Paper Hearts EVERYWHERE

Elliot's love language is drawings that he cuts out and gives to people. Annie gets pictures of cats taped to her crib, I got a cute picture of Harry Potter taped to my wall, and Aaron got a card with a picture of peanut butter and a laptop. 

I get these delivered to me several times a day. It is common for a paper heart or two to be slipped under the bathroom door to let me know he misses me during our time apart. 

My Harry Potter picture

Aaron told Elliot that he would be done working in a few minutes. Elliot came downstairs and wrote this math equation to convert minutes to seconds. And of course he had to cut it out because that's how he operates. 

Elliot asked dad to explain all the symbols on the calculator to him. Now we find pi symbols around the house, and he'll tell us "this e is euler's number!" 

We have been cutting up fruits and veggies for dinner. I let Elliot arrange them into a "fruit pattern." He made this stick puppet that he likes to wave at me while I'm cooking.

A fruit pattern in the making

Aaron has been teaching Elliot some basic coding using a website called scratch. They have made a couple games together.

Grumpa Donuts! There is a picture of my dad in the 70's that you move back and forth with the arrow keys to catch donuts falling from the sky. Elliot made the sound effects. It's pretty cute. 
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/398930530

a

Elliot took this great picture of Isaac smiling. He now texts it to Mimi several times a week. 

He also gets a huge kick out of photographing his feet (yes, I punned on purpose)
He laughs his head off whenever he looks at this picture. Boy humor. 

The builder boy, and a bit of my toes that he painted for me

Elliot is really good at reading. I taught him the basics and went through Bob books over a year ago, but with cousins here and the baby coming, I haven't spent much time having him read to me. I sat him down a few weeks ago and had him read a book with me, and he read WAY more than I thought he could. It turns out that he has been practicing reading by himself in his room at night. I got him some beginner comic books from the library which have been a huge hit. He loves the Bad Guys series by Aaron Blabey. He is now at the point where he can and will read books without me sitting next to him. He doesn't get all the words, but he is great at guessing based on context. It warms my heart to see him curled up with a book, laughing to himself.

He falls asleep curled around our illustrated Harry Potter book most nights. In the morning he will tell me things like "MOM! The last chapter in the Prisoner of Azkaban is called "Owl Post Again!"

Elliot's 2 weeks of swim lessons were pretty much our only social interaction in the past month. Elliot didn't want to put his head under the water at first, but as soon as he started counting how long he could hold his breath, he got a lot more enthusiastic. His record is 12 seconds. 

Pillow piles are a common site around here. And pillow forts. And pillow beds.

Elliot's cousin Aaron made a mold book. I showed Elliot pictures of it on Facebook, and he immediately decided to make his own one. 

Aaron wrote some of the captions, but Elliot added more on his own. 

Every week at home church, we make goals as a family. We put Elliot in charge of making the goal sheet. This one came with pictures of ideas for goals. My favorite is "no punching."

It is so fun watching Elliot grow up and become more independent. And it is so nice having a kid who can pour his own milk!