Chasing Girls is Hard Work

Well, our little guy definitely has a thing for chasing after little girls. It's adorable but not without its perils. He managed to injure his face not once, but twice yesterday. BLEEDING facial injuries.

Here's the best photo I currently have of the face of destruction. We went swimming today btw, more on that later!

He got his lip at the library while chasing two little 4 yr old girls through the book stacks in the children's section. They were squealing with joy and Bradley would give a happy shriek whenever he got close to them and since the children's section was downstairs from the rest of the library and the other mom didn't seem to mind, I didn't have the heart to break it up. Fortunately, Bradley took care of things for me by falling into a metal shelf with his mouth. Only small amounts of blood resulted from this, we were still able to make it to the story time program afterwards where my little imp actively tried to escape from my arms and make new friends for the entire 20 minute duration of the program.

Making friends. If you click on the picture it will show up larger.

The big ugly scrape on his forehead is from trying to chase our cute neighbor girl on her driveway and managing to fall in such a way that you do half a cartwheel using both hands and forehead as balance. On concrete. He cried for maybe 30 seconds and then wanted to get back down and play with the little girl some more. I guess when you're constantly falling down and injuring yourself you have to get over it quickly or you'll just spend all your time crying, which is such a waste when there are delightful people to play with.

Bradley has making his new friend strategy down pat. All you have to do is make delighted cries when you see a new person and toddle over to them and stick your face about 1 inch away from theirs if possible. Touching faces is even better. You keep smiling and laughing/shrieking while this is going on. Kids who are used to any personal space don't really know what to do around my child. But man, little girls eat this stuff up.

Interest in new people does not go away at the grocery store. This is the only way my child will sit in a cart, otherwise he's stuck looking at boring me instead of seeing where we're going and being able to have enough time to holler at people as we walk by.

We've dropped him off at the church nursery a grand total of three times and two of those times he's come back with head injuries. They're always so apologetic yet seem excited to tell us that although he may have a mild concussion from taking himself out on a rocking chair he barely even cried. Or that despite the giant red mark on his forehead from knocking heads with another child (a peril of having zero personal space) he was happy and played well the entire time. Meanwhile other children are pushing past us to get back to their parents and our sweet Bradley may smile over at us but really would prefer to continue playing with all his new toys and people.

He is not so cavalier about being around us at home though. Well, it's more that he would prefer to not be left alone in a room at any time. He'll play independently, someone just needs to be in the room with him. So I do things like tell him I'm going upstairs to get something and then wait for him to be able to follow me so the poor child doesn't have to deal with his very real abandonment issues. It's a very sweet feeling to have a little fellow following you all over the house and "helping" with housework. He loves the vacuum and will sit and watch with rapt attention. He's a big "help" with laundry and I have never unloaded a dish washer faster than when I have Bradley standing next to me grabbing at everything within reach. We have a lot of fun.

Really, everything is fun these days. We still have our tough moments but they are few and far between. Bradley is such a happy, fun, easy kid right now.

Look at this. Just look at this! I am so happy that our boy likes to cuddle now.

Nathan had brought him downstairs so I could give him a kiss goodnight and Bradley was super smiley and kept trying to lay down on me. Yes, I melted.

We DID have to make an adjustment in his sleep routine because we'd lay him down in his crib and no matter how tired he was he'd play with his Baby Tad toy for a while. I'd think he was going right asleep and then I'd hear something on the baby monitor and it would be "That's the green square! That's the red heart! That's the that's the that's the purple triangle!" (Our guy is a bit of a button masher). So baby Tad was moved to the other side of the crib and Bradley is less tempted to play instead of sleep.

He also has developed a few new less than ideal eating habits. Our kid that would eat anything is now getting pickier. They said that this happened when a child got to about 12 months old but I didn't think they meant MY child! The most ridiculous food development is Bradley's new grape eating method. He used to love and adore grapes above all other foods but all of a sudden it changed. He still gets excited whenever he sees grapes but all he wants to do is chew on them a couple times and then spit them out. He does this for every grape we give him. Chew, chew, eject! I thought this was crazy behavior but then I compared notes with another mom and apparently her oldest child who is four still does this. What is with kids these days?!

 IF YOU WATCH ONE VIDEO ON THIS BLOG POST THIS SHOULD BE THE ONE

My boys are beyond adorable together.

In addition to this, Bradley has decided that his love of throwing his toys into and out of bins would work well at the dinner table. So I'm constantly battling a child who is trying to "sort" tortilla bites or pieces of toast into his applesauce container or water cup. The other day he managed to sneak a piece of tortilla into his water cup and then was very upset with me when I wouldn't let him fish it back out. He's such a little goober.

And here he is at Kaleidoscope, a free art place sponsored by Hallmark. We didn't do much art but we had a lot of fun.

Still at Kaleidoscope. We like to chase big kids around and find buttons to push.

He has some other fun things he does now, we get excited and yell and point at cars and dogs and lights. Our dining room looks out on the little neighborhood road we're on and there is great joy during meals when we see any of these things. He also has a first word! Sort of. When I previously wrote about him saying waowaowao over and over again it turns out I was mistaken. His Grandma Colleen was the one to figure out that he was trying to say row row row. As in Row Row Row Your Boat - a song that Nathan and I MAY have been singing in an increasingly silly way as we would get Bradley ready for bed each night. Nathan would try to sing it in a round and I would try to thwart him and we would both end up cracking up while Bradley apparently absorbed all that he saw. So people sing Row Row Row Your Boat with him whenever he starts singing rowrowrow to himself and he seems quite pleased about it. I've been trying to add in the word "mommy" to songs now in hopes that he'll pick that up, no luck yet.

Here he is playing with wise Grandma Colleen

 He also goes down the slide now. He LOVES the slide. This video shows a little more discomfort than glee (and a bit more booger than I would like) but the kid goes nuts over slides.

Swings are okay too, although not quite the same adrenaline rush unless Daddy is doing the pushing. This poor kid had a look of terror on his face half the time we were at the park. Of course he loved everything Nathan was doing with him, but still. A mother gets to protest.

 He also has a thing for stuffed toys these days.

New favorite game: being buried in stuffed toys and then escaping

Or just chilling for a bit. You know, how the cool kids do.

We went swimming today at a community center pool. Bradley had a blast, he shows no fear of the water and it's quite a job to hold onto him when you first get in because he wants to go go go and he's pretty sure I'm holding him back much of the time. Again, within minutes he found a couple little girls that wanted to adopt him. I can dunk him, he doesn't care although it's not his favorite activity. We went with a sweet little boy two weeks younger than Bradley and a friend that I made at the library. HER little boy will stand next to her in the locker room while she is changing. MY little boy tries to run away every time I put him down. He cackled at me when I ran some defense and tried to block his escape but he never stopped trying to run away. There are definitely some pros and cons to this active, social child business. We actually went swimming twice today, once during the day and once Nathan got home from work. We swam for a total of three hours today, which is a lot for anyone. Bradley is going to sleep well tonight.

Note that I'm rocking the maternity swim suit. I think Bradley is busy pointing at a light.

We have a belated 1 year checkup for the kid this Friday. Fingers crossed that he doesn't get any more face injuries that I'll have to explain prior to then.

And our little girl is growing larger and kicks more and more every day. I'm 31 weeks pregnant, getting closer and closer to that June 27th due date!

Getting close to being able to balance bowls of food on my stomach again. YES!