Toddler Boy

Is it too early to say that in the battle of wills, I may actually be losing? How did Nathan and I end up with an extremely friendly yet extremely obstinate child?

But look at how cute he is when he's unconscious! Both my boys are so cute when they nap together.

This kid is beyond adorable but despite my determined efforts to teach him the meaning of gentle, we still hit everything. And what we don't hit we throw.

This is sort of a longish video but it's so sweet. Bradley running around the family room throwing things. Balls are the best toys ever.

http://youtu.be/NzqgsoIequE

We went to the park today and I took this adorable video of Bradley being excited to see a little girl and giving her a toy (21 seconds long).

http://youtu.be/B6m320ViCFc

Please note how quickly that video ended. 1) I didn't want to be creepy at the park filming someone else's child and 2) Bradley quickly took back his toy from the little girl. Also, within minutes he discovered you could throw sand and despite my best efforts to say no no and shake sand out of his hands as well as encouraging constructive sand use ... we just kept throwing sand. It was most fun to throw it at other children. Also we liked to hit other people's sand piles with whatever tool we were holding at the time. We were an adorable whirlwind of violence and destruction. So Mommy soon got to haul a sobbing child away from his favorite sandbox playtime ever. Is this what the toddler years are all about? I thought this was supposed to start at around age 2, not 14 months.

Luckily, I still get some angelic looking photos

We also went to the zoo today and had a blast. We even seemed to care about the animals to a small degree! Although the carousel and the kiddie playground area may still be our favorites.

On the carousel with our friend Fatima. We cry and yell when we're in line for the carousel and we don't get to get on in a timely manner. This child has inherited my patience!

Lemurs are SO fun!

Actually watching the macaws!

The other day there was a thunderstorm in the afternoon (there are SO many thunderstorms here, it's going to take some getting used to) so we had our friend Eli over since we couldn't go play outside. Poor Bradley, it was awful. Eli tried to touch some of his toys so Bradley had quite the job snatching away each toy Eli got his hands on. It was tough work, lucky thing Bradley was so dedicated. (Sharing is currently another losing battle I'm fighting). Finally he settled down a bit and just followed Eli around to supervise anything and everything he was doing. Toys that Bradley hadn't looked at for months were suddenly of great interest.

Bradley NEVER plays with this piano toy. Suddenly it was the best thing in the room.

The play date ended with Bradley throwing a wooden puzzle piece at Eli's head. Yet another losing battle. Unless that counts as sharing ... (!!). At the park today I met a mom with a little girl almost exactly Bradley's age who complained about her daughter not throwing balls or anything yet. I love my Bradley, but I'm rather excited at the possibility of having a sweet little girl who gently hands things to people and doesn't yell and point if something is not to her liking. With Nathan's and my genes, I'm not betting on it, but at least it's a possibility.

For instance, tonight at dinner I tried to sneak Bradley potato soup with some veggies instead of spaghetti with meat. Here is the end result.

SO MUCH SPAGHETTI was eaten and ended up all over Bradley's face. He had to holler at me and point insistently at my spaghetti several times but finally even the most oblivious of mommies had to figure out that a boy was not going to eat crummy soup when pasta was an option. He literally ate 2/3 as much as I did ... and I'm eating at 36 weeks of pregnancy levels. The boy is a beast.

We had a great Memorial Day weekend, Nathan and I went on a quest for a kiddie basketball hoop and to say that Bradley likes it is an understatement. Here's Bradley's very first glimpse of the basketball hoop.

http://youtu.be/9LeL3N95Jz0

We're going to show this video when he's a shooting guard for the Pistons (I think that's a real position and a real team. Nathan keeps saying that our girl is going to be a hardcore athlete but she is going to have a good amount of Anne in her keeping her from such an icky, sweaty future).

We went to the park and poor Bradley had his work cut out for him telling us what he wanted to do. He must think we are the slowest parents around, he has to holler and point so much to get his point across. If he wasn't so cute when he did it maybe he wouldn't have to try so hard.

The SWING, Daddy, the SWING. Seriously, how is this difficult to understand?

All this activity leads to a very tired boy. Good thing he has a daddy who is always game for a good cuddle.

We had a very fun BBQ with about five neighborhood families and Bradley spent most of his time chasing around the sweetest eight year olds who were very nice about the pushy small child who wanted to play with their toys and follow them everywhere they went. He got very flushed and hot and kept chugging from my water glass (not my favorite thing, when you share water with Bradley you get plenty of backwash and bits of small food in your drink ... yummy) so I ran over to our house to grab the giant bag of otter pops that genius Nathan had gotten for Bradley. Bradley had almost two popsicles on his own and was soon happy and cool and there was a small whirlwind of young children who were delighted to share his otter pop stash. Kids and popsicles are about the most hilarious thing ever, these are basically just ice with lots of sugary artificial flavors and kids go nuts over them. Even our one year old. He came home with a small cut on his leg from falling on who knows what in the yard and his clothes were covered in mud and popsicle juice. I'm pretty sure he thought it was the best day ever.

We're having a blast these days and my mom comes out to Kansas City this weekend for AP Physics test grading and hopefully a reasonable amount of Bradley time. This is the first time we'll have seen her since the move, can't wait!!