Hip Hip Hooray Bradley and Raspberry Eleanor

Bradley has started to stay "ta daaaa!" when he does things now (like undoing the straps of his shoes in the car) and "hip hip hooray" when he's excited about something. It is to die for cute. I thank television because I certainly didn't teach him either of these tricks.

He also jumps out of doorways and says "peekboo" now. So great.

However, I did teach him about smooching. Bradley smooches SO MUCH these days - but in an impish way. He kisses me and Daddy in order to be hilarious, not out of sweet sweet love and devotion. The other day he was cracking himself up moving back and forth inbetween Nathan's shoulders kissing each in turn. And then he grabbed the top of Nathan's head and started kissing that too, all while laughing hysterically. He also remains quite insistent about the importance of grabbing our heads and kissing us forcibly on the lips. Yesterday I had to tell him to stop kissing my arm so I could change his diaper. Who tells their child to stop kissing them?

We are absolutely loving summer and are spending every day at either the pool or park or both. We're planning on getting rid of our little wagon because we cannot get Eleanor to stay seated in it and we have a double jogging stroller so there isn't much purpose to the wagon anyway. We took it out for one last hurrah and now both kids really want to keep it (although Eleanor will still not sit down it to save her life).

But she's cool with pulling Bradley around

And this is exactly what it looks like

Finally. The kids earn their keep.

Perhaps the best thing about our park trips lately has been Bradley pushing Eleanor on the swings. They both love it so much.

Eleanor can also walk the whole way from our house to the playground on her own. Like a champ.

And this is while being loaded down with as many nuts she can find as we walk along and carrying a bat and/or club.

We continue to be fascinated by all the neat snails we find at the park although I have sad news about the lifespan of the one Bradley made friends with a few days ago.

I was a little judgy about how he smacked it with a ball to encourage it to come out of its shell until I turned the stroller around to show him another snail on the way home and heard a loud crunch of yet another snail shell as I did so. Whoops. Guess we're a snail killer family.


We've been enjoying our little community pool although I have distressing news about how messy one can get while innocently playing in the sand.

Eleanor is concerned about the state of her hands

The best way to clean off some mucky sand!

The other day it was overcast and drizzly and the pool was deserted - except for us. I'm from Washington, people. If it's over 70 degrees that's pool weather. I'm also not in the business of raising little wusses! Unless we have icky sand on us. That's not being a wuss, that's being careful about one's personal hygiene.

Oh these kids.

Nathan had a business trip to go on this past week and I was a little nervous about maintaining sanity with a teething one year old (molars!) and a toddler who is learning how to deal with emotions but it went really well overall. Although if I never again have to deal with a two year old having a meltdown because we've stopped watching My Little Ponies that will be okay by me.

I stole Nathan's favorite weekend activity and snuggled up on the couch with the kids for a movie and popcorn.

And we checked out a park that we had never been to before which also had a farmer's market complete with a little stand for free face painting. I can't get over things like this - Kansas City is so awesome.

The lady was a pro and painted a couple spiders on Bradley's arm so he could see them. Unfortunately, she still needed a bit of guidance but she was fortunate enough to have Bradley's assistance.

Telling her which paints he wanted (in a cute way).

He was SO into this

Showing off his legitimately cool spiders to his friend Eli.

The spiders were adorable and Bradley showed them off to everyone for the couple of days they lasted. The next day at Sunday school they sang The Itsy Bitsy Spider (not your standard church song) because of Bradley's cool spider on his arm. We're going back this next weekend with Daddy and Bradley says he wants a dragon this time. I hope his Sunday school teacher knows the words to Puff the Magic Dragon.

It went well while Nathan was gone but it's so good to have him home. I blame him for Bradley's newfound mustache obsession.

The kids are such little buds. The other day I was texting Nathan during their lunch and was not paying enough attention to Eleanor's wants and needs. She was hollering a bit and Bradley leaned over and casually tapped her water cup to alert me to what she wanted. It was very sweet.

Playing with deck furniture together. Best game ever!

Feeding each other breakfast

However, it is not always a two way street. Eleanor now bides her time and snatches toys from Bradley and then runs for cover to Mommy while Bradley howls in despair. The best is when he's crying and she goes back to wave the toy in his face ... but still doesn't give it back to him. She's just showing him the cool toy. There was an incident over a baby hair brush that led to the most impressive Bradley meltdown I have seen thus far.

And this is her "I want it" face. The phone was in her possession about two seconds later.

Eleanor has also started hiding behind curtains and then peeking out with a huge smile to see if anyone sees her. Bradley hides under blankets when we're playing hide and seek with him, no idea where she picked this up but it's beyond adorable and I love it. 

Eleanor has a favorite book "Go Dog Go" and will bring it over to you while chanting "go dog go go dog go go dog go" and throw the book in your general direction. She'll then back up and plop herself down in your lap and settle in for a nice read. I melt every time.

She also has begun to blow raspberries on my shoulder while I'm carrying her around. She'll cackle to herself and latch on, blowing raspberry after raspberry. She's going to be a sad girl when summer ends and Mommy wears something with sleeves once again.

And the kids and the cats continue to bond. 

Lucky Meg

Eleanor and Layla loves

And the piece de resistance:

Our cats are just way too nice.

Eleanor Pigtails and Bradley Soccer Class

Eleanor's hair is finally long enough for pigtails ... barely. Mostly her hair does this naturally, I just put some rubber bands on it on a recent trip to the park.

And here's Bradley, being his normal shy self at the park. Surrounded by a large group of martial arts kids on a field trip. It was mayhem, it was big kids, and Bradley was all over it.

Being with Bradley at the park is a lot of fun and not ever boring. Look at him showing off his knee bandaid ...

He ran around for a while like this. Because he had to be able to see his knee. Such a funny kid.

Going to the library is not boring either. We went a couple days ago and soon after we arrived, Bradley started to run away from me through the stacks. I walked over to hunt him down and get him to come back over to the little kiddie play area and he immediately started saying in his loud Bradley voice "working on POOP, Mommy, working on POOP!" So I said "okay, okay, you go ahead and do that" and he repeated "working on POOP!" so I said "yes, yes, let me just leave you to do that" (trying to back away so he'd stop hollering). He repeated his poop announcement a couple more times for good measure so I'd be well and properly embarrassed. It worked. The fun part was when we were supposed to leave, I got to literally run down and catch my child. He's pretty good about coming when I call him now but this does not extend to when he has a poopy diaper. He was in the back corner of the stacks and had some highly advanced evasive maneuvers. To make things more fun, Eleanor got in on the fun of running away from Mommy and I had to bribe her with playing with usually forbidden car keys so she'd stay still while I ran after and half tackled her older brother. Nathan just laughed at me when I told him this story. I officially blame his genes for our very active children.

These cute kids. All Nathan's fault.

Bradley is such a sweetheart but we are solidly into our 2's now and I've finally started instituting time outs for some of the accompanying behavioral things we're working on. It's been pretty effective, no one is too upset but it gets the point across that a particular action (like pushing) is not okay. What's great is that Eleanor has been trying to join Bradley in time out lately. He'll be on a chair and I'll be mid count and she'll be clambering to get up to sit next to him, even though he's usually in timeout because he just pushed her. She adores her big brother.

Teeth brushing buddies.

Eleanor now has her own stool to stand on but prefers to stand as close to Bradley as possible.

At the zoo. Bradley got on a hippo statue ... 

So Eleanor had to get on the hippo statue too. Of course. 

Last weekend was eventful because we went out and got Bradley a bunk bed. It's been a bit hit!

Bradley quickly mastered the ladder and can go up and down with little to no problems. We switched around both of the kids' rooms for this new setup and they both got moved completely into new rooms. As Nathan was relocating a few things from Eleanor's old room to her new room he left her in the hallway and when he walked back into Bradley's new room she had managed to get in the top bunk by herself ... 13 months old. Oh dear.

She hasn't exactly mastered the ladder yet, I'd say she's at about 50% success rate going up and can't get down on her own. But that hasn't stopped her from trying. This video is taken immediately after she fell down the ladder from halfway up. But my children have little sense of self preservation and she decided to go for it again. She's supposed to be my cautious child.

Eleanor's personality has been coming through loud and clear. She's outgoing, adventurous, and a little imp. And she knows how to get her way! Good luck saying no to this cute face. 

Bravely riding on the back of the sit and stand stroller

This face. Oh this face. Nathan and I agree that this is the photo that most perfectly captures Eleanor at this age.

And the video below is pretty precious. Eleanor is sobbing because I won't eat food out of her hand ... like I said, she gets what she wants.

And I would like to thank whichever family member (we're guessing Uncle Thomas) taught Bradley to say "bang bang" and point something like a gun. He won't stop. I'm trying to make not a big deal out of it so it goes away but Daddy is too fun and I'm betting this is just the beginning.

But we can't blame others for everything. I showed Bradley how to carry kitties the other day ... seriously, these cats are amazing. Bradley is mostly pretty gentle, just loud. But still, how many cats would tolerate this? also, please note how Bradley insists on calling Layla "Meg". Poor cat. Not even getting credit for being the one who is putting up with the kiddie loves.

And we had a big day yesterday. Bradley had his first soccer class at the local rec center! He was the youngest person in the class and what he lacked in listening skills he made up for in sheer enthusiasm. I was very proud of him, he was a good boy and had a blast. I'm not sure how much we learned about soccer but really, who cares about this with a two year old?

This video is SO Bradley. Apparently he even kissed a ball once, I know this because a little girl announced it to the class. They gave the ball a name (Bob) and told him to hug it, of course it's going to be kissed!

 End of class team cheer. We love soccer!

After our grueling physical start to the day we had a mellow rest of the morning. Bradley was a great help when I made brownies. You can't pay for such dedicated help!

Such a cool boy. I'm so happy he's ours! He's our 1-2-3-4-5 (we count to 5 constantly these days) big boy Bradley!