Bradley in a Big Boy Bed!

Bradley is officially in a big boy bed now. He loves it and it's the transition has been an overall success I'd say, despite him somehow managing to get himself wedged between the bed rail and the mattress at 5 AM his first night in the bed. Luckily, Bradley is Bradley, and despite crying a lot when he got himself trapped in the rail he still really likes the bed and has already settled in to the new routine.

Here Bradley is helping Daddy disassemble the crib. Such a helper!

Another Bradley advancement in the past couple weeks has been climbing ladders at the park. One day he wasn't, the next day a punk 5 year old ran up one of the ladders ahead of him and Bradley HAD to follow. He has fallen off a ladder once or twice (in slow motion from a middle run) but it has not deterred him in the least from getting back up and trying again.

He also continues to have a thing for dogs with leashes. People are way too nice here and keep letting him do this.

He talks a lot more now too, which is fun. Today we were walking down the stairs to go out to the car and I was carrying both children (I have some pretty legitimate muscles these days, let me tell you) and Bradley noticed Eleanor's hair bow and started poking at it and said "bow on head". I said "yes, Eleanor is wearing a pretty bow on her head." So he repeated "pretty bow on the baby head". I perked up upon hearing him say "pretty" and asked him if he could say pretty mommy. He could! I love having a child who talks.

This. I love this. He enjoys eating ice cream on the front step from time to time.

Although conversation can be fairly focused on one particular subject. I don't know why I was trying to talk about anything besides apple juice and bubbles in this video.

Well, sometimes I enjoy the talking. After church this past Sunday Nathan and I were asking Bradley about his Sunday school class. We asked him if he got to draw, if he got snack, if he had friends. Talking Bradley has been so much fun, we love it when he tells us stories. He brightened up when we asked if he had a lot of friends at church and smiled, nodded ... and enthusiastically said "hit!" Nathan has a much better poker face than I do, I had a lot of trouble stopping laughing. I'm not asking any questions about Bradley's friends from now on.

Although he is pretty cute with his little friends whenever I'm around. A little while after this picture was taken he pulled his friend Worth (the boy in the back) in the wagon through the grass by himself. Bradley is strong.

I mean, he is seriously strong. Look at these arms! 

Welcome to the gun show

 This photo and the following are from our friend Olivia's birthday party. We had a blast!

Good news, Bradley doesn't mind girly pink frosting in the slightest. Is it bad that I'm hoping to teach him that pink is just for girls? Maybe purple too. I can give Eleanor only pink and purple toys and avoid a lot of fights.

No luck so far, especially after Bradley's encounter with pink frosting. Pink is the best!

And thank you so much to Grandpa Dan and Grandma Kati for sending Bradley his new, awesome remote control car! He is quite the fan. Forty seconds in he says thank you and it is quite sweet.

 We are so crazy for our little Eleanor, especially as more and more of her personality comes through.

I think this photo, albeit a bit blurry, perfectly captures our little Eleanor

So smiley!

So sleepy

I briefly considered getting Eleanor a $2 birthday tiara in prep for her party next month. She said no thanks.

The crown sits heavy upon Eleanor's head

We're not sure if Eleanor has said a real word yet but she definitely says something along the lines of "dadado" when she sees Nathan and I swore the other day that she said "cat!" while she was pointing at Meg but then she said the same thing when she pointed at the pictures on the fridge so perhaps I'm giving her too much credit.

Cute in the bath

Wootwoo, someone is a cute little bee out of the bath!

She lives for the stairs these days. If left unobserved for more than two minutes she will find her way to the stairs, crawl up, and head into the bathroom to play with the bath toys. She's cute but she's naughty! She loves walking up and down the stairs with assistance. Walking down the stairs while holding onto both of her hands is as scary as it sounds. But she loves it and I'm a sucker for her smiles and her laugh. She cackles when I chase her up the stairs and she howls with glee when I catch her. What a little doll.

She seems to have a much better sense of self preservation than our Bradley boy and it has taken her two full weeks from her first independent step to try anything beyond one quick step from one thing to another. Today she took six steps in a row! A new record! She's actually walking quite a bit these days, it's so fun to watch.

It's a bit surreal to have her walking and I absolutely cannot believe that in just a month she'll be a year old.

Our little Pebbles will be so old!

She is all up in Bradley's business these days.

Tee hee hee, I can play with the phone toy while he's watching his show!

And sometimes Bradley is in Eleanor's business

Eleanor was DONE giving Bradley rides on her walker toy. DONE she tells you.

And much of the time they're just in Mommy's business. This picture pretty accurately describes my life these days.

And this describes Daddy's life when things are going right on the weekend.

One of Nathan's favorite things is to cuddle up with Bradley for one of his shows. Turns out the way to make it even better is to add popcorn to the mix.

These are the popcorn bowls that I grew up using at my granddad's house. It's so sweet and a little surreal to have Bradley using them now.

My boys just like to cuddle.

And I like to pull out my old freebie Harry Potter glasses from ten years ago and put them on my son. The results are rather eerie! Genetics for the win.

This kid is so stinkin cute

Nathan and I are so happy that things are finally kind of settling down. Here we are celebrating our third wedding anniversary a few weeks back.

That said, Nathan found out that he has to go in for hip surgery in a couple weeks and will be on crutches for a month afterward. He also found out that he has been retired from all sports besides tennis and golf, because I am DONE with my crazy husband playing sports while he is injured and causing himself to require surgery. Back surgery and hip surgery by 33, no thank you. Luckily we have some family visiting but feel free to send us your prayers. Nathan has a lot of stairs to climb at least twice a day, it's going to be tricky to say the least!

Easter and Eleanor's First Step!

 

Eleanor took her first step on Sunday! We were so excited! She's not quite ten and a half months old and we're trying to remember if this is earlier than Bradley or not. I think they're within a week or so of each other on this milestone.

I don't have a picture or video of the step, we were at our evening church group and Eleanor stood up next to Nathan's knee and took one pretty solid step to get over to a little play table we had brought with us. I just caught it out of my peripheral vision and asked Nathan if she had taken a step. He said yes! We were both very excited. I made her take a couple more steps that evening by standing her up and then backing away from her with my arms out but she quickly caught on to what I was trying to do and protested mightily. Our delicate little flower still prefers to avoid falling at all costs so we'll see how long it takes her to make this independent walking thing a regular occurrence.

Current attitude towards walking - I want to walk but give me something to hold onto!

We had a very nice Easter this year, both kids like candy so what is not to like?

Actually, Eleanor just got goldfish crackers and I have the feeling she knew she was being jipped.

Bradley kept asking for Easter eggs on following days and I had to put them away so he wouldn't be continuously disappointed by the lack of candy in his life. Candy for breakfast was a BIG deal!

Eleanor and her cute belly participated in our little Easter egg hunt in the backyard. If you can call it an Easter egg hunt when the eggs are all scattered in plain sight and Bradley stops and eats the contents of every egg as he goes along. Except for the eggs with goldfish crackers inside, those were clearly inferior and the goldfish were thrown onto the ground as he quested onward for m&m's and jelly beans.

Eleanor did a good job finding her eggs. She is so into standing these days

Yep. This is about what you'd expect from the Bradley boy on Easter.

The aftermath. I'm pretty sure Bradley ended up with chocolate all over his clothes. Great Easter success!

Eleanor was a wreck for much of the weekend because she has not one, not two, but FOUR teeth coming in simultaneously. Poor little dear. They are the center top four and you can see them under the gums but they haven't broken through yet. There were a few unplanned naps because of baby exhaustion and this may explain some of the serious cuddles I got while Colleen and Kerry were here.

After Easter we've settled into a pretty nice routine with a lot of crafts and outdoor playtime. 

Bradley really likes coloring with his markers but I have a sneaking suspicion that it may be not as much about coloring as other endeavors. 

And now Eleanor insists on being involved in craft time too, which is pretty cute. Girl likes to lean back and chew on some closed markers while Bradley stacks his markers. Unless I draw something and then Bradley enthusiastically tries to "help" me by scribbling over whatever I drew. Such cute kids, we're really having a blast together these days.

Eleanor is a bit obsessed with Bradley I'd say.

 

Getting to hang out in the cool kid grocery cart while shopping with Daddy

But then again, she's obsessed with a number of things these days. Like kitties ...

And walking with assistance. You get hollered at if she wants to walk around and you aren't prompt in giving a baby girl a helping hand.

Proud of all the walking she has accomplished

On that same trip to the park

We found out that Bradley loves dogs on leashes. And yes, the leash aspect is key.

He's so cute and fun these days. He's been helping Nathan work on yard work lately too.

I got a mini rake just for occasion like this. Great success!

We really like it when Daddy makes a nice pile of leaves and sticks so we can throw them back to whence they came. You can see Nathan smiling at the naughtiness here.

Bradley loves his Daddy. Here they are holding hands through what I think was a suspenseful part of a show.

And Bradley officially needs a remote control car, all we have is a remote control spider (of all things) and that was deeply fascinating in it's own right.

Bradley is really into stickers these days too. I put my camera phone on the mode where you see yourself as you take the picture and Bradley was a big fan.

We love stickers so much sometimes we have to give them hugs.

Bradley's ever increasing vocabulary has proved to be both a blessing and a curse. He's adorable and will say "hep pease!" when he needs help and has gotten increasingly good about saying "tank yu" when he gets something he wanted, which is usually the "big one!". However, I'm beginning to see the dark side of this skill as well. Today we went to the library and there were a couple of seriously bratty little boys there that were a couple years older than Bradley that we had a very difficult time being around. We left the library early because Bradley was getting so upset and when we pulled into the driveway I said something to Bradley about the boys being not nice at all. He nodded at me and brightly said "hit!" in response. He had indeed hit one of the boys after being tormented and I had made him apologize. Mean kids better watch out, I'll do what I can about the hitting but Bradley has no qualms about standing up for himself.

Except when it's Eleanor getting him, then he thinks it's hilarious

He also uses his developing vocabulary to order me around. "Hat off!" and "hair down!" I don't know why he feels so strongly about my personal appearance. Got to keep up standards around here I guess.

Eleanor is also into my hair. She likes playing with it after nursing.

And we've really been enjoying how Bradley has moved on to "real" books lately as opposed to just reading board books and there has been a lot of Dr. Seuss in this house lately. This has been all well and good until this morning when Bradley woke up early and insisted that I read Fox in Socks to him at 6:00 AM. Here is a sample of what I read:

“When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles
and the bottle's on a poodle and the poodle's eating noodles...
...they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle
bottle paddle battle.”

There is literally a warning on the front cover of the book to not try to read it too fast your first time. Because the entire book is like this. 6:00 AM. Ah parenting.

Our refrain at times like this are "he's lucky he's cute!"

Eleanor also has a favorite book, it's the one that makes all the animal noises. She squeals in glee when we push the buttons. She loved it when our friend Jayme read it to her and Eli and Bradley.

And here the kids are with Nathan for take your child to work day. We just joined Nathan for lunch, even though I generously offered to let him take one or both children for the morning. I can't believe he said lunch would be preferable. In the short time we were there Bradley managed to acquire both Nathan's calculator and computer mouse. Nathan wouldn't have had to push a single button all morning with Bradley doing all of the button mashing for him!

 Aftermath

And a few more adorable Eleanor photos for good measure!

It's nice to see pictures of her smiling because teething has been brutal these past couple weeks. Hopefully we will soon have some nice pictures of Eleanor with some shiny new chompers! The darn teeth need to break through so the poor baby (and her parents!) can get a break.