A couple of long days....

Eli's cold is getting better. He doesn't even have a runny nose anymore, but still has a bit of a cough. Now, I have to somehow convince him he doesn't need to be getting up every 2 hours in the night anymore....that should be interesting. Yesterday, I almost killed Rica. I put Eli down for his afternoon nap and she started barking after 5 minutes and woke him up and I never could get him back down. I was defeated! Today we had my cousin babysit while we had band practice for 2 hours. She called me towards the end that he was crying, so I rushed home and put him down for a nap. She stayed while he slept and we ran off and did another band photo shoot. We borrowed an old couch from our church and stuck it in the woods. It was sweet. Eli started crying for us again when he woke up, so we bundled him up and my cousin strolled him around while we finished up. My poor cousin....she was a trooper! I am so exhausted. This has been a long week. Eli has been waving HI and BYE whenever we want him to. We started laughing today because we said, "Wave bye bye to Mama and Dada" and he turned and waved goodbye to the babysitter before we'd even left. That should have been a sign :-) Brandon got a haircut and shaved for the first time in a week. He no longer looks like a homeless man, which is nice. I've been working on Eli being more "gentle" with the dog. I've now taught him to pet her with his one little finger. He can only do so much damage with one little finger. It's so cute. He just strokes her legs/feet with his little pointer finger. My brother Will and Brandon bet the fish in our pond would die during this winter (b/c it has frozen and thawed so many times because of the weird weather). The lady before us said they'd survived two years without her ever even doing anything (they have a self feeder plant). The picture says it all. I'm kind of relieved because by this spring I want the darn fish pond emptied and filled with potting soil so Eli doesn't drown and we'd all been arguing about what to do with the fish. Poor fish. Check out Eli's wild hair during his bath...he has a LOT of hair!