Bradley's Bear Story

Happy St. Patrick's Day! This is what happens when I tell Eleanor to smile for a photo.

Bradley's favorite color is blue and he is very excited about blue items, wherever he finds them. I have no idea when he really picked this up or why exactly, I had never asked him about his favorite color so he must have picked it up on the street (aka Sunday School). He was very happy about his new blue shorts that I got him for this summer and I made the mistake of trying them on his head as a joke. Ask me how easy it was to convince him to wear them correctly after this.

Bradley with his shadow

Eleanor was pleased to get in on the new fad

Bradley's imagination continues to impress, he'll take something small and run with it to places we never anticipated. We've been learning about different kinds of animals and I decided to let him watch a few short youtube videos on my phone so he could see real versions of the cute cartoony animals he has in some of his favorite books. I happened to let him watch a youtube video where a variety of animals were stealing food from people in cars and it seems it made an impression.

We get so many Bradley stories and I love them so much. This was followed up by tales of a robot frog he could see out in the trees in our backyard. I could listen to his stories all day (poor neglected Eleanor).

The story face. This was when he was telling me about how the bear wanted to eat his mustache shirt.

Eleanor is quite impressive in her own right, it's amazing to see what an observant younger sibling can pick up. We were looking through Bradley's favorite animal book and he often likes to guess wrong for animals as a funny Bradley joke. Yes, it really is on purpose, he makes it abundantly obvious that he thinks he's hilarious whenever he plays this game. So I asked what a picture of a rhinoceros was and he said "elephant!" at the same time Eleanor quietly said "rhino". She also knows most of her colors and was bossing me around in the car yesterday saying "green light go!". In comparison, I'm pretty sure Bradley's communication with me mostly consisted of pointing and yelling about 10-20 key words at the age of 21 months.

Eleanor also bosses Bradley sometimes (shocking!). He was having a rough time one morning and I told him a few times about how he was going to be sent up to his room if he kept on being so upset and didn't start playing nicely. I was so lucky to have good backup in Eleanor who started pointing upstairs and saying "in yo ROOM!" over and over again and "no Badley!". A little girl is lucky mommy was there so she didn't get shoved by an angsty little boy.

Not to say that Bradley and Eleanor aren't still the best of buds. It hit 80 earlier this week so we broke out some serious summer gear complete with cool shades.

But in typical fashion, we ditched the sunglasses once we got the the place where they would have been useful. 

We like Ironwood park because it has plenty of swings but sometimes we still have to share. I can't believe these kids are for real, especially Bradley. He not only tolerated sharing a swing with Eleanor, he rather enjoyed it. 

Park outings have gotten more fun now that Bradley and Eleanor can follow each other around a bit, although if Eleanor could stop copying all the things that Bradley does that would be okay. I was talking to a mom at a park yesterday and she let out a gasp of horror at the tiny little girl climbing the ladder to the tallest slide all on her own and I got say "Oh yeah, she's mine. She's okay. She does that." And it's also nice because when 5 year old little boys are bratty at the playground and don't let Eleanor play near them and their stupid woodchip piles I get to do things like not intervene when Bradley starts destroying said woodchip piles. And Bradley always wins. Don't mess with my cute little girl.

The children have been begging for a picnic lately which means we don't sit at picnic tables anymore, picnics happen on the grass. 

I finally remembered our picnic blanket the other day and there was great joy. 

We also have a new park where we feed the ducks, which is a blast.

And with the warm weather the kids have begun to get to have treats like fudgsicles when they could use a cool treat. I don't know whose happier about the onset of spring, me or the kids.

Poor Bradley does have it tough at times though, especially when he's a little tired. Bradley started crying this morning when he woke up and Nathan went in to help a guy out and it turned out that Bradley had a myriad of concerns: 1) He couldn't find his pacifier. 2) He couldn't find his plastic egg. 3) His bottom hurt.
Nathan quickly located Bradley's pacifier by one of his pillows but couldn't find the plastic egg until he looked in Bradley's pajama bottoms where Bradley had put the egg for safekeeping at some point during the night. No wonder the poor guy had an ouchie bottom.

Nathan just got back from a trip to Columbia which is happily his last work trip before we are joined by the new addition. Mommy was okay company while he was gone but things are just a bit different when Daddy is home.

Bradley loves the soccer jersey that Nathan picked out for him and hopefully you can tell that I successfully got shorts on him in addition to his jersey that will surely fit even giant Bradley for a few years. He's not quite three and Nathan got him a youth medium. 

The countdown to baby Patrick is down to five weeks! We alternate between being so ready to meet him and terrified of parenting three small children. When Eleanor looks like this I feel very prepared to have another child.

But then she wakes up and I get to chase her around ... oh my. We're going to be quite the busy household.