A new look

We both needed a haircut.
Seriously.
So I took Elliott with me to see my neighbor's friend, who has a mini salon in her apartment. Elliott watched me get my hair cut while his little buddy proudly explained, "Sometimes I sit in dat chair and look in the mirror and get my hair cut, too!"

So after my turn was done, Elliott sat in my lap with his arms around my neck, and the stylist snipped a bit. When I was going through my purse later, Elliott saw the foil with his locks in it and said, "My hair!" A few days later, John showed me the curls he cut, telling me, "I wanted to be the one to cut his hair first." I gave John the foil to put them with the others and I hope he put that in a safe place -- just now realized I don't know where that was. Maybe on top of the fridge like he'd done the first time. Ahem.

But that front hair on Elliott is also starting to come in, so I think he looks a lot different than he did just a week ago. Not sure if we'll cut some behind his ears or what, but here he is, just a few days shy of two and a half. He weighs about 28 lbs and seems to be 34.5 inches tall.

Oh, and he's standing in front of a little calendar I made him (that is probably incredibly non-Waldorf but is very Jessica. So far he's just having fun playing with the laminated cards with people's photos and pictures of stuff we do and then sticking it on whatever day he wants. Thursday has no meals or activities, just several kinds of weather.

And yes, he's wearing underwear. We have had a good run again for the past month with #2 on the potty, and now that he's asking to go when he only has to pee, we're trying that, too. But I think the awareness will come more slowly. I had three pair of white underwear/training pants, and we went through them in about 90 minutes. So I went out to buy more and, before I got to the Babies R Us to get more plain another drive away, while I was in the shopping center with Carter's I bought some with dinosaurs, dogs and monkeys. When we did get to BRU, Elliott was intrigued by with a piece of cardboard in our cart from someone else's Thomas train toy and wanted to put it in the bag, so we did. And I let him sit in the yellow Bob the Builder car without putting any money in it. That's my commercial branding for this weekend. Here it is already Monday, so I'm done for now.

Remind me to write about how he correctly used the word "instead" the other day.

Last days of long locks

"Want to see Grandma B at Uncle Larry's," Elliott said the day after we had dinner with Larry, Donna, Rebecca and Sophia (can never remember if that's f or ph) up in Frederick at the end of Barb's visit with us. Although there was a nice breeze along the creek, it was a hot and humid weekend, as the curls illustrate. Sophia seems so grown up with her purse and headbands. I wonder if that contributed to Elliott packing a bag later in the week, saying he was going to go to the airport. "I've got my CDs, my keys, my water bottle." Later I forgot what he'd enumerated and asked about the sippy cup, which he promptly found.

Elliott played with Barb a lot over the weekend as we worked on sorting through things in the basement. He got to go to the farmer's market and to pick up some coffee. At home, Elliott enjoyed shelling lima beans and making waffles. We keep the non-organic cinnamon around just for such a purpose. Sometimes he offers more "help" than others. This was more of a mimicking activity than a helping one.

In Frederick, he enjoyed looking at the menu, ate a ton of my food and then had his first trip to a Ben & Jerry's where he chose berry sorbet over Jamaican Me Crazy when given tastes of both. "I like it, Mom," he said looking at me with a pleased, surprised smile. On the way back to the condo, we all enjoyed a great sunset.

Goodbye, Summer

Just a few quick photos of rainbows and races, and cousins.