Relaxing at the Lake House

Eli and I spent a relaxing six days at the Lake House. For the beginning of the trip, Grandpa Paul (Ba-Bo), Uncle Brian (Benbi), and Grandma Sallie (Grammie or Za-Za) were there with Aunt Seana (Ah-Ya) and the two of us. For the last two days it was just Aunt Seana, Eli and me. We did most of our usual favorites (except no hike this time), but as I said before, the Lake House is getting more fun and less stressful every time we go up. Eli is getting more and more independent, and more into the different activities -- especially the water.

On Saturday, the first full day that we were up, we spent most of our day down at the little beach. Eli enjoyed watching and playing with the other kids. Once he was out of the water, it was fun for me to sit back and watch him play.




One of his favorite things to do at the Lake House is go on "Ba-Bo's Boat Ride." He loves to help drive. One day we went out with the whole family, and rode to a marina to get ice cream. Of course, every boat ride after that he thought should end with ice cream too. Uncle Brian, Grandpa Paul and I all went tubing. At first, Eli was a little concerned, he hid in Grandma Sallie's lap. I think he thought we were being tortured. But, after watching me for a while, and realizing that I was smiling and laughing, watching us tube became one of his favorite things to do on the boat.









On Saturday night, Grandma Sallie and Grandpa Paul treated us to a delicious dinner at Pazzo's. Pazzo's is a nice italian restaurant with gourmet pizzas and pastas that is a short walk down our little lane. Grandma Sallie and Grandpa Paul held Eli's hand for most of the walk and I had to include the picture even though it's a little grainy. Grammie brought a little bag of diversions for the time at the table (their service tends to be a little slow.) The hands down hit were the alphabet cards. As you can tell from the pictures, Eli loved them.





Something really nice about the Lake House is that Eli's feeling more comfortable there. Left to his own devices I think he would actually spend most of his time inside. He loves to play on the screened porch. I set up his sun shade tent again as a little play destination. He happily played with his puzzles or "What Happened?" for long stretches of time inside the tent. "What Happened?" is a Duplo game that Scott, Eli and I made up. The front of his Duplo trucks flip up to expose the engines. So, the game goes like this: we drive the trucks around, they stall, we ask, "what happened?", he says that the engine has dirt or salt in it or it's too hot, then we flip up the hoods and we use some of our "tools" to fix them. And the whole game starts again.




Eli developed a new love at the Lake House -- parmesan cheese. I think it's mostly about being able to shake it on his noodles all by himself. But, as you can see from the pictures he does get quite a bit in (or on!) his mouth.




Last summer, Eli was not very comfortable in the water. Thankfully, this summer is a very different story. I think a lot of it has to do with our frequent pool visits. It was very obvious how much differently he felt on the beach at the lake. He would "swim" up to his neck in the water. One evening we went down to the lake and Eli happily wore only his swim diaper. That night Eli loved it when Uncle Brian "threw Ewi". Additionally, his favorite water toy right now is his watering can.







The only part of the trip that wasn't relaxing was the amount and quality of sleep that Eli and I got at night. He's teething, and right now he's getting three of his two year old molars. That doesn't lend itself to much sleep. Luckily, we had some good naps.




We spent our last few days with Aunt Seana. It was a quiet, relaxing way to end our trip. We spent a lot of down time inside reading and Seana had fun "exercising with Ewi."

Countdown to the Lake House

On Friday, Eli and I will be driving up to the Georgia Mountains to spend some time at the Lake House. Unfortunately, Scott won't be able to come, he starts back to school tomorrow, and his kids start next Monday. Grandma Sallie and Grandpa Paul own a share in a Lake House on Lake Burton and we are fortunate enough to have an open invitation whenever they have the house for a week. :) The Lake House is a gorgeous destination in and of itself, but as Eli has gotten older it's gotten more and more fun. These are pictures that I took the last two trips to the Lake House in April and May.

This is the view that you see when you park your car in front of the Lake House. I'm always freshly amazed by how beautiful it is every time we pull up.



When we pull up to the house and see the lake Eli usually says, "Rocks in water", which means he wants to go down to the waterfront and throw rocks in the water. When we were there in April, Uncle Brian and his girlfriend Kathryn were skipping rocks in the water. We have a fairly hard and fast rule with Eli that he can only throw balls, so he was a little confused and intrigued by what they were doing. When I told him that he could throw a few rocks too, he immediately fell in love. In fact, for a while I always had a handful of rocks in my pocket because anywhere we went he would hand me rocks and say "Rocks in water", I had to explain that we're not always around water, but I'd pocket them for the next time we were near any. Since we are surrounded by lakes in Peachtee City we usually get to throw them in at some point. And, we've disappointed many a duck who understandably assume we are throwing bread.



His other favorite activity on the little beach is playing in the sand.



One of the best features of the Lake House is it's giant screened in porch that practically sits on top of the lake. Over Memorial Day weekend we brought up Eli's quike (Scott and my pet name for his four wheeled bike) and he rode it back and forth on the screened in porch. When I've mentioned that we're going back to the Lake House, he already told me that we have to take his bike again. It was a hit.



In May, we took Eli on four boat rides, which were his first successful boat rides on the lake since he was tiny and in the sling. Children have to wear life jackets at all times on the lake and when we tried to put the life jacket on Eli last summer he screamed that wounded wild animal scream the whole time. We even took him for a very short ride on the canoe, figuring he would be distracted once we started moving -- not successful.

In May, however, the life jacket fit him much better and we were able to reason with him. He had a reference point too -- Disney World. We took him on the Jungle Cruise and It's a Small World at Disney World in February and we called them both boat rides. Scott even made up a little jingle while waiting in line for the Jungle Cruise. "Mommy and Daddy and Eli are going, going, going on a boat ride. Boat ride, boat ride, whoo, whoo, whoo!"

It took a little convincing, he still wasn't super fond of the life jacket at first, but we took him on two canoe rides and two motor boat rides. He definitely preferred the motor boat. At the beginning of the first ride he sat huddled on my lap, but within ten minutes or so he was trying to run around the boat, jumping up and down and hurling himself onto the different seats or relatives. We tried to restrict his movement a little, to avoid him getting launched over the side, but it was great to see how happy and confident he had become. By the end of the boat ride he even helped drive.





Our other favorite activity while we are at the Lake House is hiking. The Georgia Mountains (or as Scott likes to call them -- hills) have hands down the best hiking in the state. We usually go on a short, scenic hike every time we are at the lake. It's called the Hemlock Falls hike. Eli is a good sport about hiking, he rides in his back pack, and now occassionally gets out and walks. He thought it was pretty exciting to walk over the bridge over and over again.

Soggy Bike Ride and Kodi's Help

Yesterday, we rode our bikes to Scott's school. Unfortunately, he has to go back to school on Monday. :( I'm sad. We've had a great summer. Anyway, he decided that he wanted to ride his bike to school, to see how long it took so that he could think about riding it to school on a regular basis. It took eighteen minutes, which isn't too bad. When we got there, I actually got a little nostalgic. Starting a new school year is one of the best parts of teaching. There aren't many jobs where you get a whole new slate every twelve months. I always felt excited and full of hope. The kids usually feel that too. Now, let me say I only felt a little nostalgic, and I wouldn't change my life (or job) right now for the world! I had to say that to Scott, because he says he would jump at the opportunity of having a sugar momma and staying home with Eli.

On our way bike ride home it started pouring. Luckily, Scott had packed our Disney ponchos in the back pack, so we were able to stay a little dry. But, as you can see from these pictures, we still got hosed. Eli was a little freaked out by the whole thing, but quietly fascinated at times too. And, Scott just wanted to know why I had my camera out AGAIN! I actually had a ball. The rain was warm, and it felt a little defiant and magical to be riding our bikes through it.






On a completely different note, Kodi is so funny with Eli now. I think I wrote in another post how she used to pretend he didn't exist. Then she started looking at him with irritation and disgust. Slowly, she finally seemed to resign herself to the fact that he was here to stay. Now, she treats him like she treats us. She rubs against him and requests love. Truly, his room is now her favorite place in the house. When she comes in from outside she checks his room, as we're all often in there. She sleeps on his bed frequently. Except, to her chagrine I try to keep her out of there at night, at least until I go to bed and open his door again. She's just so loud, she's definitely part Siamese and she likes to announce all her actions which is not so helpful when trying to get a toddler to sleep. Now when we play in there, she likes to "help." Lately, she's especially fond of his Duplos. She rubs against anything tall, and then flops down in the middle of the action as cats are apt to do. Then, if we give her a Duplo she attacks it. Fortunately, Eli's quickly learned to keep his hands away from her when she gets frisky.

Ewi's Job, Poop on the Potty and Dinner with Dendi

Eli is a myna bird lately, you have to be very careful what you say around him. He tries to repeat verbatim about a third to a half of the sentences that I say. But, I think the most interesting things are when he has obviously synthesized some information and then uses it in a new context. Lately, one of his favorite things to say is, "Iss Ewi's Job." He says it almost solemnly. He'll say it when we're playing in the closet and he's closing the doors, or when he's dumping Duplo's into his dump truck or when he's finding color matches in his Maisy game. The funny thing is Scott and I have no idea where he picked it up.




Yesterday afternoon, Eli talked about wanting to go to the potty or read his potty books, I can't remember how it started. He started going into the bathroom and didn't want us to come with him. We weren't sure about leaving him in the bathroom by himself, and his potty seat was all put away, as he hasn't shown much interest lately. I waited a few minutes outside the door, then asked him if he needed help, he did. When I opened the door, he had almost set it up all by himself. He had moved his heavy wooden hand washing stool away from the bathroom cupboard, got out his potty seat, put it on the toilet (a little crookedly) and set up his potty stool, and had even pulled out the bottom step. All I had to do was straighten out the potty seat and help him up and he was ready to go. I started reading his potty books to him and he started pooping! I couldn't believe it, I don't think we're ready to potty train yet, he still doesn't seem to be able to identify very often before he has to go. But, it's a step in the right direction.



Tonight we went to Dendi and BaPa's house for dinner. We had a nice time and got to see Dendi, BaPa, NiNi and Ms. Andrea whom we haven't seen since getting back from Disney World. Eli enjoyed driving his car, eating the grape tomatoes that he'd picked off Dendi's vine, doing puzzles with Dendi, trying on Dendi's crocs, stepping on Andrea's feet and going upside down with Daddy.









On the way home, we passed the playground in Dendi's subdivision, and Eli wanted to stop and play. I'm glad we did -- Eli saw his first rainbow. He also played on the playground, emptied the wood chips out of his shoes (he learned how to put his shoes on in Disney World), played in the gazebo and ran through the grass with me, Daddy and Dendi. It was a nice end to a pleasant evening and I think it did the trick -- he fell asleep pretty early tonight.








P.S. Happy Birthday Aunt Seana! We went out to breakfast with Seana and mom this morning, but I forgot my camera. Oh well, more birthday festivity pictures to come as we'll go out to dinner this weekend to celebrate her birthday with the family.