The Howe Family

Eli Stats:

• Physical Attributes: No teeth- One tooth bump, 23 lbs., Stands alone and walks 4-9 steps.
• Hobbies: smiling, taking magnets off the fridge, banging sweet beats on the bongos, riding in the wagon with Phin, playing ‘modern expressionism’ pieces on the piano, turning light switches on and off, calling people on my cell phone who start with the letter ‘a,’ and unrolling the toilet paper.
• Favorite foods: tomatoes, black beans, carrots, graham crackers, magnets, mama’s bread, butterfly noodles (bowtie).
• Words: Mama, something that sounds like “actually”
• Other: Softest cheeks in the world.

Phin and Eli are developing interesting “Brother Games.” Some of them include yelping back and forth at each other in the car. They do it until they bust out laughing. Then they giggle back and forth. They also like to dismantle the contents of the refrigerator together. Phin likes to boss Eli around and say, “Eli, play the drum” or “Eli, play the little piano.” Then he will proceed to “direct” a concert with a baton. Typically his baton will be a drum stick or any other thing that resembles a director’s baton. Sometimes Phin orders me to play an instrument, too. He will say “we will have a drum concert…” and then organize the rest us. When he thinks his orchestra/band is ready, he will count to 3 (or 5 or 7) and direct us. It is the cutest. I guess we have dragged him to too many concerts.

The most recent game included a garden hose and a plastic knife. Eli loves to crawl at top speeds to find the garden hose when it is turned on. (It usually ends in him completely soaking himself and when I remove the hose from his tight pudgy fingers he screams bloody murder.)

This time I was too tired to intervene, so I let Eli play with the hose to his heart’s content. Phin joined in and they had a great time soaking each other. Phin went inside to get a plastic knife so he could “cut the water.” We came up with a few different hose games and we all were soaked in our clothes…shoes and all. Oh, brothers.

We never know when to say that our children are “walking.” Is it the first wobbly unaided step? Or is it independently walking to the changing table? We’ll never know.

So I am here to announce that Eli is officially taking “four steps.”