stand your ground, steady now...

Tonight we brought Eli to Target with us in order to hone our parenting skills in the area of saying no. To make it especially challenging, Eli forced me to go into the toy department where he pointed out all of the benefits that each toy possessed. I held my ground and told him that we were only looking. I was doing well until Sherri came up and Eli switched tactics. He asked Sherri if he could get it and Sherri passed it back to me.
I caved...too much pressure!!! Off-sides !!! Foul!!!! Then Eli clinched the sale by giving me a big hug and announcing, " Dad, you're the best!"
I managed my own little coup...I managed to get Sherri to let me get egg nog! She's the best wife!

L is for the way you look at me,O is for the only one I see,V is very, very extraordinary,E is even more than anyone that you adore...

It seems as though Eli's heart has become twitterpated. Today on the ride to school, Eli started a conversation about love. Apparently there is a little girl named Abigail that he likes - you know the type - blond hair, blue eyes, wears the same things that you do ( they wear uniforms, but love is blind). He asked me if he could dye his hair golden, the way it used to be... this morning before he 

left for school. 
He asked Sherri if he could tell her that she is beautiful...Sherri said he could tell her that she is pretty. Eli asked if he should tell her that he loves her...Sherri said that he could tell her that he liked being her friend. Eli thought about the course of the conversation and then said...I know how I can get her to like me. First I need to create a team of Super Villains and then I could rescue her from them. He added that they weren't going to date until they got older. For this stage, he told Sherri that he would have to build a robot that could tell him where she lives.
Evidently ( according to Eli), Abigail has announced in the school newspaper that she is in love with someone that has really cool hair ( Eli smile, points to self and raises his hand), very smart ( Eli smiles, points to self and raises his hand), can do back flips ( Eli smiles, points to self and raises his hand). ( Eli, for the record can NOT do back flips), a hundred front flips ( Eli smiles, points to self and raises his hand) ( again, Eli can NOT do front flips, either)...
I can tell that I'm going to have to intervene. I've told him that I would hear from God FIRST about his wife/ girlfriend and then I would let him know...I've gotten nothing. The airwaves are silent about this Abigail chick.

The key is...

Tonight, when it was time for Sherri to go to class, Eli couldn't remember what he had done with the car keys. You may be asking yourself, " What were they thinking, letting Eli have the car keys!". Well, you see Eli needed to get his books out of the car ( which was a good and noble quest) but then he became distracted and wandered over to our neighbor Michelle's house. By the time Michelle walked

 Eli home and he had played with Piper and had done many adventurous things, it was time for Sherri to leave for school. She asked Eli where the keys were and that question was met with a dumbfounded blank stare and a solid response of " I don't know" ( this is a direct quote). Sherri demanded that Eli remember where he put the keys which is like asking the age old question of Whose on first? Sherri, Ariana, and I started looking for our ONLY, LAST, COMPLETE, set of keys. We looked like we were looking for a missing person - organized and spaced apart, responsible for our area and ready to yell with any leads.i came inside to see if Eli had had any luck sparking his memory, only to find him jumping on my bed.

I said Eli, I thought you were helping us look?
I am.
How?
I'm trying to remember. This helps me remember...
Sherri out of frustration announced that she was going to have to miss her class and Eli came up with a brilliant idea. You could wear some fast air shoes and fly to class. Sherri was not amused and told him that he wasn't helping. Now trying to track a 7 year old boy is like trying to follow the wind ( and they even have machines to do the latter) and I imagined in my mind one of those maps in cartoons with black dots going in circles and random places, when I was snapped back to reality by a loud..." I remember where they are". Now Eli being Eli, couldn't just walk directly to the keys. It was as though he had gotten into my head or I in his and he randomly walked through our den ( as though on a map with black dots in a cartoon) and ended up at a basket on the bookcase. He reached in and retrieved the keys - much like a magician reaching in and pulling a rabbit out of a hat. There was no time for questioning and there were no answers given as to How? Why? Or When?
By the way, Sherri did make it to class and through the search and rescue, I found another key to the car...not bad!

You say potato, I say...

Eli still has a way with words although the school system is determined to replace his words and phrases with proper terminology and words that adults deem correct. I think his terms are a lot more descriptive and actually make more sense. For example: an umbrella has become known as an underbrella around our house. Tonight he asked if the school lunch featuring baked chicken would also have one of his favorites...mash-ma-tatoes ( sometimes also said: mash-a-my-tatoes). I hope we never have boring old mashed potatoes at our house, but just like cradle crap ( as our daughter Ariana used to call it when she was little) has to go, so do some of the most innocent of sayings.

Back to nature...

There is nothing quite like coming home to the peaceful sounds of a waterfall to take your mind off of the cares of the day.........wait a second......I don't have waterfalls in my house, nor do I live by any waterfalls, babbling brooks, or playful streams. I don't hear well, so I do have to check out and verify what I THINK that I hear, only this time I could SEE what I thought I was hearing.

El

i decided to take a bath when he got home from school (odd for a seven year old boy, I know). He started running the water, but became distracted when a friend from next door knocked on the door and asked him to play. Well, being more like the typical seven year old, he went to play and forgot the water.

When I opened the bathroom door, the water was cresting over the top of the tub embankment and enjoying its new freedom, began making a mad dash out of the bathroom and into my bedroom. I did catch it before it made it out of my bedroom and into the dinning room. From there, it would have been like a river making it to the ocean... By flooding the living room, kitchen, and den!
Sherri and I won't be taking a bath for a while since it took every towel in the house to stop the great flood of October (15) 2012. I put the date in parenthesis because tomorrow is another day, history is bound to repeat itself, I live in south Louisiana where a flood can happen with any rainfall, and last but not least - Eli lives here!

Back to the future...

Giving a heads up...Eli has been spending his afternoons doing experiments. There are various containers and water bottles with food coloring in them...some even have dirt in them. His goal is to create a time portal. If he succeeds, I may see you in the past...or the future. I just wanted someone to know, just in case. I'm also going to start carrying around a list of things to invent just in case I get to go back to the past...

salesman of the year...

Eli has been inspired to win a laptop computer from his school by selling the school's fund raiser of cookie dough and other baking things. He must sell 80 items which is very lofty, but he is asking Michelle (our neighbor) to help him by selling them also. To clinch his goal he has also opened a petting zoo in the backyard. He has a lot riding on the appeal of Piper (our dog) as his only attraction. He tried to include Mrs. Beasley (our cat), but she was uncooperative and kept walking away.