an exciting few days...

Eli has had an exciting few days: 

On Sunday at church, we were able to leave Eli in the children's room for play time and snack with the other kids from our church. He was so blase about our leaving him.  He was like, "Okay, bye bye!" and fine. I checked on him once to offer a trip to the bathroom, he went, returned to snack and friends and was pleased as punch to once again say "good bye!"  Woo hoo!!! This was the first time we've really left him and it was for over 1/2 an hour.  Yeah!  :) Thank you Elizabeth and Judy for taking good care of him and managing a great kids room at church on Sunday.

Then Sunday afternoon we went to visit Nana and Papa and Eli drove a real tractor with J - he was so excited, I thought he might explode.  I have a short video, I'll see if I can figure out how to post it here....  It was a delightful visit and he can now say Hannah, as well and Nana and Papa.  It's amazing all he remembered from his last trip there, several weeks ago.  It's so cool to see how he makes connections all the time in his learning.

Monday we flew kites at Highland Park - it was perfect weather for it. He had a blast.  (We all did!) Thank you, Joyce and Pastor Doug for the great kite with long tails - it was marvelous!

This morning he had a super fun play date with Deb, Gail, and sweet little Abby.  She is darling and was patient w Eli as he's learning to share (and doing MUCH better each time!)  They were so sweet passing toys back and forth to each other.  I nearly cried! (seriously.)

Woo hoo for great times with good friends and family! :) 
(photos sometime soon...)


p.s. the patching is going well.  he is okay to wear his sticker patch each day. the taking it off part is not so much fun and his cheek gets a bit irritated from the sticky part of the patch, but the redness wears off in an hour or two...    J wants him to wear a traditional pirate eye patch... we'll see...  ;)