A year of growth

I finally finished Eli's first year video. 

Even though I basically have no idea what I am doing when it comes to putting videos together, this is probably my favorite form of documenting babyhood...over pictures, journals, baby books, and scrapbooks.

I keep the video I made for Max the week he turned 1 on my desktop. 

Every few months I will see it there, double click, and take it all in. 

For a few minutes, I am back in that first year and he's my one and only.  

I feel the newness of motherhood, the breathtaking excitement of so many firsts, and I can't believe that head of hair! 

These clips become more precious as we get further from those early days, I can only imagine what it will be like look back at these videos years and years from now.

It was interesting to see a shift in my parenting/documenting between Max and Eli. As I put the video together I realized that it never occurred to me to take dedicated video of Eli clapping or crawling, yet I have hundreds, literally hundreds, of  videos of him laughing.

Julian really saved the day on this project. I combined clips from four different sources and they did not want to cooperate in one video. Thankfully Julian understands fancy stuff like codecs and video format conversions. The ending could use some smoothing over but for now I am considering it done. 

I'm also posting Max's video so I have them in the same place. 

----------

We also went for Eli's 1 year and Max's 2.5 year check-ups this week.
We are grateful that they continue to be healthy boys.
Our guys are usually around 90th percentiles for height and 50-75th for weight, and that is right where Eli still is. Max had a big growth spurt and is now 90th for both height and weight, together they weigh 60 pounds, which explains why I have lower back pain!

Eli happened to be in a very chatty mood, saying Dada, Mama, Bye-Bye, juice, Ah for the tongue depressor, and "dis" + "dat" to the doctor. She said he is a "very verbal" baby which was a different experience for us as Max was always much more advanced on the physical milestones while hitting verbal milestones on time. We always say that Eli is going to be the artist of the family because he seems to be the most "right brained" person in the household (despite my numerous neuroscience classes that taught me brain functioning is not separated in that way ;)).
She also reassured us that Max is right on track for potty training a boy.
Phew.

We are thankful for another year of continued health, growth, and memories with our boys!