We took Eli to the doctor today. He has grown a little, but he is still a little nugget. Every day he captures more of our heart. We love him so much and are so proud to be parents of such an incredible son.
Here are the deets on him:
Weight: 12.3 lbs (up from 9.13lbs at 2 months)
Length: 23.5 inches (up from 21 inches at 2 months)
I know, you’re thinking heavy duty huh. Well, not really but he is still such a bundle of love.
I put together a video of Eli playing around the house. It’s not too exciting, but it gives a glimpse of our day-to-day life.
I just uploaded these to my computer and had to share them. Sweet baby boy…
Below is a video of Eli’s content, sweet personality after he finished eating. He’s SO cute!
It’s been so long since I’ve posted. Life has been so much fun. It seems like we’ve been on the road non-stop for a month straight. Eli’s trek began in Birmingham, AL at Church of the Highlands for an awesome ARC church planting conference. Then, we went to Monroe, LA, for my cousin’s wedding. Eli met the whole fam on my mom’s side. We had a precious moment when my aunt introduced him as her mother’s first great-grandchild. What an awesome privilege! After that, we said goodbye to daddy and left with my parents to stay with them for a week in The Woodlands, TX (Houston area). He swam in their pool for the first time and went to Sports Academy with his Papi for the first time (my dad loves that store and was so excited that Eli got to go with him). We flew home from there by ourselves, which was an adventure in itself. Eli had the worst poopy diaper of his young life at the end of the flight, right when the “seatbelt sign” was turned on, and it leaked all over the place. He screamed as loud as he could for the last 15 minutes of the flight, because he was so uncomfortable. I fought off breaking down myself and just prayed that the flight would be over. When I was about to exit, I heard a lady say, “Get that screaming baby off this plane.” Her head was right by my hand and I wanted to….well…I’ll let you imagine what I could’ve done to her!! After our connection in Atlanta, he slept the entire second flight. I guess he wore himself out from all of his crying! We returned home for two nights, then packed up and left for Collision, our church’s youth camp. It was an awesome experience. I really enjoyed spending time with some of the young girls and they loved seeing Eli. So many teenagers made commitments to surrender their lives to Jesus. It was a powerful week. We spent a week at home and then left for Oxford, as Mundo mentions below, for a wedding he performed for a couple in our church. Now, we have about a week left at home and we’ll be on the road again for a fun family vacation. We will finally get to meet our new neice, Sofia, in La Place, LA and then we’ll head to Destin to spend a week on the beach with my parents and my brother.
Mundo and I have so enjoyed being able to travel with Eli. He has been such a trooper on all of our trips. I can’t say that it has always been easy for me to decide to travel with him. However, I always think in the back of my mind that our children will only benefit from being exposed to new places and new faces.
As Mundo also mentioned, Eli is making so many cute noises now and he smiles like crazy. He really loves the rice cereal and we tried applesauce yesterday as well. He thinks it’s a game. It seems that he is trying to pull a fast one on me- as soon as he has a full mouth, he spits at me as hard as he can, right in my face and gives me the biggest smile. I was laughing so hard yesterday I could hardly feed him! Babies are such a joy.
I’ve put together a little slideshow of pics we’ve taken recently. Blessings to you all! (Sorry this post was so long-it’s been a while!)
This past weekend the family took another road trip. This time we went to Oxford, Mississippi. I had the privilege of marrying a young couple from our church. Tony, the groom, played football for Ole Miss so the wedding was on the campus of Ole Miss. Then the reception was at the Ole Miss Football Stadium.. …pretty cool. Then on Sunday morning I preached in all 4 of our services at church. I had to start the day off at my favorite place……Starbucks. I got there so early, they hadn’t even opened up, but having to preach all those services I could wait! It is a fast paced, exciting, awesome and jam packed day. We saw over 50 people make a Fresh Start with God. Pretty amazing. Oh, did I forget to say that it was my first Father’s Day. Pretty cool feeling to be a dad. Amanda and I fed Eli some rice cereal for the first time. It is the only thing he has had other than milk since he was born. Man oh man, a long, but great day.
Eli is growing and making so many cute noises. It is amazing to see him develop right before our eyes. We are overjoyed every time he wakes up and just smiles at us. Smiles are coming all the time now. Our parents have asked us why he never smiles in pictures. Well for one he is just getting the gist of it and two now that he is smiling all the time, when he sees the camera he gets serious because our camera puts this orange light out to reduce redeye. But we captured a couple of smiles in the last days.
We have met too many couples who swear they will never have kids. Man oh man, are they missing out. This is a part of marriage that is an incredible blessing. Even if we were not able to have kids, we would adopt, which by the way is something we talk about all the time. Ok, enough rambling, here are some pictures of Eli. We will put up some more in days to come and some video footage of him making some noises. It is as if he were trying to communicate in his own way. Precious.
This summer our church is joining with literally hundreds of churches around the world to be a part of a special sermon series called “One Prayer.” It’s a cutting edge idea that features video messages answering this question, “If God would answer One Prayer for the Church at large, what would you pray?” Pastors have each chosen a topic they’re passionate about and created a video message for churches around the world to use. It is going to be an incredible time as we join together with thousands of other believers around the world for this awesome series! Check it out on our website: lifechurch.com.
This is a video from a pastor who puts on a youth camp in Detroit. The great heroes of the faith did their part, their ran the race in their day and now it is up to us and the generations to come to do our part. Our church is committed to raising up the next great leaders of the world. For that I believe their needs to be one thing that happens: We must DIE! Yup, we must die to our own agendas, our ways, our thoughts and allow what God is speaking in the earth now to guide us. But we must have ears to hear. It is a matter of us believing all the promises in the Bible and running wild for Him.
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. -Galatians 2:20
