How's Eli?

Eli is great! He naps about 3 days a week now, when he's being really grumpy in the morning or I know we're going to have a late night.  Since the boys are turds about actually falling asleep when I put them to bed at the same time, I try to avoid it.  If Eli didn't nap, he goes to bed around 7; if he did nap, he goes to bed around 8:30.  Patrick just goes to bed at 8 either way and they can't pester each other or play hide-and-seek. One night while Patrick was in bed and Eli was staying up he came in from the otehr room and asked "do I look pretty cool?" I turned around, saw this:

 laughed out loud, and grabbed my camera. He's a very funny guy sometimes! When I was still very pregnant with Ethan I was complaining to the kids that my legs were tired so I couldn't carry the kids around.  Eli asked why they were tired and I said, "because my legs aren't used to carrying around a big belly!" Eli immediately asked, "but daddy's legs are?"  HAHA!
He still can't pronounce "Patrick," he says "Batswit."
Eli says things very sternly, and he always furrows his eyebrows when he does, like "Batswit, you can NOT have any more chocolate milk!" We love his stern expression!
He talk and talk and talks and eventually you stop listening because his story is never going to end. A couple minutes later we'll listen back in and "yep! he's still talking!" and then go back to not listening.
While he talks he'll say something that reminds him of something else and he'll say "speaking of ______ ..." even though he's the only one who was speaking of it.
He still wants his milk warm, even in the summer. Right now it makes sense since it's cold outside, but even when it's hot he wants it warm. When he switched to cow's milk at age 1 he wouldn't drink it cold, and 2 years later it still holds true!
Speaking of warm things.... (haha!) he is decidedly against anything HOT. If it's hot you need to put it in the fridge to cool down.  The hot dog you just warmed in the microwave? Back into the fridge.
He and Patrick fight and say "I don't want to be your brother!" so we made a jar called "I love my family." When someone says something mean like that they have to say something they love about the person whose feelings they just hurt.  We write it on a slip of paper and put it in the jar, that way we can go back and read nice things about each other to make ourselves feel good. So far he says "I like playing with Patrick" every single time. Maybe not the most diverse compliments I've ever heard...
...but true! Those boys do everything together, which is exactly what I hoped for in having kids close in age. I just hope that in the end they DO want to be brothers ('cause they're stuck).

And that's Eli!