Boardwalk Fun

After Eli and Grammy both got their new hairdos, we met my Dad at McAlister's for lunch (Audra, I finally got their signature sweet tea I've been wanting!). Eli has gotten so much better about eating out with us at restaurants. Josh and I haven't tried it alone, yet, but after this trip to S'port, I think we may be able to handle it. Eli sits so great in the highchair now and as long as you keep him supplied with puffs, he is one happy camper. Eli has also started to figure out that restaurants equal new exciting foods for him to try. We ordered our food and when it was brought to us, we all had a dill pickle spear on our plate. I LOVE pickles. Seriously, they're an addiction. When I was a freshman in college, my grandfather bought me a huge jar of pickles for Christmas. You would have thought I won the lottery the way I reacted over those pickles! Anyway, just like any good pregnant woman, I consumed my fair share of pickles, olives, banana peppers, and all other kinds of sodium loaded foods. I decided to give Eli a pickle so I could see what his reaction would be. I figured he would pucker up his lips, squint his eyes, and make a face, but this is what happened instead...


Okay, so you can't see the joy that was all over his face in this picture, but trust me, he LOVED them! In fact, right after this picture, he used his little chompers to bite off a piece of pickle, giving me quite a scare and prompting me to dig it out of his little mouth. He did that twice and after the second bite, I decided that pickles would have to wait for now. I'm too scared he's going to choke. Guess those pickles I ate when I was pregnant did have an effect on him. Too bad Poppy (my grandfather) isn't here to see this. He would have been tickled to know that his great grandson loved pickles just as much as granddaughter. :) Eli might have even gotten a big jar of pickles for his first birthday, too!

After McAlister's, we all drove to the Boardwalk for some shopping. The weather was so nice and I also wanted Eli to get to experience riding the carousel they had there. After all the excitement of the morning, Eli was sound asleep within minutes of leaving McAlister's and stayed asleep when we got to the Boardwalk and even when we transferred him to his stroller. I was convinved someone had switched my baby, because my child has NEVER done that. The moment you go to move him, he usually wakes up, but not this day!

This was Eli after we got to the Boardwalk. Still sound asleep! Woo Hoo!

We went to Children's Place and I picked up a couple of onesies (you can never have enough of those!) before Eli woke up with big smiles all over his face. His 30 minute power nap worked! Since he was in such a good mood, I decided to capitalize on that and let him ride the carousel.

Eli's first carousel experience was in Baton Rouge a few weeks ago, and he had fun, but after the third trip around he was pretty much done with just sitting on a tiger that didn't move. We switched up the game plan this time and I found an animal that did move. What says "We live in Louisiana and we're proud of it!" more than a crawfish? Eli didn't mind at all; in fact, he was so excited and surprised when he discovered that the crawfish moved up and down. This carousel ride went so much better :) I didn't want Grammy and Pop to miss out on all the fun, so Eli got to ride the carousel two more times with each of them. Can you say spoiled rotten? No, not really. He LOVED it and I'm so glad Mom and Dad got to experience it with him :) I bet the carousel operator was disappointed when we left. She probably looked at us and saw "SUCKERS" written all over our foreheads.

1st time around with Mommy on a crawfish

He did this with each of us. He wanted to see what made the figurines
go up and down. Maybe we have a little engineer on our hands :)

2nd time around with Grammy on a zebra

3rd time around with Pop on a horse

Pop rode on the horse and let Eli sit with him.
Eli took advantage of that and proceeded to do tricks.
"Look, Mommy! No hands!"

"I can ride backwards, too!"

We shopped a little more and then headed to Cold Stone Creamery for a yummy treat. Poor Eli, all he got was a bottle of formula that he didn't want at all, so he settled for some ice water out of a straw from Grammy. He really wanted all of our smoothies, but mine had strawberries in it and our pediatrician told us to stay away from those for awhile (just in case of allergies); Mom's was a coffee flavored smoothie and you all know that my child does not need any extra energy; and Dad's was some sort of cheesecake concoction that was loaded with lots of sugar. So, in the end, he had to settle for his water. He didn't seem to mind and his favorite part was when he got to keep a straw and chew on it. I bent down to get some of his stuff together so we could leave and this is what I found. How funny! I had Mom take a picture real quick so I could blog about it (everything in my world is blog worthy, I've come to realize).

Getting some sugar from Grammy

Eli was tired and ready to go, but I wanted to do the traditional fountain picture that everyone does when they're at the Boardwalk. Unfortunately for me, all Eli wanted to do was to climb in the fountain, so those pictures didn't turn out quite so well. I'm smiling though :) I settled for a couple of pictures under this tree and these two turned out cute. If you look closely at the last picture, you'll see a family to our left. They were doing fountain pictures, too, when one of their kids actually fell in the fountain completely! Notice they are all staring at something? That would be their daughter's shoe that was about to go off the waterfall in the fountain. When we left, they were debating who was going to go in the fountain to retrieve the shoe. Why, oh, why, do I have images of me having to retrieve my SON from this same fountain one day? :)

I had a death grip on him because he was fighting so hard to "get" the water!

"Umm, can I go in now?"

"Mommy, why are you smiling?"