water or a combination of the three.

In addition to spending many weekend afternoons at my parents' pool, a few weeks ago we went to the Decatur beach festival, where they dump several tons of beach sand into the middle of downtown Decatur and we get to play in the street in the sand. We met a bunch of our friends there. Eli liked playing with his friend Paul.




Eli tried to swim in the sand.

IT'S SUMMER!!
And as we all know, here in Atlanta, summer means swimming! Eli's been hitting pools all around town.

Here's Eli and Daddy swimming at Grandmaman and Bumpus' house. (Grumpy got a new name, "Bumpus", which Eli can pronounce and my dad is much fonder of.)

I've been getting back into running (again). Our daily schedule is so tight that it is hard to find the time to run between waking up with his highness the little rooster at the crack of dawn and when we collapse into bed in the evening. Seems like something is always in the way. Ah well, I'm doing my best.

To motivate me, I've put some new running songs on my ipod. It is so funny to think about what kind of music I listen to when I exercise, it isn't the kind of stuff I listen to at any other time in my life. A lot of hip hop, actually and not the most savory kind. But it has a good beat and makes me feel tough... both are necessary to keep me going!

So here are some of the songs on my list.
Lose Yourself by Eminem
Hey Ya! by Outkast
Let's Get it Started by The Black Eyed Peas
Jackson by Johnny and June Carter Cash
Foxy Lady by Jimi Hendrix
Supernova by Liz Phair
Lady Marmalade by Labelle
Crazy by Gnarls Barkley

There's more, but those are some of the highlights. Any ideas to add? I could use the help!

Welcome to the world, Madelynn!
We've been anxiously awaiting the arrival of this little petunia. Madelynn's mother, Elizabeth, is a colleague and friend of mine. Eli's surrounded by cute girls these days.

Eli, master of Jedi mind tricks, says...
Happy Birthday Alison!!

In other food news, Eli and I planted a garden. I built some raised beds and filled one with dirt. Last weekend we put in a few tomatoes and peppers. We're keeping it small this first year and we'll get a bit bigger next year. My composter is nearly full, so soon I'll be able to start to fill the other garden bed to get it ready for next year's crops. Please ignore the lack of landscaping around the bed... baby steps.

This evening after dinner, Eli and I watered the plants. And I watered Eli. I couldn't resist!

One legacy that Kevin and I have in both our families is that of good cooking and good eating. Kevin's mother, Linda, was a remarkable southern cook in the old tradition. Her chicken and dumplings... whoa. There are many things I miss about her and one of them is that I never had a chance to learn her kitchen secrets.

My dad is a great cook of the gourmet variety. He's a foodie. we can be assured at any given family gathering that there will be three times as much food as we can eat and it will all be delicious.

Why am I talking about food?

Because our CSA (community supported agriculture) just started up a couple of weeks ago. We are awash in green leafies, kale, collards, redleaf, beautiful garlic, kohlrabi, beets, vidalias. The strawberries are amazing! If you haven't heard of it, a CSA is a neighborhood co-op that buys shares of produce from a local organic farm. Every week, we pick up a big box of yummies from a neighbor's house and start cooking!

This week's box was so delish. If my kitchen could do a happy dance, it would. Tonight we had a beet and egg salad and sauteed beet greens.

In case you're interested, here's the beet and egg salad recipe, surprisingly delicious:

a couple of beets, boiled and peeled, cut into bite sized peices
a couple of hard boiled eggs, peeled and cut into pieces
some mayo
salt and pepper

Mix and eat. Yum.

We haven't been at the beach since February but we were able to get enough time off over Memorial Day weekend to take a family trip. One of the cool things about going to the beach every three or four months is that it is a great way of marking Eli's growth. He has a different reaction every time we are there because he is in a different developmental place each time.

This trip was marked by his fascination with the ocean at the same time he was sort of overwhelmed. Trips down to the water were very serious for him. He spent a lot of time thinking very hard about the sand, the shells, the water, the birds. I think he was enjoying himself. It is a toddler's job, after all, to organize the world. He was working hard!

We had a great Mother's Day last weekend. We all went over to our friends the Millers' house for a Mother's Day cookout. The food was great and the company was the best! At one point, the mamas were enjoying a quiet moment eating ice cream when the daddies called us outside to see something funny: two toddlers and their toys in a pack-n-play made for one infant. Luckily, it didn't turn into a cage match.
After play time, the little ones had dessert: Eli with a popsicle and Baikal with ice cream in the nice evening sun.

Happy Mothers Day! Here's a big KIIISSSSS for all of Eli's favorite mamas, most especially his Granmaman. We love you, Mom!

There are a few of you out there who don't get to see Eli on an regular basis. It is for your poor folks that I post this picture. We've taken some really beautiful pictures of Eli. He is really photogenic and very pretty.

But this picture, friends, THIS is a picture of my son. The front part of his hair sticks up for no reason at all. He's perpetually losing a shoe because he loves to play with the velcro. He's holding tight to that silly bubble bottle. His nose is all scratched from a speed-of-light faceplant he took yesterday. He's a sweet, sunny little soul with a lot of energy. Gorgeous.

It has been a good day. This morning Eli helped me make banana bread and then he hung out on the porch with his new spill proof bubble dispenser (thanks Mose!) that he is madly in love with it. Frankly, I am madly in love with it, too, as it solves our nearly daily tussles over who gets to hold the bottle of bubble solution. Eli carries around for hours at a time, not even blowing bubbles, just holding it. It went for a walk with us today.









After we baked, Eli helped with the dishes, a project that ended up being, of course, messier than the initial dirty dishes, so Eli's portion of the project moved out to the porch where he happily played in dishwater and soap until lunchtime. Toddlers ROCK!!

While we're technically not "potty training" with any gusto, Eli has a little potty chair that he likes to sit on from time to time. He calls it "pobby". Without giving too many unsolicited details, I will say that he has used it several times successfully. We are very proud.
He likes his pobby so much that he will occasionally sit down on any other convenient, small round object and call it "pobby". Short stumps in the park, for example. A few days ago, we were in the front yard playing and Eli decided that one of my big flowerpots looked like... you guessed it... pobby. Luckily he is still in diapers so soiling the soil was not an issue.

We also got to visit Eli's Godparents, John and Andie and their lovely little 5 month old Anna, our Goddaughter. I think spending the afternoon with little Mister Let's Go made John and Andie wonder whether they'd survive toddlerhood.

Here are some photos of Anna on her baptism day. She's a peach!

Here's a fun photo trip down memory lane...

Here's Eli the first time he met Great Grandma Reeves.


And here's the two of them this weekend.

The theme of this weekend, in Eli's words: "Let's GO!"


Another trip to Granddaddy's house last weekend provided us with lots of time with little cousin Hunter. Hunter is getting so big! He is 8 1/5 months old and growing like a weed! He is a sweet little guy and loved watching his older cousin Eli run and play.

My friend Laurie over at Burlington Blurb does such a great job writing about her family and the ins and outs of life with three rugrats. It made me realize that I haven't really written much recently, mostly just posted pictures. At the risk of boring the heck out of you, here are a few of the most recent thoughts and developments in our world...

You might be able to gather this from our pictures, but we have a great time at home. A really really great time. Sure, we have some typical toddler moments of frustration and incomprehensible shrieking, but we are blessed for the most part with a remarkably lovely, loving, happy child. He loves to help out cleaning up his toys, he loves to snuggle and play outside. He has a great sense of humor and he is a quick study. In general, we're about as happy as parents can be.

I don't claim that Eli is any smarter or happier or better than any other kid, just that he's the perfect amount of smart, happy, and lovely to make him Eli. He makes me happy to be a mother, especially HIS mother.

So what's he doing these days? Let's see... He's 18 1/2 months old now and he is all over the place. He can walk and run and he talks a blue streak. He sings a lot, sometimes recognizable songs, sometimes his own tunes. He loves to dance, either to the radio, his own CDs or to the thumping bass of a car bouncing down the street. He is remarkably coordinated considering that I'm his mother, and he is a great climber. At the playground today, he climbed a small climbing wall built for much bigger kids with no assistance (yes, I was spotting him). He is also fearless, which adds to his success as a climber but also the number of bruises and scrapes he manages to acquire. He loves to pat the dogs and would dearly love to play with them but doesn't really know the rules of dog play (like, you eventually have to throw the toy, not just dangle it over Tabi's nose) and thinks tails looks like a lot of fun. He isn't interested in TV unless he's too sick to do anything else, which has only happened two or three times. He loves babies and always has me stop at the window of the nursery rooms at his preschool before I dop him off so he can look at the babies ("Babies sleep? Shhhh."). He's a hell of a good eater and will try anything we put in front of him, although occasionally it will come back out again. His favorite food is cheese and he asks for it at every meal (it sounds the same as "keys" and "trees" so context is important here).

He's incredible.


p.s. I do want to shout out to Laurie Burlington because Eli and I LOVE being in her music class on Friday mornings. It is SO much fun and Eli sings the songs all week long, whether or not I play the tape. Thanks for being a Music Class rock star, Laurie!

It is finally warm enough to run around in diapers... and drink from a big boy cup!