Another Sick Day - and where did July go??

Eli's Pirate Eye is back again. Well, that sounds cooler than pink eye. Some kids get ear infections repeatedly, but for Eli it is his eyes, although he hasn't had one in a while. Luckily he doesn't get too bothered by it, although his eye gets glued shut when he sleeps so he wakes up looking like a one-eyed pirate, which sorta freaks him out (the curse of such long eyelashes is they get tangled with eye gunk). Beyond that, it just looks bad and he has to stay home from daycare for a day so we can go to the peditrician and get eye drops. It just gets old because we know the drill, but we still have to take him in to get looked at and then go wait at the pharmacy. It came on really suddenly last night when we went over to his friend Eddie's house for dinner - sorry buddy, hope you didn't catch it!

Oh, and getting eyedrops in a toddler is SO much fun. When I was home alone with him today I had to take the "calf-branding" approach (sorry, I just watched the PBS reality show "Texas Ranch House") -- Basically sitting on top of him and pinning down his shoulders with my knees so I can hold his head/eyelid with one hand and the dropper in the other. Good times.

Otherwise we had a fun day together. Eli spent the morning with daddy, so after the doctor's appointment and pharmacy they picked me up from work so we could drop Justin off at work and switch off. But Eli was mostly feeling fine, so we went to the playground and went for a walk. He's still contagious, but I figured as long as he keeps away from other kids and they don't try to rub his eye it would be ok.

So, to catch up on the rest of July: Last weekend we went to Chesapeake to visit Grandma & Grandpa E and had a good time. We went to the Va Beach boardwalk and rented a surrey (4-person bicylce Flintstone car thing), ate dinner on the waterfront in Norfolk at a restaurant that was a renovated church (odd, but good). We also went to what seemed like the world's largest playground in Chesapeake. Unfortunately it was miserably hot and humid all weekend. Right before that Grandma was in town and spent most of the week with us, so she Eli-sat a couple evenings so we could go out. Otherwise, mostly just lots of pool time and playground time and frozen custard and hot weather.

New silly Eli Tricks:
-Announcing all passing busses (still working on the route numbers)
-Pointing to an increasing number of body parts on command
-Asking (begging? demanding?) cookies (more like "koo-kah") Why did that have to be his first real food word??
-Saying "woof woof" to dogs (after saying "Hi Doggie")
-Other vocab words include: uh-oh, agua (no, he won't say water), ball (sort of), out, shoe, milk (almost), daddy, "hi kitty", and he tries to count the stairs with me -he's got the right vowel sounds, but the consonants are random. He'll try to repeat lots of other words, but doesn't use them consistantly. He also says several other words we haven't been able to identify - not sure if it's Eli's dialect of Spanglish or just fun sounds he likes to make.
-And the funniest new trick is when he kicks the ball to me when we play soccer and he throws up his hands and yells "Goooooooool!"

I'm getting ready to go on a work trip to Toronto, so the guys will be all by themselves through the weekend. I made a double batch of muffins for Eli and bought some Mac n' cheese for Justin, so hopefully no one will starve.