I’ve been promising a post on our new neighborhood and here it is, finally.  This is in front of our townhome.  We are the door on the right and the gate is to our little porch/patio area.  The door on our left is our awesome new neighbors. More about them later in the post.

It is a huge complex of townhomes like ours. This is a view looking down the sidewalk in front of our home.

This is a view around the corner where the dogs get to “go”.

This is our view of Lake street, a main district in Oak Park.  I’m standing directly in front of our complex looking down Lake street.  There is a movie theatre, every kind of restaurant you can imagine and lots of fun shops.

A few blocks down is the Oak Park public library.  It is fantastic!  Elijah and I have been to a few story times at the library.  He loves them!

This is another district in Oak Park called The Avenue just a few blocks down from our complex.  It is great too!  There is a fantastic children’s toy store called Gepetto’s Toy Box.

Here we are in the park pretending Plato is a horse.

Remember the other green door? Well it turns out we have really cool neighbors.  We have so much in common.  They have a dog and 9 month old.  They use cloth diapers and had a home birth too!  Crazy huh?  We all went to the park one day to play.  Here is their adorable son Jackson playing with Elijah.  Apparently he is quite the ham and loves to have his picture taken.

And now for the well overdue 11 month pictures.  I think i’ve been putting them off because I don’t want to this to be my last under one year post.  After this my baby will be one year old – sigh.  Actually in 2 weeks he’ll be one.  I am surprised at how sentimental I am about it.  Why don’t we want our kids to grow older?  I’ve enjoyed all of his milestones so far. I just can’t shake the desire to keep him small so I can rock him in my arms forever.

He has done so many exciting things this month.  He learned to wave.  He claps and rolls his hands to the “clapping” song.  He throws his arms up in the air when you ask how big the baby is “SO BIG”.  He plays peek-a-boo by pulling a blanket over his own head.  He is cruising around the furniture and has learned how to take off his own diaper. Enjoy the pictures!

We recently purchased a video monitor for Elijah’s room and get a kick out of watching him sleep.  It is more interesting than you would think to watch what your baby does in the crib.

Nap time usually starts out like this.  Standing sitting, standing sitting over and over again.

Eventually he lies down.  With blankie and pacifier in tow. Sometimes he sleeps on his side like this, but usually it is on his stomach some how.  He used to hate to be on his stomach as a teeny baby but now he loves it!

Sometimes he sleeps is funny positions like on his knees.

Or with one knee tucked under and an arm sticking out.

And sometimes he refuses to sleep and tries to sit up as long as possible until he falls asleep sitting up and ends up doubled over like this.