We may indeed be witnessing the most beautiful person in the history of time...

We recently had some professional pictures of Elle taken. We love them so much. Enjoy!

Props to Tasha from Homeshade Photography in Houston-

she's A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

Birthday Bash

Eleanor's first birthday is in a couple of weeks (Dec 2), and my (jeremy) 30th birthday was last week. So Nikki decided that we couldn't just have a birthday party for Elle; we had to have a joint party for the both of us. I felt a little awkward hogging in on my only daughter's birthday party, but we had a great time.

We had decided several weeks ago that we were going to grill some burgers outside, since it's only cold in Texas for about 3 weeks in January. Unfortunately, it was frickin' freezing. You'll see in the pictures that people are wrapped in coats and scarves as they drink beer and coke outside. Don't see that too often.

Most of the people who came are friends from Waco; some from church, some from my department, some from Nikki's work, etc. We are especially grateful to those people who came in from out of town - Nikki's parents and grandmother, my brother Brian and his fiance Stacey, Brad and Meredith, Matt and Krissy, and Kristin and Russ. Love you all. Unfortunately, my mom got SERIOUSLY ill the day of the party, and my older brother had dental surgery, so they couldn't come. We missed them a lot.

Here are some pics of the action...

The birthday girl.

Nikki loves this picture.

Elle's best friend Campbell Rose King

Much food and such.

Jerks.

Sarah and Myles

Eating a birthday cupcake.

Love Brad and Mere.

Okay, so this one requires a bit of explanation. As party favors, Nikki found fake grills. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of grills, it's basically a set of fake teeth with gold and silver and gems on it. Very gangster. Or gangsta, as the case may be. Here's a pic of almost everyone sporting their grills, with the best hard-ass gangsta face they can muster. As you can see, some are better than others. I'm looking at you, Sam.

And here's a video of Eleanor eating her birthday cupcake.

Our Backyard.

Some of you know that Nikki finished her MA in counseling last August. As a graduation present, Nikki asked her parents if they would fund and assist in some backyard landscaping projects (insead of the cruise they offered-- ha!). They agreed, and we spent several days doing the whole project. We can't thank them enough for this, and Nikki completely loves it.

So here are a couple pics of the backyard before we started (these pics are from when we first bought the house)

After digging out some of the grass and removing the former stone pathway, Nikki is laying down some new stones. We were able to reuse a number of the stones from the previous walkway.

We rented a gas-powered tiller to get up this large section of the grass.


It took over a day just to lay down all the stone tiles. This was very tedious work, and Nikki and her dad did all of it. For each tile, they had to level it and measure its distance from the other tiles, then level it again, then put some sand under it, then level it again the other way. You get the idea.

Here is the finished product

We also tore out the screened in porch and opened it up.

Thanks Mom and Dad for all of your help and hard work- we absolutely couldn't have done it without you and we LOVE it! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

It's been awhile...

So I know that it's been several weeks since our last blog post, and yes, we are still alive. yes, we still live in Waco. yes, we still have the most beautiful and amazing little baby in world history. So I guess a lot has gone on, but we will not be discussing much Rhodes news on this post. I do not have the energy. I will, however, post a few videos and pictures.

This first video is of Eleanor walking. She has been walking for 5 or 6 weeks now, and this video was taken 2 or 3 weeks ago. She can walk a bit faster now, but you get the gist.



This next video displays a few of her latest tricks, which include touching her nose on request, whistling, fake hilarious whistling, saying "Pop", and just generally being astonishing.



And for our final video of this post, we have Eleanor laughing. It is wonderful.



And here are a few pictures that we've taken in the last few weeks.

Nikki hosted a Mary Kay party, and decided to put makeup on Eleanor.

This was her new favorite expression for a few weeks.

Again, this time on her swing.

And playing peek-a-boo behind the treadmill.

We did some landscaping in our backyard (with Nikki's parents' endless help)

Surprise!

Elle has a hysterical new expression that she mimics when we act excited and raise our eyebrows at her. See for yourselves.

Eleanor laughing is like a song.

So this video was taken a couple of weeks ago, and I'm just now getting around to putting it up. For a few weeks now, Elle has decided that spitting out her food is more fun than eating it. Sometimes we'll put the food in her mouth, and as soon as we move the spoon away, she starts spitting it out. We say "no" and this works sometimes, but not always.

This video was taken at Nikki's parents' house in Jacksonville (they're doing some re-modeling on the inside, so that's why the background looks like a disaster zone). As Nikki's dad was feeding Eleanor, she was of course spitting out the food. But for some reason, when he said "no" to her, she thought that was absolutely hilarious. This was the most she had ever laughed.

Let it be known: he promised to call me "Master Nikki"

... he also told me that once he got his PhD and everyone starts calling him Dr. Rhodes (hypothetically), that mine would still be better because the rule is that you always go by your final degree, and mine would of course be Master, and everyone knows a master is better than a doctor--- please.

he won lots of points that day.

In all seriousness, he has won a LOT of points every day for the past two years as I have been commuting to school, working, pregnant, and mommy-ing. I haven't been what you would call "around" much, but Jeremy and Elle have both been the most supportive, patient, and encouraging little family I could ever ask for. I owe my ability to finish to them and the good Lord for holding us all together.

People Eleanor Loves

Nikki and I were talking the other day about Eleanor and love. Of course, everyone has heard a million times about how much you love your children, beyond your wildest expectations, blah blah blah. What has been surprising in these first 7 months or so, however, is how it affects us when other people love Eleanor. When someone loves Eleanor, I seem to connect with them in a new way. I'm grateful to them for loving that which I love the most.


This is one of the main reasons why we love hanging out with our parents so much. Milestones and new skills happen all the time with Eleanor. Some of them are pretty important (crawling), some of them are less than earth-shattering (hair seems to be 1/8" longer than 6 months ago). But regardless of how unimportant some of these things seem to most people, even to close friends with children of their own, these things are never unimportant to our parents. With who else can we talk for 30 minutes about the syllables she can pronounce, or the fact that she likes this toy but not that one, or the noises she makes when we drive in the car? Only four people in the world care as much about that stupid stuff as Nikki and I do: our parents. We love them so much, and they all make Eleanor smile more than anyone, often more than we do. I'm not making that up.



So here are a few pictures of Eleanor with the four people she loves the most.

Pop

Honey

Grammy

Grandpa

Visit from the Kings

So Kristin and Russ brought Cambell to see us this weekend, and we had a great and relaxing weekend. Here's some pics.

Beautiful little girl.

Eleanor had a consistent urge to gouge at Campbell's eyes. We told her, "eye gouging is only for 6 month old babies."

Eleanor planning her next eye gouge

If Elle can't gouge Cambell's eyes, she will settle for an uncomfortable stare

They already have the same taste in clothes. Amazing.