a recap of 2 months...

oh my how time flies. the holidays blew in and out of our household this year with a furry and i think we're still getting caught up. here's a recap of what has been going on in the anderson house lately:

- joel and i had our first night away from eli and it went wonderfully. thanks to sara and mike, we were able to have 24 kid free hours. we forgot what it was like to not have to cart a kid around and we could just...go. it was great but we (read: i) were ready to come back and snuggle up with our little guy.

- eli is officially walking! finally, at 15 months he decided that he could do this thing called walking. since then he hasn't stopped for a moment. for a long time he was walking but always had to hold onto something, a wall, a table, our weighted walker. but one day he just decided to let go and let loose.

- our previous "safe" zones are no longer safe now that he's walking. so our level of mess has moved up some so it's almost at eye level. makes you pick up a little bit more often!

- eli's new favorite past time is books, books, books. i don't think you guys understand. he will sit still for at least 10 minutes for us to read books to him. and this happens about 4 times a day! needless to say my vocal cords are getting a work out. he also has started wanting to read specific books and isn't too happy when you suggest something else (because you've read Curious George 4 times already today).

- joel has finally been assigned his own crew at e80 plus, thank god! it means way less travel for us and more consistency for joel at work. both really good things.

- i (shannon) have started my own business. this month i'm launching a home based breastfeeding counseling business. the basic idea is that i will travel to women's homes and help them with any breastfeeding issues they may have and support them. you can check out my website for more details at www.madisonbfsupport.com. most of my work will most likely come from personal referrals so pass the word folks. much appreciated!

- i (shannon) had my first long weekend away from both eli joel. my friends from college and i all met in NYC for a long weekend of wine, amazing food, shopping, amazing desserts, shopping, sangria and connecting. we've decided that every year we're gonna take a trip the 4 of us to connect and recharge with each other. and we've decided that the year we turn 30 we're going somewhere warm!

- there are a variety of places that we are now known at: crema cafe, woodmans, the children's museum, goodman community center, nursery at church and hobby lobby. i guess it pays off to frequent places so often they know you and say "how's it going this week?". i really enjoy that consistency and feeling that we're part of this community on the eastside.

- playgroup is expanding and we've needed to move to the basement for more room! it's so great to see the kids finally playing with and off of each other.

- lastly, eli LOVES to sweep (or play with the broom, however you'd like to see it). and joel and i had a breakthrough....the shortened swiffer! joel noticed that you can take sections out of the swiffer and now we have a perfect "eli height" swiffer. and he is swiffering all around the upstairs! i've attached a cloth diaper to it and my floors (at least the back hallway) are looking pretty nice. i figure we need to cash in on this enjoyment of cleaning while we can!

we'll have more on snowpacolypse 2011 (or snowmeggedon as i call it) later. it deserves it's own post with some supporting videos.

date night

no, we haven't fallen off the face of the earth. i promise. we've just been busy trying to keep up with all of eli's movements (he's trying to turn doorknobs but isn't quite tall enough).

so earlier this fall joel and i decided that we needed to be more intentional with going on dates. so we've made the commitment to having a date night every other wednesday night. we've got a standard high schooler we use for childcare (though we may be looking to set up an exchange with a certain new aunt and uncle in our family).

so far, we've had some pretty fun dates. mostly it's low-key, no pressure dates. just a simple dinner and, now that we're parents, errands sans child sometimes. some fun date nights have included:

-a trip to stoughton's movie theater where you can get pizza and watch a movie in comfy seats. totally awesome experience, we recommend it!

-checking out smokey jon's bbq on the northside and finding out there isn't much to do on the northside at night.

-dinner at brocach's irish pub and strolling down state street with a cup 'o' joe and dessert.

-a date night in complete with dinner on our nice dishes, a fire and smores with reeses.

we've found that carving out this time for just us has been so good. it's great to reconnect and enjoy each other outside of the house. this week will be a very special date night as it falls on our three year anniversary and we can't wait to celebrate!

First steps...

this weekend we were playing at the library and eli took his first assisted steps. i'm not sure if he really knew what was going on but he's getting better and better at it each day. last week he started pulling himself up on furniture and has quickly mastered that task. i captured some of his antics on video, so enjoy!

time flies....

opps.... it's been a month and no posts. i think september got away on us a little bit! mostly because we were gearing up for eli's first birthday! it's crazy to think that a year has gone by so quickly. joel remarked that we now have something to mark time against again. back in college it was semesters now it's first smiles, first crawling, first steps (last week!), first words and so much more. we decided to have our wedding photographer take some pictures for us and i feel that was a great way to mark eli's first year. i'm hoping we'll do this with all of our kids at their first birthdays. i'll be writing a post later about eli's party and dedication so for now, enjoy our modeling poses.

labor day

in addition to picking apples and making applesauce (post on that to come soon) we enjoyed having monday off this week. the morning was spent on working on some projects while eli napped and in the afternoon we decided to bike over to the madison children's museum. as a child, i have very fond memories of playing at the minneapolis children's museum. i remember my favorites being a mock grocery store where you could play clerk and a mock tv studio. the madison children's museum just reopened a few weeks ago and it is quite spectacular. one great thing is that they have an area that is only for kids 5 and under. there are tons of wooden and fabric toys to play with, walking aids, percussion instruments and, the total hit, a water room. seriously, that room was the busiest room in the place! they do have smocks that the kids can wear but we're not sure what the point is, they get soaked anyways. we decided that next time around we'll just let eli get wet and bring a change of clothes. we actually brought our camera along for once hence the pictures. all in all we had a great day.

apple picking

we were some lucky folks this weekend. we had the pleasure of going apple picking at door creek orchard with mary, jon and their little one.









here's to many more years to come!

finally crawling!

so eli is finally army crawling. we have such a chill baby, definitely an observer. he just likes to check things out but doesn't necessarily need to move around the room. we have discovered that he does tend to be more motivated to crawl towards objects he finds interesting. then he takes off! he's mostly interested in blocks, the dishwasher and cheerios that i don't quite get with the broom.

here's a little demo of his crawling skills.