She and the boys helped make these cupcakes. I am validated in not letting Patrick help bake very often because it turns out he'll throw anything into the mixing bowl to see it go and we lost a reasonable number of cupcake wrappers due to his scientific curiosity about physics and destruction.
At least the batter turned out yummy! He was of great assistance during this time. All of the kids were!
And we had a tea party birthday theme due to the influence of one of her favorite books, The Princess in Black. It was actually not too much work on my part (hurray!) because it turns out if you just use heart cookie cutters to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and you dip some pretzels in chocolate you have properly dazzled your four year old audience.
Also, you buy a bundle of chintzy plastic crowns and wands and you are all set. Party complete.
The mark on Eleanor's forehead is from an unfortunate collision with a big kid and a stone table at the pool earlier that week. Poor thing. It has mostly healed now but it was a very big owie for a sweet little girl.
Okay, and you have water balloons with a dinosaur target so that little girls in fancy dresses don't get wet. They still got wet when they popped water balloons in their own faces (oops) but I can't help you there, sweet little princess girls.
Eleanor's most treasured gift may have been long Rapunzel hair. Bradley and Patrick keep running around with it pretending it's a snake, here's hoping it survives more than a few weeks.
For my birthday (yes, I had one too. Mine just is somewhat overshadowed by a cute little girl's birthday two days later) I wanted to go to a Royals game with the whole family. And it's really good I had something I could officially call my present because Eleanor was slightly disappointed with all the adorable homemade cards that she and her brothers made me and on my birthday morning she told me "Is it your real birthday? Do we need to make you more presents? You need a REAL present like a mermaid Barbie."
And for the record, Bradley made me a book about dragons that I will treasure for always and need to photograph page by page and include in this blog. It's just that good.
But we went to a Royals game and I guess it should have been an indicator of how things were going to go when two children fell asleep just on the ride to the ball park.
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| Sitting in the parking lot to give the tired boys a few more minutes of rest. |
Fortunately he rallied quickly. Eleanor was gracious enough to be willing to be carried at that point.
We made it until the second pitch of the game before Eleanor started asking "Can we have ice cream? I want ice cream!" on repeat.
She had to make do with popcorn.
And all of the kids really enjoyed cracking peanuts but no one really wanted to eat them.
I think we made it until the third inning in our actual seats. All three children mostly were staring away from the field and the players and were completely unimpressed and uninterested by a Royals home run.
So we went and got ice cream. And also went on a carousel ride. The stadium here is ridiculous, there was also a mini golf course back there, batting cages, and a mini baseball field for kids to play around on. But mostly we were in it for the ice cream.
We got a group picture.
But this one taken at our seats may be a more accurate depiction of how things went at the game. It was a lot of fun! But oh my goodness. It's really good Nathan and I weren't too worried about sitting and paying attention to the game.
Bradley is so stinkin cute I can hardly stand it. His idea to use his ice cream cup hat.
But then the game that had started out at 80 degrees and quite toasty (I got a sunburn) turned on us and we got a bit soaked. We took a group vote to stay or go and the result was unanimous.
So stinkin sweet. They were little champs and it was a lot of fun, although Nathan and I discussed how much better it would be if we took grandparent reinforcements next time. The Royals lost by the way. No one in our car seemed to care.
Because sweet Eleanor had a pretty reasonable nap on the way home she was HYPED at bedtime and was having a tough time settling down. So I thought, why fight it? And she and I had some super fancy girl chat time at the island for a while. We talked about taking a fancy girls only trip at some point in the future and I asked her if she wanted to go to the ocean or mountains. She said she wanted to go to the creek behind our house with me. Honestly, it's a pretty great reminder that kids really don't need or even really want big things most of the time. They just want a little girls' trip to the creek.
She did eventually go to sleep.
Bonus sleeping pictures of children.
Sometimes Eleanor still takes naps when I send her into her room for quiet time and it's pretty adorable.
And sometimes Eleanor and Mommy have to spend some quality time together sleeping in after dealing with a 3am nose bleed. And also Meg likes to get in on the action. Yes, her head is literally on my head. She sleeps on me like this every morning actually, she comes in yowling at 5:45 typically and wakes me up and then walks all over me until she finds a comfy spot to go back to sleep. Our relationship is ... quite close.
But look! I get to do other fun things. I finally tried out the kids' swing. It's pretty darn fun. I'm going to start fighting for my turn too!!
And we unlocked a new achievement by letting the kids have chocolate milkshakes on the way home from ordering Eleanor's ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. The two year old only spilled a little bit and all three were ecstatic over the rare treat so we're calling it a success.
We also went to a free puppet show at a nearby park.
Patrick's friend Mabel was there with us.
I really hope this is a lifelong friendship, they are just too sweet together.
And we met up with Mabel and her brothers later that day (my birthday!) for pool time and pizza. I might insist that Patrick eat all future meals outside in clothes that don't matter and where we can easily dunk him in some water to clean him off. At least more pizza ended up in his body than on his face.
Because this is how he acts for mealtimes at home. Is this what you call a handful of a child?
Kids had final swim lessons and Eleanor bravely went down a slide on her teacher's lap and declared that she liked it! Not too bad for the girl who still refuses to put her face in the water.
Brave Bradley jumped off the diving board on repeat and was great at swimming back to the wall on his own. It's so fun to see him work on his swimming!
Patrick could hardly stand watching his big brother and sister at the pool without getting to join in and is hardcore into copying them with everything we do at the park. Or following them around and being near them. Or just anything he can do to be a little bit more like them.
Fortunately for Patrick, he has the sweetest brother and sister ever and both heartily enjoy the compliment of Patrick's attention. Well, when toys aren't involved at least. Park time is the best.
This picture is sweet because Nathan had Patrick occupied pulling the wagon at this point. Often all three children fight over holding my hands at the same time and we haven't hit on a winning compromise yet.
But seriously, there is just a small amount of studying them and copying their every move.
One minute later ...
If he copies Eleanor he will have a lot of work ahead of him. The girl actually does this when riding her scooter. Could she be any more perfect?
Patrick is really into books now, which is great for all involved although it's a little rough when he comes into our bedroom at 6:30 in the morning and happily shoves a book in my face while saying "Read! Read!" I suppose I may be encouraging it with our current book habit from the library. Did you know that they only let you put 30 books on hold at a time? I do, because I hit that cap regularly when we go on our weekly trip to the library to return one batch of books and get the next.
Reading time is also excellent cuddles time.
We recently had to go through a bit of an unexpected decision making process when full day kindergarten became fully funded in Kansas and the school got rid of the half day class we had enrolled Bradley in for the upcoming year. I talked to Bradley about the prospect of him going full day and he asked me if I could show him how to draw me. I said "Why?" and he replied in a quavery voice "Because I want to be able to see you when I miss you!"
He's going half day. At least for the first two months so he can have a nice transition. We're still allowed to send him half day and I just pick him up from his class early every day. All of the activities like PE and art and music are in the afternoon and we figure he'll want to go to those eventually but there's no rush. We're going to make sure this sweet little guy has a nice time at school and doesn't have to miss his mommy too much!
And also we need more of this in our lives. Oh the Dinosaurs are Partying Late at Night is a Bradley original song that the entire family knows and enjoys. The verses vary but the chorus remains the same. And yeah, Patrick is into everything right now. Big kids are such champs around him.
We went to the dinosaur museum for another class this past week and my children were very calm while posing for photos of the boys in matching dinosaur shorts courtesy of Grandma Kathy (we got a lot of compliments on them while we were there).
So much calm.
And I've been trying to give the kids more time to just play around the house and stop dragging them out for activities at every opportunity and the result has been forts. So many forts. We had thunderstorms all morning today so we stayed home to be cozy and the entire house is destroyed. Bradley asked if he could move the dining room table at one point to block off an area (mostly our forts seem to be walls of furniture) and I did put my foot down on that one but every other piece of movable furniture was utilized. I feel like this is just the beginning of a fort making era. Wish me luck.
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