Eli turned 5

Continuing to move backwards on the birthdays, Eli turned 5 waaaaaaay back in November! We had his first "friends" party, which he chose a Transformer's theme for. I had fun making decorations and sending out cute invitations; we invited 3 friends from school, 2 neighborhood friends, and his cousins (of course!). I don't usually get crazy with decorations, but I hit the dollar store and got lots of streamers and a banner and some poster board to draw a "pin the wheel on Optimus Prime" game. It took far too long to make, but the boys loved it! Unfortunately, none of the school friends came, so it was a decidedly quiet "friends" party and I really felt badly for him; luckily he's not old enough to take it personally, and judging by my nonexistent memories of birthday parties when I was 5, I have no doubt he won't even remember, much less be scarred, by a lack of birthday partiers. He and his guests who came had fun playing the afternoon away anyway! We ate pizza, had cake and ice cream, opened a few gifts, and called it a day! And that was Eli's birthday.

Eli has really been enjoying preschool, and I have really been enjoying the quieter mornings because of it. He is proficient at reading and writing the alphabet and letters up to 30, and his drawing skills have vastly improved since the summer. He was previously far too busy being busy to sit down and make a complete picture, so I'd save anything that was more than a scribble, but now he constantly comes up with great pictures that are large, colorful, pretty recognizable, and that have a funny detail or two (like he drew a nice picture of a dog in the park, but the dog was stuck in a mud puddle). He wrote me a sweet note, one of his first solo writing ventures, that said "I LAV YOO." So I laminated it and turned it into my new favorite bookmark :)

I'd maybe give more details, but to be honest I am terrible at taking pictures (so I have none to jog my memory), I've been terrible about writing in my journal (took a 3-month hiatus for laziness), and of course I have fallen flat on my face about blogging. But there you have it, of what my poor memory can recall! Happy birthday, dude, you are my sweet Ka-Dooly.