In just a few short months, Elliott has already developed strong tendencies to do exactly what we don't want him to do at the worst possible time. This seems highly improbable to me considering that he still only has about six activities in his entire arsenal. But it's uncanny.

"If you're going to anything in the next 15 minutes, just don't vomit all over your church clothes."

"I am going to stop watching you for 60 seconds while I put my shirt on, please do not choose that time period to roll over for the first time in your life."

"You slept through Shelbi moving furniture last night, please do not wake up while I'm in the middle of a work call because I sneezed from three rooms away."

The problem is that every time Elliott does something like that, it is always accompanied by an enormous grin. Even as stream of half-digested milk is still streaming down his chin onto his sweater vest he flashes us an expression as if to say: "Woah, did you guys see that? You've got to admit that was cool."

Most recently, Elliott has become not just intrigued with, but obsessed with, the television. Shelbi and I didn't have a very long list of things we were adamant about doing with our newborn but one of the few things we knew we wanted was to keep him away from TV as much as possible until he was older. The other night we were out to dinner and we placed Elliott's car seat away from the television closest to us. He promptly turned his body to face another TV 50 feet away in the bar. So I moved into his line of vision to block it and he arched his back to look behind him at yet another television. We're fighting a losing battle.

However, I am completely confident that, when Elliott is allowed to watch television, he is going to be a pro. Shelbi and I have very different TV viewing habits. She will find something that interests her in an absolute maximum of two channel changes. "Commercial, sports... Oh! I WOULD like to know how to make lemon chicken skewers in just five minutes." In fact, for the past three days, she has had a habit of telling me things that are in the Smithsonian Museum because she watched a show about it last week on the HIstory Channel.

Me on the other hand? In 20 minutes I will have been to at least 100 channels, many of them more than once. Even if I am watching a specific game or show, I am incapable of just sitting through commercials. And I'm pretty sure Elliott got my genes with this habit. He enjoys his books but ever since he discovered that he is capable of turning pages, the reading process has become abreviated. Now as we read, instead of being amazed at the colors in front of him, he is far more interested to see what's coming next.

"Uh huh. So it's a catepillar? It's eating? What's next? We've got an apple, grapes... flip flip flip. Annnnnd it's a butterfly. Hmm, not a lot of character development. What else have you got? A train? Some toys? These engines are d-bags. Here comes a blue engine. Annnnd he's over the hill. Very inspring. This goes a lot faster when I'm in charge dad. Can I eat this book now?"