Belated Tribute to the Birthday Boy

Jeremiah quickly posted last week about Elias’ 2nd Birthday but I thought it seemed like a good idea to devote a little more space to the big E and his second year of life. I think I could start by saying that this little guy is one tough cookie and has a heart of Gold. The heart of Gold part was in full effect the day that Jeremiah saw him give Owen and big hug and say "I Love you", a completely independent, unprompted act.

Elias so admires his Big Brother it’s amazing. When Owen has taken toys away from him and has been asked to apologize to Elias, Elias will always respond at the same time with an “I’m sorry Owen” even though he hasn’t done anything wrong. The other day Owen got nailed in the mouth by a Matchbox car that came sailing off the coffee table, needless to say it came with a lot of blood and lots of tears. I was so touched by the outpouring of concern that Elias showed to Owen, wanting to kiss his lip and make it better. It was such genuine care and concern it melted my heart.. Most of the time Elias’ admiration for Owen is demonstrated in a positive way. However, there was a rebellious period a couple of months ago where if I asked Owen to do something Elias would look at me with a sweet but defiant little grin and do the very thing that I was asking Owen not to do. The funniest was the request I made of Owen to stop picking his nose, in response to this request, Elias promptly stuck his index fingers up each of his nostrils and defiantly grinned at me. I could hardly keep myself from breaking down laughing.

Elias loves to watch videos, almost every morning he’ll wake up and ask “watch movie?” or “wanna watch the Cars movie”. We haven’t let him turn into a total couch potoato though, he still loves swimming, going to the beach, and most recently he loves to swing in his new swing. When we first moved it from the meager 2 foot height of a low tree branch to our pergola I could hardly drive into the driveway without Elias declaring “I wanna swing”, his favorite is the “underdog” where his Daddy pushes him so high that he almost touches the bottom side of our pergola, which is about 13’ high. Until I perfected my version of the underdog and figured out how to get him high enough he would say to me, “No, not Mommy, want Daddy to push” He is definitely our little dare devil, The pathway down to our front door is just a dirt path, pretty steep, without any stairs. Elias will run down this pathway hooting and shouting with his hands in the air, when he reaches the bottom he turns around and says “did you see that? Did you see that? Did you see that? Did you see that?” and no I’m not exaggerating when I say that he repeats most statements or questions at least 5 if not 10 times.

A few of his other favs… are bubbles and singing Jesus Loves Me. Whether it’s bubbles in the bath or bubbles blown outside he can’t seem to get enough of them and when it comes to singing “Jesus Loves Me”, I think could sum it up best with the statement “mo Jesus”. If I had a dollar or even a peso for that matter, for every time he has said “mo Jesus” I would be a very rich woman. I’ll sing "Jesus loves me" to him a few times before getting up to leave the room when he’s going to bed and without fail before I reach the doorway he says “sing Jesus one mo time” It’s pretty hard to resist when your baby is saying “mo Jesus” I mean really, what more can a mom ask for? Though I do wonder if it’s often not just a delay tactic to postpone the inevitable bedtime or naptime.

A description of Elias’ 2nd year would not be complete without explaining his absolute infatuation with the Pixar Cars movie, and in particular the characters of Lightning McQueen and Doc Hudson. During our cruise to Alaska in July, Elias’ favorite thing to say was “where’s Doc Hudson” even if he was holding the Doc Hudson car in his hand, he would ask the question “Where’s Doc Hudson?” and as I said before, the question would be asked a minimum of 5 times. He sleeps with both Doc Hudson and Lightning McQueen nearly every night and for every nap. Whoever thought of sleeping with soft cuddly animals didn’t know anything about the Blackwell boys. Owen has been know to ask to sleep with a piece of re-bar, but for his first three years was content to cuddle up to his sippy cup as if it were his second mommy and Elias has opted to snuggle up to his two favorite metal racecars Doc Hudson and Lightning.

I could go on and on about all of the cute, shocking and wonderful things about Elias but those are some of my highlights. Hopefully they give each of you a better picture of who this little guy is and what he likes. He’s captured my heart, his Daddy’s heart and I even think his Big Brother’s too!