Cousin Emmett and Zoo Trip and Unswaddling and More!

Phew. It's been a busy couple of weeks. This is going to be a few blog posts worth of material. And it's all delightful stuff if I don't say so myself!

Everyone is delighted by the Bradley blog posts!

Adorable video of my boys playing together

 

Bradley Meets his Cousin Emmett for the First Time

We had a sort of mini family reunion of sorts based around my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. Not only did Bradley get to meet his big cousin Emmett who is six months older than him, he got to meet his uncle Thomas for the first time too!

He looks a little unsure of Emmett here but it's really that he just can't take his eyes off of him. My sister's husband Ryan is holding Emmett and Uncle Thomas is on the right.

Our social child was so excited to see people that he barely slept over the weekend while we were at my parents' house. He couldn't get enough of Emmett. Emmett is 10 months old and is quite active, so it was a job to let them admire each other without having Emmett grab Bradley's head or ear or eyeball. Auntie Laura did a great job of moderating.

Our two children did have a lovely exchange at one point while Emmett was in his high chair. Emmett has recently discovered his nose and likes to "explore" it with his finger. So he was busy exploring while sitting in his high chair and then he noticed Bradley, who I was holding up so he could see his cool cousin. Emmett removed the finger from his nose, waved it around, then held it out for Bradley. My child promptly chewed on the offered finger. I don't know if I win or lose mommy points for laughing when this happened, I figure boogers aren't the worst thing that Bradley is going to put in his mouth.

We had this exchange a couple times. Emmett's finger would go from his nose, swinging around in the air, then offered to Bradley, then back to nose. But the joke's on Emmett, Bradley had just finished eating yams and you can see some residue on his chin. Emmett definitely got some yam up his nose.

Bradley adores his Grandpa Redfern

And he's rather fond of his Grandma Redfern too.

 
My Grandma and Pa's anniversary was also a highlight, we got a lot of good family photos!

Cousins with their great-grandparents!

This is the last of a series of photos of Bradley with his Uncle Daniel. Uncle Daniel's forehead vein got more and more pronounced the longer he held Bradley. My child is a giant.

Love this picture of me and my sweet Bradley

After leaving on Sunday, I realized that Laura and I had somehow managed not to take any photos of the two of us with our babies. Ridiculous. So I went back up to Camano on Wednesday and we took a bunch of pictures!

Grandma and Grandpa needed a picture with the two cousins as well

We also got some great photos of Uncle Thomas with Bradley. Bradley adores his Uncle Thomas.

And here are some swimming shots! Emmett splashed a lot and Bradley was quite impressed.

Unswaddling the Bradley

Nathan and I have been extremely dependent on swaddling for sleep, happiness, and sanity pretty much since the first week of bringing Bradley home. But he can roll over now, both front to back and back to front, and it has been time to unswaddle for some time now. We were both pretty worried about how this would go. And then I tried it and besides a rather hilarious hour of trying to put to sleep a child excited to have both arms free, it's gone off without a hitch.

Back in the days of the one armed legless swaddle

 Here is the journey, we are loving unswaddled Bradley!

The "tired" child upon discovering that the swaddle I wrapped around him hasn't trapped any arms this time.

 Step 1: Put baby in crib

 Step 2: Okay, that didn't work, let's try the swing

Step 3: Wait it out

Success!

 We may have cheated a bit, I don't think we ever really sleep trained this kid. We just started laying him down to sleep on his side once he could roll both ways and apparently that makes things super easy. One time about a month ago we tried to sleep train him by laying him down on his back and going in every five minutes of crying to comfort him. He cried for an hour and a half and never actually fell asleep. So we said forget that and started doing this. Everyone is much much happier and Bradley seems to be able to put himself back to sleep just fine when he stirs during his naps. I like to credit the parenting whenever possible but I think Bradley gets the credit for being naturally wonderful for this one.

Zoo Trip

We took Bradley to the zoo! The Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle is the cutest little zoo. And we are now members! I'm looking forward to making many a zoo trip in the coming years.

That said, I wouldn't say Bradley was exactly interested in most of the exhibits during our first trip to the zoo. Nathan thinks he may be more of a botanist at the moment since he loves looking at leaves!

By a jaguar! Bradley is not impressed.

 But Nathan and I had a good time and we very much enjoyed playing with Bradley outside and having wonderfully observant strangers tell us how adorable our child is.

 

And the following series of photos shows what happens when you put a boy with grabby fingers near your long hair.

Family portrait!

I LOVE this photo of Nathan holding Bradley up in the air. We were waiting in line for the baby snow leopards, we had plenty of time to take pictures.

And here we are at another exhibit, Nathan is listening to his daddy tell him about all the animals

Entranced by his daddy's words

No longer interested in what Daddy has to say

Our cute boy. Notice the stroller we brought along in order to carry everything BUT the baby

Watching our first nature show

Golden Eagle in background

Most of our time at the zoo was spent doing things like this with our cute boy

Looking at the elephants with his daddy

A welcome break for all involved.

We had quite a fun time, despite Bradley being a bit too young to really appreciate the animals. He's starting to notice though, these zoo animals just can't get close enough yet for him to really care about them. I put a kitty in his stroller with him today after we got back from our walk and he was delighted, the cat less so. Perhaps if he hadn't grabbed her tail ...

Return to Camano Island

We went back up to Camano Island yet again for another family day on the day after our zoo trip. A highlight from that was my silly Grandma trying to play patty cake with Bradley. She'd hold his hands and clap them and say "patty cake patty cake" and exactly at the second cake Bradley would stick his fist in his mouth. Every time. She tried quite a few times with exactly the same result. It was quite hilarious.

My Aunt Nancy also had a good time with Bradley. She clapped for him and he laughed and laughed like it was the best thing he'd ever heard in his life. My mom decided to take a picture of the two of them together and wanted him smiling for the photo. So I clapped for him - and got nothing. Aunt Nancy clapped again and he laughed and laughed! So apparently I need to work on my clapping skills if I want to keep up.

Odds and Ends

Bradley is getting more and more mobile. He can scoot backwards now, but not forwards. He also can rotate to see objects or persons of interest. We're getting closer and closer to crawling!

He has also discovered his tongue lately and it's getting a LOT of good use. It's sticking out in half the pictures we take of him these days.

And development landmark! He can grab for items he's interested in and pass them back and forth between his hands. I think that's supposed to happen at a later age for most babies, just another example of how my child is brilliant. However, this also means that reading books to him is a lot more difficult now. Someone seems a lot more interested in eating the book than reading it and with his newfound dexterity there can be a bit of a battle over the book. He's strong!

He's also recently discovered he can grab and chew on objects on his exersaucer. Happy boy!

And I lose parenting points for what I now refer to as the "Q-Tip Incident". I discovered our unused pack of baby safe Q-Tips in the bathroom and decided to use one to clean out Bradley's ears. It wasn't after a bath so he was dry, and I decided that the logical thing to do was to get the Q-Tip wet and stick it in his ear to clean it out. You would have thought that Bradley was experiencing an electric shock from his reaction! His eyes got big and he made upset noises while he thrashed around for a couple seconds. So I did the obvious thing and waited a few seconds before trying it again, reasoning that he'd know to expect it this time. Nope. Electric shock again. My poor child, I comforted him and decided to leave the ear cleaning to his daddy.

I keep calling Bradley our "experiment child". He's getting a lot of attention but he's paying for it while his first time parents figure things out. We have mostly good results but every once in a while he gets a cold Q-Tip to the ear. Poor kid.

We also put him in nerd outfits. Thanks to my mom for the adorable onesie!