Grandma and Grandpa Redfern and Uncle Thomas Visit and Patrick is Doing All the Things!

Patrick is crawling. Patrick has his first tooth. Patrick is babbling! My sweet baby is doing so many new things.

Crawling officially started and seven and a half months. The first tooth was a week after that and I think babbling began on a day or two after the tooth popped through. It was a busy November for such a little guy!

Also, I hope its clear that I don't believe in putting clothes on the baby if naked baby is at all an option.

I know I have been vocal in my pride of baby Patrick's accomplishments because Bradley and Eleanor will both go over and pat him on the head and say "good baby, ohhh, you're so cute!" Bradley will tell anyone who will listen how big his baby brother is and Eleanor informed me today when I was squishing her legs (I love squeezing cute little legs) that Patrick was the one with the squishy legs and I was supposed to squish HIS legs, not hers.

Bradley has been a big help as we've been getting Patrick to demonstrate his crawling abilities for videos I want to take of him.

 Oh this sweet little bubba. He is universally adored.

He also has his first tooth now and started babbling about a day after the tooth came in. He loves having conversations. I'm not kidding, he beams and babbles back when you babytalk at him.

My parents and brother Thomas came out to visit for Thanksgiving, which was great because Nathan had a work trip to Columbia and it would have been a very sad and lonesome Thanksgiving without them.

Eleanor's reaction to hearing that grandparents would be visiting the next day.

Aaaand ... instant roughhousing with Grandpa upon his arrival. Also, Eleanor and Bradley are wearing old outfits that my mom originally made for me and my brother Thomas. A bit surreal to see them on my kids!

We got in plenty of reading time too. Bradley had a little bit of a cough while my parents were here and milked it for all it was worth whenever it was convenient to be a bit sick. My favorite part was bedtime when I would ask him if he was sick and he would immediately cough and ask for medicine. The best was the time I gave him medicine and he downed it and coughed again and told me he was still sick and needed more medicine. Fortunately his feelings weren't hurt when Nathan and I laughed and told him one dose of baby Tylenol was plenty.

Grandma was lucky enough to get to participate in a shopping trip with Eleanor. It truly is a lot of fun, Eleanor is happy to hop in and out of the car cart repeatedly so she can assist with food selection. Both Eleanor and Bradley beg to run errands with us and we're happy to oblige. This past weekend Bradley and Eleanor went grocery shopping with me and then Nathan and I traded children so he could take them to get the air in my tires checked while I played at home with baby Patrick. So fun to take our big helpers out with us!

Grandma and Eleanor made cookies together while Bradley was at school one morning and I don't know who had more fun.

And thanks to my mom for bringing a bag of my childhood bows and ribbons for Eleanor to use. It would be great if Eleanor's favorite one wasn't the biggest and most ridiculous one.

 

 Patrick got in plenty of grandparent cuddles during their trip.

Don't worry, Daddy. You're still Patrick's number one guy. And Layla is something too ...

We were happy to get some help putting up Christmas decorations although I'm sad to say that Grandpa was pretty distracted during quite a bit of it and didn't seem to do his share when assembling the Christmas tree.

See, even Eleanor did work.

But Grandpa seemed more interested in catching children as they ran around the tree and jumped on him.

Silly Grandpa. Also, there's nothing quite like Bradley's face when he is joyfully being an imp.

Bedtime!

Nathan and I even got to go out on a date while my parents were here so we chose to go and do what we used to do before kids: go to a dive bar and play buck hunter. It was pretty great. I have great technique for the record. 

Nathan might have beat me by a lot. 

Uncle Thomas arrived the next day and quickly established himself as a go to cuddle and play person with the kids.

Well, we may have been more into play than cuddles. 

Fun note: Bradley is not at all allowed to do this but I wasn't downstairs at the time so my mom took pictures of her cute grandson in action instead of saving Thomas' life. 

Patrick says he's learning to do whatever Bradley does. 

Patrick enjoyed the wild play WAY too much.

This is the best picture ever taken of my dad. For once no one is paying attention to the child in the picture.

My mom took a bunch of pictures for some math and physics books she makes using grandchildren to demonstrate various laws and principles. If you're curious why there are so many jumping pictures or pictures of children with measuring tape, physics textbooks, and calculators, this is why. 

We went shopping for early Christmas presents for the kids while the grandparents were here to see them enjoy their presents in person.

The kids have really been into the show Doc McStuffins lately so it was rather perfect for Eleanor to get a themed doctor's kit.

It was put to a LOT of use. Lucky Grandma.

Eleanor would even sing the song from the show "going to check your eyes, check your ears, see how much you have growwwwwn"

Eleanor doesn't use the kit for many actual checkups since the grandparents have left. No one is as good of a candidate for a checkup as Grandma it seems. My favorite was when I would hear Eleanor tell my mom that she was going to give her a shot and my mom would ask if it was going to hurt. Eleanor's answer was always an emphatic "yes!"

We went out to a local museum and checked out a few shops.

But most of our fun was had when we stayed home.

Cutest little elf ever.

I wonder what the baby wants ...

We had nice weather and went out to the park a bunch while our visitors were here.

Grandma got "surprised" at the bottom of the slide a bunch.

Grandpa went down the slide with Patrick for Patrick's first official trip down a slide. Patrick was less than impressed. 

Swings are better.

It looks like love but he also chews on my face when he's getting hungry. I'm pretty sure the latter is what was going on in this picture. 

Eleanor does this thing now where she sighs and does a dejected face whenever she's disappointed about something. Too bad for her that it's adorable and I kind of love it. Here was her reaction to being told it was time to go home.

This is what mornings look like when we have visitors. Wake up and come play with us!

We have a new table with a bench which is great when grandparents are taking time eating breakfast and maybe they could use some youthful assistance.

The children could not believe how many pony rides and other fun, wild games they got to play while Uncle Thomas was here.

Patrick was WAY too excited to get in on the fun. He was only 7 months old in this picture. It's so fun seeing his personality coming through, Bradley is so excited about all the fun and destruction he and his brother will wage together. 

 It was pretty hilarious watching Uncle Thomas teach the kids how to do push-ups.

Patrick was grabbing at Uncle Thomas' face in this picture in addition to whatever Bradley was doing.

And the picture I got of me and Thomas before he had to run out the door to go to the airport. Oh well. 

Patrick captures our feelings about family leaving.

Don't worry, he recovered.

One of my favorite things these days is three kids in the bath together. That and pinching that perfect baby bottom!

 We were so happy when Daddy got home so we could resume our typical cuddly weekend routine.

More cuddles!

This is a pretty long video but I like it because it's fairly typical for how mealtimes work now. Patrick loves sharing food with his big brother and sister but I think he wishes more food would end up in his mouth.

Bradley loves making faces and crossing his eyes - like all the time. It's difficult to believe you're being taken seriously when you're trying to talk to a guy who is crossing his eyes as he stares back at you.

I signed Bradley up for 10 session of introductory martial arts that begin in January and to say that he is excited is an understatement. I *might* have sold him on it by showing him youtube clips of other kids doing martial arts and telling him "You have to yell a bunch. And you kind of pretend fight with kicks and hits. And they teach you how to break a block in half." The day I signed up him he told Nathan at bedtime "I want to do karate right now!" and literally the first words out of his mouth to me when I came in his room to cuddle him in the morning were "can I do karate today?" I hope I haven't over sold it but I truly think he'll have a blast.

Serious block building time for the bros. 

He's so protective of his little brother.

I love the stage Bradley is at right now. He says the most awesome things on a regular basis. I picked him up from MOPS childcare a few weeks ago and they showed me the paper pumpkin they had him decorate for a craft. If you look closely at the pumpkin it says "Thank you God for ..." and Bradley had them write "real pumpkins." I laughed immediately when I saw it because that is so Bradley. I'm sure they told him he was doing a pumpkin craft and he wanted to point out that this was NOT a real pumpkin.

We recently switched up our bedtime routine a little bit so Patrick gets to read books with his big brother and sister every night and he loves it! So do Bradley and Eleanor for that matter.

Bradley is loving preschool. The teacher has a little cute thing the kids do before they enter the class every day: one time they walked on a balance beam, another time they got to say hi to a little puppet she was holding. The other day all they had to do was give her a high five. The child in front of Bradley gave Mrs. Bieker a high five and then she held her hand up for Bradley, who promptly hit himself in the forehead and started cackling. She held her hand up again and he poked it with one finger and giggled. So she held it for the first kid again who happily demonstrated the proper technique and then Bradley gave in and did a normal high five and walked into class. To say we love Mrs. Bieker is an understatement, not every teacher would be so okay with a cute but goofy little guy.

Speaking of goofy, here is a recent dinnertime conversation I had with Bradley. Make sure you watch it to the end, it's worth it.

Eleanor is giving him a run for his money though. This next video was taken about five minutes after the first.

Bradley's face has mostly healed and we've discussed with Eleanor how she can talk or holler at Bradley as much as she wants but scratching is on the no no list.

 

Sometimes I take Eleanor out places and even I can't handle how cute she is.

 She lined up all the chairs at the library and this was her celebration time.

Eleanor is not yet potty trained but she saw her big kid underwear in a drawer the other day so she begged to get to try it on.

Unfortunately, the Wonder Woman underwear had to be taken off and a diaper and pants had to be put back on. 

My three angel children have been napping at the same time in the afternoon most days so Meg and I are generally able to get in some quality time while I try to get in a little snooze myself. Meg could win a cuddle kitty award.

But even when Patrick doesn't go along with the preferred nap routine it's not too bad. He's SO much fun to be around these days. The ladies who help at the nursery at church keep asking me if he's always such a nice and happy baby (when they're not threatening to steal him from me). He's pretty amazing, this is the baby jackpot right here. 

All three are pretty great. Nathan and I may have passed on some serious cuddle genes.

Although Daddy is the favorite for more active activities. Kudos to Daddy for keeping rough house time fun and having it really never end in tears because he's so careful about the kids. 

My favorite thing these days is pictures of all three kids together. Patrick desperately wants to be in on whatever Bradley and Eleanor are doing.

Reading Grandma Kathy's math and physics books about themselves in matching Grandma shirts. I put Patrick in his shirt and the other two requested that they get to match. Done! Are you kidding me, children? Anytime!

We're having an incredibly mild late fall and I can't believe how much outdoor time we're getting.

And Patrick can ride in the wagon now, which is wonderful! Eleanor and Bradley are taking turns trying to pull the wagon ... is this when we get a puppy because everything is getting so easy?