Bradley has done really well with full day kindergarten and although I'm glad he's enjoying himself we certainly miss him while he's gone all day.
One part of kindergarten I did not anticipate was having to message Bradley's teacher to explain his art to her. He still likes to draw dinosaurs on everything and in addition to that he likes to turn shapes and letters into animals. It's quite adorable. But somewhat questionable.
This is a long video but an example of current Bradley mode where he just makes up stories to tell himself for literally an hour at a time. I really want to sit and listen to an entire one sometime and write it down - there are plot twists, backstabbing, cute games, and generally someone is eaten by a dinosaur.
Eleanor has been bored out of her mind during nap time with Bradley away at school and has been mostly pestering me to play princess with her non stop. So we've been arranging play dates with some of her friends during that time and they have been great successes!
Patrick likes to dress up too.
Eleanor and Patrick have been getting a lot more solo play time with Bradley away at school all day and it's very sweet to see them become such buddies. Patrick is fully willing to play princess with Eleanor if that is what she desires and she is a good sport about playing ice cream cones with him, which is a game we play with megaphones and volleyballs.
Patrick has been very lonely for Mommy in the nighttime and we decided to try to give him a sibling to cuddle with instead of me. Three kids in one bed experiment!
It was very cute and cuddly ... and ultimately not a success. Apparently Mommy cuddles trump all other cuddles. We're still working on having him not come and join me in bed every night. Frequent trips are not assisting in the sleep training process.
Our local grocery store had a block party over labor day weekend and we are fans of the ice cream, bouncy houses, and train rides.
Family train ride picture!
Me with kids in front of a giant ice cream brand cow? Check!
Patrick has even been enjoying some of the Eleanor loves. She just has so much love to give.
Bradley and Patrick cuddles are more rare but when they occur they are so very enthusiastic and sweet.
Group cuddles. They thought it might be a good idea to try to sleep like this. Patrick in particular was a big fan of this idea.
There is a new game that is all the rage in the Scott house these days. All of us enjoy playing it but Patrick is the one who has truly embraced it as only a two year old can. This is the game: you guess the name of the person you're trying to talk to and you guess WRONG on repeat and it's HILARIOUS. It's kind of the perfect little brother game, because the older sibling will vehemently tell you they are NOT a kitty or they are NOT Mommy or Daddy and that makes it all the more enjoyable. Hearing Patrick walking down the hall at bedtime and telling Eleanor "good night, DADDY!" on repeat gives me great joy. At that point of the evening it sometimes gives Eleanor a bit of angst, but again, that just adds to the appeal of the game for some small persons. As a younger sibling myself, my sympathies often lie with Patrick. Also, he's really cute and that helps him out more than he knows.
We also are still very devoted to the discussion of all things related to monsters. Here is an instant classic video where Patrick talks about hitting monsters with sticks and Eleanor discusses fashion.
And it's even funnier when you mix things up with our ever constant monster, bad guy, and princess stories.
More fighting of monsters, but with the vacuum cleaning attachment and on my bed.
Seriously, we talk about monsters and bad guys and princesses pretty constantly.
Here Patrick is with his his friend/obsession, sweet Mabel. It's very fun to tell him we're going to go play with Mabel and have him say "I cuddle her SO much!"
We usually hang out with Mabel at the library and they had a free demonstration of a music class for toddlers that we went to and it's fairly apparent Patrick enjoyed it thoroughly.
Wonderful Nathan has been game for all our hardcore summer fun. View from the top of the ferris wheel at Scheels!
He fixed up the platform swing which had fallen into disrepair and if you're questioning how and when children get tired of a giant swing, the answer is: never.
Nathan pushes the kids considerably higher than I do.
Bradley wins some amazing big brother points for this video.
We've been enjoying Deanna Rose a lot now that it's not quite as hot out and sometimes we even look at an animal there (very much a secondary goal for us. Pretend horses and cows and playgrounds generally rank much higher.)
But when we do love a goat, it KNOWS it has been loved. Patrick hasn't gotten bitten yet, which is a statement to how nice these little animals are.
Eleanor discovered that the goats think her shirts are delicious. Fortunately she thought that was quite funny.
Oh, our other favorite attraction is the hand washing stations with the air hand dryers. We make fun happen wherever we go.
Nathan has been gone for quite a few work trips in September, which is not our favorite but we make do. We like to send him videos to share how much we miss him!
I have kept up my library habit where we check out approximately 20-30 books each week, because who wouldn't do it for moments like these? They get so excited about all the new books.
And thank you Grandma Kathy for reinforcing Eleanor's princess obsession with her new place mat that has princesses and a picture of herself on it!
We squeezed a zoo trip in over labor day weekend as well (like I said, I'm a bit behind on my blog posts).
It's worth going to these places for moments like these. I cannot handle the sweetness in this picture. We're on a zoo tram in this photo.
We love our zoo "rides."
We had some close encounters with the cheetahs on this trip, which the kids took in stride. Nathan and I were a little less comfortable with how close the wild animals were getting to our children, even with a glass wall in between them.
Like, seriously close.
If you're wondering if Bradley was willing to roar while posing for the photo, I would like to ask you if you have met Bradley.
And of course our favorite part of the zoo, the sculptures we climb on at the zoo entrance. Of course.
We took the kids for one last pool outing (still labor day weekend. We packed in the fun.)
Little Patrick went down the big slide on repeat because we have yet another maniac child on our hands.
He went down in an inner tube. But still. I had a couple moms nearby ask me just how old he was because he was the smallest child going down the slides. He swam to the wall a few times as well! Just kicking hard as he pushed off Nathan, but still, legitimate swimming! Bradley went from no swimming to passing a swim test this summer, Eleanor can upright doggy paddle most of the length of a pool, and Patrick can swim a little now too. Great success!
And back to Deanna Rose. Same weekend. I'm not sure how we fit all this in.
As well as a park outing! If it's nice weather we need to be outside!
Eleanor got a grand sendoff for her first day of school.
She was just a little excited.
Boys insisted on solo pictures as well. I am LOVING Patrick's fake smiles for pictures.
She loves her teacher and has a bunch of friends from last year in her class.
Patrick and I rampaged during our solo time (of course). Much yelling and bashing trees at the park with sticks.
Eleanor has been a wee bit tired since school started. We went to the gym that afternoon and I cuddled her for a couple minutes before we were supposed to go in for my class and she fell asleep almost instantly, poor thing.
Finding Eleanor asleep in various places around the house while I put Patrick down for his naps has become a rather common occurrence. School is so fun and soooo tiring.
And oven mitt and bicycle time.
And these stalwart children are still willing to eat popsicles even when it's overcast and in the mid sixties. Although that may mean a blanket may have to be pulled out. We have an ongoing routine where if they run around outside and get hot and sweaty then it's time for a popsicle break. We mostly do this after picking Bradley up from school. We've gotten to the point that all three children will announce "I'm sweaty!" even before we've gotten out of the car from picking him up. So the "sweaty" children go pull up chairs while I get out the popsicles ... and sometimes a blanket.
Cookies outside the bank may be a better bet.
We even got in a dentist appointment for Eleanor's first week of school! I don't know what I was thinking have both of the big kids teeth cleaned and mine as well while Patrick hung out ... but it worked! He did demand to sit on the examination chair and have his teeth counted at one point, and the very nice hygienist went along with his request.
This trio of sweetest has been beyond adorable together lately. We love outside time and we love making up games together.
Sometimes things can be tricky though because one child lives to be an imp. He "steals" my scrambled eggs every morning.
An imp but a smart one - he successfully counts to 14 in this video and counted to 30 for me the other day!
So much imp. His somersaults are rather excellent as well.
Okay, they all have their impish moments. Here's Eleanor taking advantage of drawing a chalk outline of Bradley for some tickle time.
After all of tennis time in Seattle we decided to give it a go here at the high school courts one weekend. It was nice we had six courts for our use because we used all of them. Bradley and Eleanor spent a considerable amount of time just chasing balls up and down all of the courts.
At least we looked good.
Nathan gave some lessons to the kids and we even got to play a bit, courtesy of the kindle we brought along with us to entertain the kids during official grownup tennis time!
Patrick is champ at all the sports, even if it's playing stair step basketball in our basement.
Crafts have been king at the Scott house ever since school started.
Bradley in particular has buried every open table we have under a pile of his work. He's quite creative and very independent, which has its pros and cons. Don't leave any interesting looking piece of paper out in his sight, because it might be cut into bits and incorporated into a project. Nathan never got to see his birthday card from Grandpa Dan because that was seized INSTANTLY and cut into interesting shapes and glued to something else.
Nathan has been hanging tough through the start of football season. It's a tough time for him, but he pulls through somehow.
He has trained all three kids to cheer for the Seahawks and they are all excited whenever it's time to wear matching Seahawks gear. It's fairly precious. They show little to not interest in the games however, Nathan will have it playing in the basement and they'll discuss who they're rooting for (based on colors) and then go about their business playing and turn and watch for every commercial.
We sent this video to Nathan from the airport on our way back from Santa Cruz when the Seahawks were playing. Bradley was very proud of himself.
Sometimes Nathan and I try to take a cute picture together.
And then THIS happens. I think my face adequately sums up my thoughts on this matter.
But Eleanor's favorite favorite thing to wear now is her Halloween costume for this year, an Elsa dress that lights up and plays music! I know, right? It's rather amazing.
Patrick thinks so too ... there have only been a few fights over this outfit.
Eleanor has been loving her preschool so much. Too much, really. I was going to try to switch her to a more academically rigorous program that runs at Bradley's elementary school in the afternoon four days per week (so convenient!) and the day I found out that she had earned a spot off the waitlist was the day I picked her up from school and they were doing an exciting hat stacking activity at pickup. When I asked her "um, so what do you think about switching preschools?" the answer was "NONONO!" So the sweet little girl gets to stay at the place that she loves.
She also gets to stay up late and have a popcorn and show date with Mommy from time to time when she's had a nap during the day and Daddy is on a work trip. She's such a good sport about these things.
And one time we did a late night craft for both Bradley and Eleanor and we got this amazing video where they discuss which Halloween monsters eat blood ...
Bradley is doing well at school despite my worries about him having to go full day. Learning how to deal with the car line has been a bit of a process, especially since we generally have to wake Patrick up from his afternoon nap in order to get there in time and so there have been a few occasions where Bradley has been almost the last kid picked up and he was not a fan of this at all. So I figured out that we can just park and walk up and get him which Bradley loves. There is a lot of fanfare and joyous hugs. Eleanor generally plasters herself to Bradley and Patrick finds Bradley's friend Noah and smothers him with love, which resulted in some confusion from the teachers there for a while who wondered just how many kids I was picking up. Patrick just really loves Noah.
After a couple weeks at school I asked Bradley what his favorite part of school was, assuming he was say "P.E." or "recess" or something along those lines. My sweet boy's response? "The projects!" He has taken over the desk in our office which is covered in drawings and things he has glued together or cut out. Lots of flags he has assembled from taping pencils onto decorated pieces of paper, lots of board games from cardboard he has scrounged from the recycling, it's pretty darn cute.
When we were getting ready to leave for our trip to Santa Cruz, Bradley was at first worried about the news that he would miss one day of school in order to leave for this trip. They have been doing a big craft every day with a letter of the alphabet and he didn't want to miss anything. So I asked his teacher if she could save some craft materials for him and she was kind enough to agree. Santa Cruz trip was a go!
We started our trip to the airport already tired.
But rallied for an adorable shuttle ride to the airport.
And for the plane ride. He demanded I read a new book to him for our entire first flight, the second leg of the trip he took a movie break.
He was slightly tired from our travels but dinosaur sheets make everything better.
This is the face I woke up to every morning.
Bradley was very busy for our rather short trip (it was just 2.5 days long).
We brought our arts and crafts skills with us and I think all of us were rather impressed by Bradley's pumpkin decorating ability.
He had a medium level meltdown when we were at the airport for our return flight when he realized I had not in fact packed a pumpkin in our small carry-on bag. In his defense, it's a pretty awesome pumpkin. However ... it's a PUMPKIN. Oh my. Diana has it on proud display outside their house now.
I think I caught air at one point.
More park time. If I had my way he would have worn that adorable hat the entire trip.
Pushing a ball at the park. So much bonding took place here.
It was kind of amazing to have so much one on one time with my big boy - it really doesn't happen often anymore!
He demanded that his Uncle Bill chase him at the beach.
And let it be known that this may be my Aunt Diana's favorite picture of the trip.
I love this one - in front of a full size blue whale skeleton replica!
Meanwhile, Nathan took the other two kiddos out on a variety of outings (Deanna Rose again!) and earned lifelong points with Eleanor based on the number of Barbie movies he let her and Patrick watch.
Meanwhile, in Santa Cruz, Bradley was learning the value of making demands to loving relatives that are not his parents.
He saw this man play the saw and made the request that he play the song "Oh yeah, my name's T-Rex" but sadly the poor man did not know that popular YouTube ditty.
Ice cream break!
Bradley's face here is perfection, right down to the chocolate ice cream smeared everywhere across it.
Our one group shot of the trip (minus Granddad).
And Bradley with Granddad! I love it so much. It was an instant love connection.
Bradley enjoyed getting to explore the garden as well.
Diana made him this bean teepee, which was a favorite spot for garden hide and seek games.
And we established that the turtle was stone and decorative and not to be feared.
He was so pleased to have willing readers at his beck and call.
And I believe he may be a fan of the Santa Cruz boardwalk.
Especially the rides! Bulgie the Whale was cute.
Rollercoaster was cuter
But the ride of questionable historical accuracy where the Santa Cruz cavemen battle dinosaurs and sea serpents was the big winner of the bunch.
That and the chocolate dipped cone he got. It was quite the food trip for Bradley.
My favorite part may have been going out on the pier to watch the sea lions sunbath and nap. We hung out and watched them for quite a while.
And more beach tag before we went home (Uncle Bill is such a good sport).
Bradley with Granddad was sweet although not pictured are all the times Bradley tried to start rough housing with my 92 year old Granddad and I had to put a stop to it.
I got a few pictures of me with my wonderful Granddad right before we had to leave for the airport.
Someone was eager to worm his way in to these photos. You get away with a lot when you're cute.
And here is the cute face reading his new Dogman book which he loved at first sight and I actively campaigned against when we saw it at the bookstore (it's by the author of Captain Underpants and there are some poop jokes). However, Bradley had an aunt and uncle on his team and they persevered and got him his new favorite book that I have had the great joy of reading to him on repeat.
The trip was a lot of fun, despite Bradley fighting a bit of a rotten cold the entire time we were there. Thank you Kindergarten germs.
And Eleanor was a wee bit cuddly with Bradley when he got home. I'm told there were a lot of complaints about the prospect of cold feet in the night time while he was away.
Patrick has a bit of a fan club with some of the front desk ladies at the gym and we went through a period where we got to bring roses home from the gym.
Eleanor liked this period of time very much.
But seriously, who wouldn't want to give flowers to faces like this?
Grandma Colleen and Kerry visited us this past weekend and we got to go to the Louisburg Cider Mill Festival with them, which was a blast as always.
Bradley recently invented a game, which he calls "Bumper Cars" which he likes to play on trampolines or the air pillow pictured above. The way it works is, you push someone over so they fall down and then they're out. Unfortunately, each time he has played he has neglected to explain the rules to the children he is attempting to play the game with so they become upset about being shoved over on repeat and he becomes furious with them for cheating when they don't stay "out" like they are supposed to. He tried to play it with Patrick at the Cider Mill and it didn't go well. Poor Patrick.
It was a very hot morning, but we had a lot of fun. Good thing there were slushie apple ciders to drink.
A new addition to the festival this year was the corn pit. It was basically like a sand pit, but with corn. We liked it.
Bradley decided it would be fun to be buried in the corn and luckily for him, he had two siblings eager to assist in this endeavor.
So eager. You wouldn't believe how much corn ended up in our next load of wash.
Sadly, this was the best group photo I got for Colleen and Kerry's visit. It's a cute one, too bad I didn't take the lighting into account when taking the picture.
Tractor ride.
Big slides out in the field.
And other fun items way out in the field! We could have spent hours here, too bad it was so hot and we only lasted an hour and a half.
Why are only two children in this picture, you ask?
Because this one adamantly refused to go anywhere near the sign without Mommy. This is about the moment we figured we were done at the festival.
Reading time and cuddles rounded out the trip.
And doughnuts and cookies at church when we finally used Eleanor's birthday certificate. The combination of faces in this photo gives me great delight.
Eleanor allowed me to do pigtails in her hair a couple days in a row and it about broke me. Could not handle the cuteness.
Nathan got to chaperone Bradley's kindergarten field trip to Paradise Park and the pics I was sent were so sweet and adorable and only slightly chaotic.
Nathan did Bradley's fancy face paint! He was a tiger.
Later that afternoon. This is what I get when I ask the boys to make cute faces.
Not that some of us would ever purposefully miss an opportunity to love a kitty.
One would think the cats would get smarter or faster around the two year old who loves them too much, but he keeps catching them on repeat. Sookie is considerably larger than the other two cats now and there's a fair amount of grunting by Patrick when he tries to carry her around.
I'm training Eleanor well in the way of cats. I was reading her a book and Meg camped out on my lap and this kept happening naturally so we just went with it. Eleanor mustache you a question ...
And. Um. I got out the box of fall decorations and the cat Halloween costumes were in there. So we tried them out. I think we missed doing this the last year or two, the cats definitely had feelings about this whole endeavor.
Eleanor keeps asking to put the cats in their costumes again but I am showing some loving restraint and I'm only going to do it once more before Halloween. Poor kitties.
Patrick found the nerf gun we had hidden away in a Halloween decorations box and there has been great joy among the children at its discovery. There was also a sword in the box which has only had to be confiscated once so far. We'll see how long toy weapons last in our house, despite the joy they bring to the children.
Bradley had a fun run at his school and originally told me he didn't want me to donate per lap he ran, but to give a flat fee instead because running too much might make him tired. Of course he ended up running the maximum number of laps and his friend's mom sent me this adorable picture of him and his friend Noah.
Am I gushing about these kids too much these days? It's well deserved.
I mean, look at this dinosaur mask Bradley made for himself for our trip to the park yesterday. I only tied the string on, he did the rest.
Do you SEE Bradley and Eleanor together? And yeah, we stand up to swing now. Bradley and Eleanor did it so Patrick had to yell at everyone until it was his turn to do it as well. It's a tough job keeping up with the big kids but he excels in his devotion to the task.
Here's a Bradley original dinosaur song to end this blog post. You know you'll be singing it to yourself later.
