Boys' Birthdays, Easter, & Grandparent Visit

It's been an eventful month at the Scott house! Bradley got his new glasses and now I'm not used to him without them. He's doing really well with them and the glasses on a preschool boy endeavor is going far better than I ever imagined.

We took him out to Panera to celebrate new glasses. So cute.

I got to take the older two kids to Disney on Ice soon after Bradley got his glasses and we all had a blast although I'm not sure how much fun was because of the show and how much was because of the light up wands and cotton candy.

We got an Olaf hat with the cotton candy.

During intermission I had to pretend to sneak bites of the kids' cotton candy. Bradley in particular found this to be hilarious. And no, no one shared with me.

 All in all it was a rather exciting but exhausting morning for these sweeties.

Easter was fun even though it snowed (!!) and the kind Easter bunny decided to hide the eggs in our basement rather than making everyone go out into the cold and wet backyard in the afternoon to find our candy.

Daddy's favorite part of Easter

 Patrick got a lot of assistance finding his eggs from helpful siblings.

The best part of the kids' Easter haul was their giant eggs that resemble the magical dragon scale from one of their favorite shows, Dragon Tales.

I'm really fancy now and get seasonal window clings from the Target dollar aisle. The kids love them, although Patrick can't understand why they are placed just beyond his reach. Or at least they used to be, ones that I swore he couldn't touch a couple months ago he can now play with. The boy growing at an impressive rate!

Nathan believes in calm play with the children before bedtime. Also, there is little question as to whether or not Patrick enjoys rough housing. 

Bradley turned four and is getting kind of a ridiculous amount of birthday celebrations because we had a miniature celebration with dinosaur cupcakes on his birthday, a play date birthday party with two of his friends a couple days after that, loads of birthday presents from my parents while they were here visiting, and finally a join birthday party with Patrick is coming up this next Saturday. Once he comes down from his sugar high we'll tell you how age four is treating our little guy.

Birthday bubble fun on the back deck.

 "Fishing" in our back yard.

Eleanor's brothers may be too cuddly even for our little cuddle monster sometimes. 

I was thoroughly impressed by Bradley's cupcake decorating skills. He was too excited to sleep during nap time on his birthday so I had him come down and put the dinosaur decorations on his cupcakes. I was sure he would do a few and then I would do the rest but instead he took one look at the sample cupcake on the box and did all but the two cupcakes I decorated before I realized Bradley required no help. Apparently if I want Bradley to cultivate his fine motor skills I just need to involve him in more baking!

There was a fun series of photos that I don't need to include here where Patrick was happily munching on a graham cracker until he noticed what the big kids were up to.

Then there was baby angst. He just needed to wait two more weeks for cupcakes! Not because I cared if he had sweets at that point, mostly because I wanted his cake smash to be the wonder that it very much turned out to be.

Official birthday cupcake (Eleanor insisted on getting one with a candle to blow out as well. There is much anticipation around here for her birthday in June).

Bradley has also started playing in a little soccer league with our friends that live just down the street and it's adorable. Nathan is helping out as an assistant coach and is having a blast. At the first practice the kids had to pick a team name and one child said "Purple Hippos." Another said "Orange Crocodiles." Bradley said "Kansas!" (We're really into states and geography these days). The coach said, "Yes, we do live in Kansas" and had the kids vote on the other two suggestions. There are six kids on the team and the coach said "How many want Purple Hippos?" Three hands raised. "How many want Orange Crocodiles?" Two hands raised. Nathan informed me that Bradley hadn't voted yet at this point, he was obviously waiting for the coach to ask for votes for Team Kansas. His team name is now the Orange Hippos.

Action shot!

Bradley is really enjoying soccer which makes me and Nathan so happy. He doesn't really do much, runs around the field, kicks the ball once in a blue moon, mostly watches what the other kids are doing. He's adorable. Eleanor HATES soccer because it has been rather cold for our first two games.

Patrick enjoys soccer because he begs for snacks from other moms who are putty in his hands. He's so stinkin cute.

My parents' visit was a big success and I don't just say this because they successfully kept the children alive and happy while I joined Nathan on a business trip to Ft. Lauderdale. It was our first kid free trip in three years. It was amazing.

And then I came back a day before Nathan and joined in on grandparent fun. So much fun!

So tired! Grandpa got a lot of these cuddles on this trip.

My mom did some serious work on what I fondly refer to as "nerd books" with the children. She stages them with props and they prove a physics law or equation. To my mother's delight, Bradley was very interested in exactly how calculators work this time around.

A highlight was having all of us join Bradley for story time at his preschool. Bradley was SO PROUD to have his grandpa read a story and kissed Eleanor and Patrick thoroughly when we showed up and then cuddled on my lap. What a little sweetie.  

Eleanor barely napped while they were here she was having so much fun. Bradley is firmly in the "why" stage and you can barely get through a book with him with all the questions he asks but Eleanor is usually pretty quiet. Apparently he's training her up though, my dad said that when I sent him in to read with Eleanor during what was supposed to be her nap she channeled Bradley with many "why" questions while she pointed at different things on the pages with her toes. She also asked several times, "And then I get to go downstairs when we finish reading?" She cried a bunch when they left and my parents moved up their retirement plans. I'm not kidding.

I took about 20 pictures of the very enthusiastic hugs Eleanor gave Grandma when we were trying to leave to go to a park.

While Bradley was at school one morning Eleanor got to make a chocolate pie with Grandma which was pretty darling. Grandma lets Eleanor get far more involved in the baking than I ever do. She let the two year old crack eggs. 

Eleanor complained about her feet touching the ground after my parents left, someone was rather accustomed to the star treatment while they were here. For some reason by the time she was getting close to three years old I thought she would be able to walk around on her own but it seems that I was sorely mistaken. I carry her and Patrick up and down the stairs a ridiculous amount over the course of a day. It's almost 60 lbs of child (Patrick is so big).

Patrick gets so many kisses from his big brother and sister while they say "Awww, he's so cute!"

Eleanor couldn't believe that Grandpa was pushing anyone besides her on the swings and was quite vocal in her belief that it should be "ME GAMPA! ME! PUSH MEEEEEEE!"

Mommy doesn't do swings quite like this. 

Mommy doesn't play dinosaurs as well as Grandpa either.

I got some nice group shots of the crew this time.

This is so Eleanor.

We had a lot of disagreements who would sit next to Grandma at meals until we finally found the best solution on their last day here.

Eleanor facial expressions are one of my favorite things. 

 Hugs for cold children after breakfast.

We got to go to the Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead while my parents were here, which was particularly fun because it was the first time we had gone since it had opened for the season.

 

 

Now let me just say a little something about Patrick and animals: he LOVES animals. Hunts down our cats and gives them open mouthed kisses on their sides whenever he can and he makes excited noises and coos happily at dogs when we're at the park.

We took him to a giant pen full of baby goats.

There was great baby joy. And so many kiss attempts. 

I looked through the pictures that my mom took and he tried to smooch at least four different goats. 

I may have started laughing so hard I cried a little when I saw this one. He was pulled away before he made contact, but it was close. 

We left the goats soon after our little animal lover proved he could not handle so many cute animals waiting for his loves and Bradley and Eleanor discovered that Deanna Rose has ice cream, which had been a secret until the grandparents came along. 

Grandparent outings are the best. 

 Eleanor was too cold to eat lunch until she got to sit on Grandpa's lap.

My attempt at a group picture. It seems chickens are more exciting than Mommy.

Much better success. We'll take it.  

I don't know who enjoyed reading time more while my parents were here. 

And this is my attempt at a selfie so I would be in one of the pictures with my parents. Grandpa is really good at selfies. 

And thanks to my parents for getting a couple of pictures of us with the kids before they left.

Post picture sibling fun. These two are such little buddies. 

Patrick has been walking a bunch lately, although his first official step took place about three weeks ago (at just past 11 months old) when Nathan held out a potato chip and Patrick took two steps toward it before falling down. That same day he took one step for a ball. Patrick's motivations are not a mystery. Food and balls are all that matter! I think his record was 12 steps while my parents were here.

Bradley has become our angel child in the last couple of months and then there's Eleanor. Oh Eleanor. She has come into her own. As I write this Nathan just ran up to cuddle her and sing her more bedtime songs because she was saying "Daddy I want you, Daddy I want you" in a whiny voice and we could hear her on the baby monitor. It's clingy and it's ridiculously sweet and it's Eleanor.

Doughnut time!

Her singing talents know no equal.

Warning: you may want to turn the volume down on your computer before this video. But the video is pretty much perfection.

We celebrated Patrick's first birthday yesterday and had a pretty lovely day together.

Patrick started his birthday by generously looking after the needs of his big sister. She was so hungry.

He was out of my sight for two minutes. I heard a loud bang and came around the corner to see him shoving a bite of banana in his mouth. Breakfast leftovers are just the best.

But cookies at the grocery store are even better!

 We got new chairs that I hope to use as props for upcoming family photos.

I love this photo. If the kids don't cooperate for family photos I could frame this one. 

And maybe this. It's so pretty here right now and the kids love to run barefoot through the grass. Sometimes I can't believe this gets to be their childhood. 

Bradley helped me with important cake prep for Patrick's smash cake. 

And there was awesome brother time with little rocks at our park. Sometimes I think we should have waited another year before having Patrick but then I see the two boys playing together and I'm happy that they'll be close enough in age that they'll be able to do more activities together than they would have if we had spaced them further apart.

There was zero hesitation on the birthday cake. This boy had been waiting for this moment his whole life. In the video below this picture you can see him try to get at the cake as we're still singing "Happy Birthday" to him. The cake is in the shape of a heart, it's kind of hard to tell in the pictures.

 Bradley and Eleanor were pleased to get to have some cake as well.

So much cake. We have never had a child eat this much of their smash cake before and Patrick probably would have eaten the whole thing but we took it away eventually because we were afraid that he would throw up. (It was the size of about an eighth of a sheet cake). There was no throw up. Birthday success!

 Bradley and Eleanor were SO excited about Patrick opening his presents.

The bubble machine was a big winner and we put it to use right away!

I just can't believe he's one already. This little guy. We adore him so.

Sometimes he wakes up before siblings for his afternoon nap and seeing them come downstairs is one of his great joys.

He also LOVES playing catch. He'll throw a ball in your direction while saying "ca! ca!" for catch. He also says "buh buh buh" when he waves bye bye to someone and says "ma ma ma ma!" when he's whiny.

This video has a little of everything. Playing catch, horsie Grandpa, and Eleanor waking up. 

Fun Patrick fact: Patrick no longer allows anyone to feed him with a spoon. At age one. He insists on holding the spoon himself and dipping it into his yogurt or puree and attempting to get the food to his mouth. Just try to win a wrestling match over a spoon with this kid. He's lucky he's so cute.

So cute.

Mostly things with the kids have been getting more and more fun. We're outside a ton these days and we're able to do a lot more together. The other day I got out chalk and was tracing children's outlines and they decided they wanted to trace mine. But then Bradley said "Mommy, you're so big!" and Eleanor said "This is going to take foreverrrr!" And then I stood up to see this.

I'm super attractive

Okay, I thought it was pretty hilarious and texted the picture to Nathan immediately. Where was Patrick while this was going on, you ask?

Yep. Shoving rocks in the rain gutter. I love the expression on his face when he knows he's probably doing something naughty. 

Enjoying Bradley and Eleanor's art projects that used to be hung on the wall.

Me? Throw books out of this bookcase? I would never.

Even with Patrick's naughtiness, things are starting to mellow out around here. Bradley and Eleanor mostly get along like champs and Layla is starting to get much needed cuddles when they watch shows.

We love using my Granddad's popcorn bowls for the kids. Those popcorn bowls are one of my most sentimental possessions, I have a lot of good memories of using them at my grandparents' house as a kid.

I can go grocery shopping with all three and we generally have a pretty good time.

And have I mentioned that these kids are just crackups? Eleanor needed to get higher to see some artwork Bradley had brought home from school and he volunteered himself. And then they traded places. 

And this happened at breakfast the other day. These kids.

I forgot about Bradley's spring school picture day and I sent him to school in his t-rex tshirt and camo pants but the pictures came back pretty cute anyway. Too bad we're already planning on family photos so I didn't order them. But I loved this one of him so I took a picture of the proof to send to family! It's too bad we're done making babies because they are all ridiculously good looking!