Birthday Bash

Last month, Elliott and parents traveled to Idaho to celebrate his first birthday with the family.  Here is my obligatory, "oh my gosh, I can't believe my baby is a year old already!"  Just kidding.....

Dapper Dude:

Being tortured during his first hair cut. Bye bye baby curls:

Elliott was in heaven with all the cars at Grandma Carren's daycare:

Having fun playing blocks with Cousin Kori.  

Their conversation went like this:
Elliott: "hey Mom, I'm the cutest, right?"
Kori, "hey Mom, tell this kid it is obviously me"

 Kori and cousin Levi:

Elliott's awesome birthday cake, made by Aunt Cassi:

 Elliott wasn't sure what to do with it:

He did better with his birthday cake in Iowa:

On the day after his birthday party, Elliott hung out with Aunt Sunny and Aunt Cassi while his parents ran Bloomsday with Uncle Jakey.

Park it, dude

"Finally!" you all will shout when you see this post.  I don't need to hear or tell any of you how time flies - it's going to be obvious in this post of my GIANT BABY who walks and talks and has even started sneaking out of the house at night. GAH!

In the lack of posts over the past few months, we have been spending most of our free time outside. The park (especially the swings) are a big hit these days:

 

Elliott surprises all by how adventurous he is with bridges and slides:

 

Not lying - he will climb the stairs by himself, and then either walk right off the edge of the slide, or get down on his tummy to go down.  This some times leads to injuries, such as his first bloody nose pictured here:

He has also started demanding time outside.  He tolerates about 1 to 1.5 hours indoors before he picks up his shoes and starts pounding on the door while whining.  Right now he is loving leaves, rocks, and water.

Fortunately, the park near our house has lots of streams and ponds for unlimited water viewing:

Showing the water to his friend Jack:

Trying to jump in:

Hanging out with parents around Seattle:

 

 

 

 Easter Weekend in Idaho:

 

 

 Elliott and Grandpa Buddy:

To finish off this post, a couple of pictures or our trip to Magnuson Park this weekend:

This is so cool Mom!

 

 Look Dad, over there, big slides!

This is Elliott's Mother's and Father's Day gift to us. Isn't he sweet?  Although he looks tortured here, he actually loves it when it's moving. :)

Next post, Elliott's Birthday Bash!

Silly Elliott

Nothing much to talk about this week, except maybe how much fun we are having with Elliott. He is so silly when he's tired, it makes us want to keep him up all night.

As a warning to some whose expectations for baby videos come from viral YouTube videos, these aren't THAT exciting.....except maybe if you already think Elliott is super cute (parent, grandparent, etc)

Silly High Chair Part I:

Silly High Chair Part II:

And just more silliness (please excuse Chris's funny expression too):

Moms with benefits

I thought after 8 weeks without posts you all deserved a catchy blog title.

Over the last few months Elliott (and Chris) have been great sports and accompanied me on several interview trips.  There were some good sides to these trips - cheese curds in Wisconsin, deep dish pizza and the zoo in Chicago, hipsters in Portland.  It all resulted in the exciting news that we will be staying in Seattle where I will be a pediatric resident at UW/Seattle Children's Hospital.  Woohoo.

Anyhow, not too long ago I was able to take Elliott with me to Monterey, California where I was presenting at a research conference.  Elliott had a lot of questions about my topic, "Hepatitis B virus co-infection in HIV infected female sex workers in Kenya."  He'll have to wait until he's older for the details, like maybe 4 or 5 or something. :)

One of the benefits was Elliott got to fly in another airplane.  He also got to wear these awesome shoes for the occasion:

 Elliott loves airports.  So many people to stare at and so many perfectly sized ledges for him to hold on to:

One of the perks of Mommy's research is Aunt Sunny and Grandma Carren got to come with us, free of charge:

We all loved the sun and beaches:

 We visited the Monterey Aquarium:

And we swam!  His love of baths should have clued us in that he would also love pools.  But, we just didn't expect that he would be so eager to dunk his head under the water.  This kid is a fish!

If you asked any of us what the favorite part of our trip was - the beach, the sun, the aquarium, the really fun research talk Summer got to give.....we would all reply:  the pancakes!  This place was freakin' amazing.  We ate their twice, but wish we would have gone there for every meal!

To finish what might be one of the final blog posts of my brief time as a mommy blogger (I hear residency is time-consuming), a photo montage of what we have been up to in the last couple months:

At the Seattle Children's Museum with our friend Jack:

Doing a little Yoga with Mom:

 Smiling: