Bradley was huge into being our guide and holding the map.
There was great concern by the older siblings when Patrick crossed over the stick that separated the people area from the kangaroo field. If you cross over the stick you might not make it back.
Luckily for us there was glass keeping us from getting too chummy with friendly penguins.
The zoo has sheep and goats now. I don't understand why. But it makes Patrick happy.
If all three children are next to each other and no one is crying I say it is picture time. I don't care what we're posing in front of. Hello there, sheep pen.
Patrick was less keen on our next photo op. This was my favorite group photo of the day. Please note Nathan's head sticking out on top of the sign.
This is my new favorite photo of me and my sweet little Eleanor.
We rode the carousel at least three times this day. Good thing we got the membership with unlimited rides!
Bradley and I enjoy "racing" our carousel animals.
And Patrick got to go on a little outing to the zoo the next week with his best bud, Mabel. They are so adorable together.
We used a guest pass for Nathan so he could go swimming with us at my gym. Bradley is turning into quite the impressive swimmer, he could almost dog paddle the entire length of the pool (short side). No puddle jumper, pure Bradley swimming power. He's really excited about swimming, we can hardly wait for all our swimming adventures with him this summer.
And I didn't get any pictures of Bradley because he was too busy swimming to come over and say hi while I was hanging out on a deck chair poolside until children forced me into the water.
Oh, here is Bradley at the pool. Being attacked with smooches by Eleanor. And he loves it.
Conversations with the kids are so fun.
Bradley: If I have a child I would have to name it Bradley Scott to replace me. And I would be Nathan Scott.
Eleanor: Mommy, I want some genies in one of your necklaces.
We all do, Eleanor. We all do.
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| Cute children eating lunch at the gym |
Eleanor has been loving her new dance class and I have to say it is pretty ridiculously cute to watch. We had to do a LOT of practicing before it even started.
The class itself is quite darling. Eleanor is fine with the dress up aspect of the whole endeavor, along with the one on one time with an adoring parent audience.
You know that one child who sees her reflection in the mirror and does a little dance for her beautiful self? Proud that kid is my kid.
Nathan with his little dancer girl. This photo needs more sequins.
However, I do hope we're able to get her back into gymnastics in the fall. The little girl can do flips and somersaults like nobody's business. She had a blast when we went back to the gymnastics studio for an open gym and did about 30 flips in a row over a bar while we were there.
She can also climb like nobody's business.
Patrick is an apt pupil of all things Eleanor.
Although sometimes his love can be a bit excessive.
Side note: we really like to bring chalk to the park with us these days so Bradley can draw dinosaurs while we're at the playground.
I asked and that's the tail.
We also fight over who can find the biggest stick on the walk home. Looks like Patrick and Eleanor won this round.
But they needed some Bradley muscle to move it along.
We're really into climbing and balancing on trees now. I love it.
We are not yet tired of our platform swing. It's so great. I still can't believe how perfectly it worked out to set this up in our backyard.
And this wagon is probably one of my best purchases ever. We take it with us everywhere.
I can't get over how darn cute these kids are.
Of course it doesn't hurt to get some sweet smooches from your little boy. Patrick is not nearly as into cuddles as the other two. Bradley and Eleanor are always up for a hug, a smooch, or a cuddle, but Patrick routinely shrugs me off. However, if he knows he's in trouble or if he wants to be sweet he instantly starts hugging me and giving me kisses. It's annoying how well it works on me. I melt for Patrick smooches.
The photo below pretty accurately depicts Bradley and Patrick's relationship at present.
But Bradley has been just over the top sweet with Patrick lately so he's been getting a lot of reciprocal Patrick love and affection.
NOBODY wanted Mommy to push them on the swings yesterday. Only Bradley would do.
And then we came home and played in the backyard. It's scary sometimes to see what gives Patrick joy. Pushing the swing into Mommy and walking higher on a brick ledge than he knows I would like is all that it takes to bring a smile to Patrick's face.
But game time with Bradley ranks higher.
Then Patrick started doing a funny ear trick for Bradley and neither boy could handle how funny it was.
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| Family celebration cake that Bradley decorated himself |
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| Okay, and with a little help from the best of helpers (Patrick just stole frosting until I took the cake away) |
And the party! Balloon room! Medium amounts of chaos!
We had cake thirty minutes into the party because children wandered over to the table for snacks so we just went with it.
If there was any doubt that Patrick liked balls best. His new basketball and soccer ball both got this reaction.
I tried to keep track of who got what gift for which child during the gift opening time. Hahahahahaha.
Here's the picture Nathan took at the store of Bradley begging for dinosaur toy fillers for the pinata. Yeah, this face got what it wanted.
Pinata time mostly consisted of kids flailing wildly with bats inside my living room while I tried to keep small children from inching forward and getting hit in the head.
We loved it so much.
It was a really fun morning party and Bradley and Eleanor were so hyped up over party fun they had a lot of trouble falling asleep that evening. Bubbles right before bedtime may not have helped anything.
But sleep they did, and in an adorable manner.
Sometimes there is evidence that Eleanor has played a bit before falling asleep.
Bean bag chair on the bed happened on babysitter's watch, not ours! Poor Bradley has to tell Eleanor he's tired and just wants to go to sleep on a fairly regular basis.
They're even beyond cute together during the day time. Bradley came out of his thirty minute speech therapy class the other morning and he and Eleanor had a joyful hugging reunion and a woman nearby said "I wish my children did that when they saw each other." Sorry, lady. Not everyone gets kids like these.
Three kids in a laundry basket! One is less enthused than the others about this setup.
Bradley has taken a few turns at reading to Patrick now. Be still my heart.
I'm cute too, for the record. Special shout out to my friend Cerra for sending me some trendy mom jeans with plastic panel knees. The kids didn't understand what exactly the big deal was but they were properly excited by the hoopla when we took pictures.
The true beauty is revealed when you tuck in your shirt. So high. So tight. No stretch.
And Nathan and I have been getting a few dates in here and there recently! We're cute together as well.
Cute counts for a lot around here. Eleanor is in the process of dropping her nap and on the days where she's supposed to play quietly in her room while Bradley gets similar solo play time in his room it can be a bit hard to take that you're being separated from your best bud. I heard doors opening and closing upstairs one day and went into Bradley's room to check on what was going on and came across this:
We went through a brief Mario Kart craze recently. I'm pretty sure only Bradley was actually driving in this picture but Patrick and Eleanor were very interested in all of the buttons.
Bradley and I went on a shoe shopping trip recently and ended up at Scheel's. Childhood in the Midwest is ridiculous, I can't believe that you can go buy some Keen sandals and fit in a Ferris wheel ride and some mini bowling while you're at it.
On this trip we went to Michael's which somehow has the best dragon figurine collection around. Bradley picked out three dragons, one as a gift for a friend and two others for Patrick and himself. The catch was that he had to wait two weeks until his birthday to get the dragon he had selected for himself. He asked about it almost every day until his birthday and then on the night before his birthday we let him open up a special present - a shirt from Grandpa Dan that says "Rawr I'm 5" with a picture of a T-Rex on it. It is now his favorite shirt but there was a howl of despair when he opened it up and it was a t-shirt instead of the dragon he had been talking about for two weeks straight. So we let him open king dragon early too. Poor kid. That's a long time to wait for what is apparently the best dragon in the whole world.
Points to Nathan for capturing the moment where Bradley realized it was a shirt and not a dragon!
Recovery happy pic after getting the BEST dragon in the whole wide world.
More birthday presents were opened on the official birthday.
Thanks Grandpa Dan for the very TINY dinosaurs that the boy loves beyond all measure.
And Patrick's first glimpse of the balloon room. He was properly amazed.
We got about two weeks of use out of it after the party. What is not to love about a balloon room??
Bradley is such a sweet kid. If there was ever a child who was meant to be the oldest sibling it was sweet Bradley. He tolerates a lot and is happy as long as he's shown a little affection in return. And his dinosaur obsession has at least rubbed off on Patrick a little, Patrick still prefers borrowing Bradley's dinosaur socks to wearing anything else and if he gets his hands on a toy dinosaur he calls it a "saurus" and runs around growling loudly at everyone while waving the toy at them.
We took Bradley to kindergarten roundup and he was a champ. A little nervous at first but he has a friend from preschool that will be in his class next year so he grabbed onto him when he had to leave me to go to his classroom. However, he said "what are you doing here?" when I joined him in his class about a half hour later so I think he'll be just fine.
We had a neighborhood Easter egg hunt in the park this past Saturday so the kids practiced a bit in our own yard in preparation for the big event.
And then had couch cuddles. This lasted for about two minutes. Patrick, why won't you watch tv? In theory I get a lot of credit for how little screen time the kids get these days. However, it is Patrick's doing not mine.
He's lucky he's cute.
His dynamic with Eleanor is pretty amazing at times.
Here she is helping him out at Costco.
More reading. This time the traditional Bible story about the unicorn version of Rapunzel.
And singing Monkeys on the Bed together. You're welcome.
This guy. He's pretty irresistible when he wants to be.
Apparently I only raise children who are imps. Good thing I love it.
Eleanor has started to be a bit more interested in kitties again. Sorry, Layla. If she's cute and you make her smile then she can do whatever she wants with you.
It's so fun to see Patrick become such a little person. His favorite person in the world may be our neighbor Addison. We often have to go over and knock on her door and ask for her. Luckily for us she seems similarly enthusiastic about hanging out with the kids - especially Patrick.
But he was all about his friend Kyla today at the park too. Have I mentioned how much we love springtime? Outside all the time.
The neighborhood Easter egg hunt ended up being a blast, no surprise. And we were done within 7 minutes of the start time! I call that a great success.
But perhaps our favorite part of the Easter egg hunt has been looking for undiscovered eggs on our park outings on the days following the event. We found three or four eggs this way and I think the kids were more excited about these eggs than the piles of eggs they found during the official egg hunt.
Deanna Rose recently reopened for the season and we were very excited to renew our membership.
Even though outings like this can make a boy very tired. He generally insists upon sleeping with a ball these days. He won't let go of it even when he's asleep. So Patrick.
I was really excited the other day when I was able to get Patrick to play with trains for a while. It's a real achievement when you get the sports obsessed child to do anything besides throw a ball around or run around in the park.
It's also an achievement to find a seating arrangement on the couch that provides harmony for all three children. Patrick and Eleanor have been having death battles over a particular spot (despite Patrick generally not caring about watching tv shows for more than five minutes max). But they are happy to sit in each other's laps and share the spot. We're calling it a win!
And any pictures of this boy with little or no clothes is a win as well. Don't worry, I pinched that bottom.
These sweet kids. They have their tough moments but they are in general such dears to be around these days. I got a nap with Bradley and Eleanor in my arms yesterday (while Patrick was taking his nap as well). Big kids taking naps meant they stayed up till 9:30 playing instead of falling asleep that night while Nathan tried to have a friend over to hang out. You're welcome, honey! It was so worth it. I am soaking up these cuddles as much as I can.
Speaking of extra cuddles, sometimes when Nathan is away on a work trip I sneak Eleanor out of bed so that she can watch a cooking show with me and eat popcorn. Okay, it just happened the one time but I'm fairly certain she liked it. And Bradley would have been invited to join the party but when it's a day without naps he generally falls asleep a lot earlier than Eleanor. Next time, big guy!
And this. Moments like this. I love our little sing-a-longs.
I made these! Three of them! And I can even fit them all on my lap somehow.
What good kids. We're going to have quite the summer.
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