Spring Break and Grandpa Dan and Aunt Anna Visit

The big kids have recently discovered Calvin and Hobbes comics over at my parents' house and it's beautiful to see that some things from my childhood remain just as good as I remember.

Test run on the pokeball cupcakes Grandma is making for Bradley's birthday party.

And making cinnamon rolls together on another occasion. Such fun to bake with Grandma!

My dad getting in some Juliet time at our house.

Also, we love cuddles.

Cute Bradley is going strong on Cub Scouts, he's the orange hat in the center slightly to the left in the pic. They had an awards ceremony recently and I'm told it was very fun chaos.

Meanwhile, I was at home with Patrick and the girls. Eleanor and I decided it was high time for Juliet to play Calico Critters for the first time.

And here is another one of the series I'm calling "Juliet wakes Patrick up from his nap." Sometimes a boy can be a little cranky when he's woken up from his beauty rest but he's never unhappy when he's woken up by Juliet cuddles.

And Eleanor seeks out Juliet cuddles whenever she can as well.

Eleanor had her kindergarten musical right before spring break and it was crazy cute to watch.

She had a pretty good audience there to watch her. My folks came and of course Juliet was there too.

Eleanor has been just a *little* excited about an upcoming girls' trip to Santa Cruz this summer and has been busy planning meals with me and talking about how many air planes we're going to ride on and basically driving her brothers mad with jealousy. Here she is with her picture of her and me on either side of Juliet on an airplane.

I get art like this on almost a daily basis. I don't get tired of it.

Typical view of our living room in the evening. Bradley remains obsessed with the game Dragonwood.

And this is a lot of our mornings. Eleanor comes in to our bed to cuddle and hopes that she's joined by a Juliet.

We took Juliet in for her official one month check-up a few weeks back and it was an active crew of older kids who accompanied her. I had the kids play I Spy while we waited for the doctor to come in the room in order to keep them occupied. When she came in and started chatting with the kids Bradley told her they had been playing a game while waiting and said "I spy something cute!" while gazing adoringly at Juliet. Patrick guessed "Her?" and pointed at the doctor. We may be her favorite patients now.

The doctor also told the kids that when Juliet cries that's her way of talking to us so now whenever Juliet starts crying Patrick says, "Stop, she's talking!" when Nathan or I try to comfort her with a pacifier.

Juliet was a solid 9 lbs at her one month appointment so she's growing well.

All the kids love holding Juliet and will drop whatever they're doing whenever a rare opportunity to hold a mellow Juliet arises.

Eleanor knows so many things. Patrick is lucky to have her.

We're getting lots of smiles! Juliet first smiled at 4.5 weeks old which is the earliest of all the kids. However, yesterday she smiled at a Pikachu hat hanging on the hall tree so maybe I shouldn't be quite as honored whenever she smiles at me.

Bradley loves are a sight to behold. We keep trying to tell him to kiss her on the top of her head instead of her cheeks (cheek kisses often turn into mouth kisses because of wiggly baby behavior) but he keeps trying to sneak kisses on her sweet cheeks and I can't really blame him.

Patrick is really in to giving Juliet her pacifier.

And if a pacifier isn't available he'll make do with whatever else is around.

This is how Nathan and Juliet spend a fair number of evenings.

Sleepy smiles!

Proof that Bradley is the sweetest boy in the entire world (well, except for Patrick at times.) I took a video of Eleanor talking about her trip to Santa Cruz this summer and he desperately wanted to record a video as well for my Aunt Diana even though he doesn't remember who she is exactly because it's been a while since he last saw her.

He also scored himself a playdate with his friend Caroline after I sent her mother a text of this picture he brought home from school. It says "If I could give anything to anyone I would give my mom and Caroline a new dress because they are nice." Both Caroline and I were rather delighted by how thoughtful Bradley is.

Juliet and I got to meet up with my cousin Katie for a short while when her family was in Kansas City for a Spring Break trip.

Juliet slept the whole time, such a good girl.

The one thing everyone comments on when they see Juliet is her hair. I can't really blame them. It is rather resplendent.

I mean, look at this.

Since we weren't going anywhere for Spring Break and Nathan was gone on a work trip for most of the week I tried to make things special for the kids by taking them on a few fun outings. We had a blast at Urban Air Trampoline Park. Eleanor had won a couple free tickets at school and was very proud to be the reason we got to go.

I also broke my rule about presents only on birthdays and Christmas and gave Eleanor a new purple razor scooter that I had found at Walmart the week before Spring Break. She was ecstatic to be on equal footing with Bradley and the scooter was put to good use immediately.

Fun story, we hadn't been bothering with helmets for the kids just yet because they would just zip back and forth on the sidewalk in front of our house on scooters and no one seemed to have to worry about anything more than a skinned knee most of the time. However, Bradley decided to show off for Grandpa Dan and Aunt Anna while they were here and Nathan may have commentary on my parenting that I let him. Bradley was on his scooter at the park and decided to see how fast he could go down the seriously steep path across from the creek in the park that kids use as a sledding hill during the winter. I thought he had a sense of self preservation and I think that kids are supposed to test their limits, so I said "go for it!" Bradley accelerated down the entire hill, started wobbling on his scooter and was still kicking to go faster and ended up crashing in a heap on the concrete at the bottom. He tore a hole in his pants and got a few cuts and only almost smashed his face into the concrete, so we're calling it a success. He's very proud of himself and was much more cautious around hills after this so I think it all worked out for the best. I did buy him a helmet after all this though.

Juliet is often her most cheerful on the changing table. Don't worry, I squeeze these chunky legs on the regular.

And she smiles a lot while getting changed!

No sleep like baby sleep.

The cats are often a little lonely these days. I may have gotten them all used to a lot of cuddles while I was pregnant and had to sit down a lot.

Fortunately, they always have Patrick nap time to look forward to.

In big Eleanor news, I let her pick out her swim suit for the summer and she was ecstatic when I said yes to a two piece. She wanted a mermaid swimsuit with a tail that went down to her ankles and I voted no on the swim suit that would likely drown her. This one had a skirt that was short enough to allow kicking and showed her tummy so it was the winner. She may love it a little too much though, she insisted on wearing it around the house for much of spring break, despite it being rather cold to be lounging in a swim suit. One night we were downstairs playing games before bedtime and while laying on her tummy she leaned back and looked over her shoulder and announced "Don't you just luuuuuv purple?" My dad was there to help with bedtime and we both tried to not laugh, but we might have failed.

Dancing in her swim suit. To be fair, Patrick is in just his underwear in this photo so she was not the most unreasonably dressed child.

Eleanor also got new black tights for dance class, which I didn't think would be that big of a deal, but I was wrong. She put them on and said, "I look amaaaaazing in black! Isn't black and pink so pretty together?"
Me: It's a nice combination!
Eleanor: Compliment?
Me: Nono, combination.
Eleanor: Oh, I'm just so used to getting compliments. Like whenever I do really well at school.

Self esteem may not be an issue around this house.

Here are the kids reading with my dad at bedtime. Juliet is usually at her fussiest right at bedtime, it was really great to have him come by to help out while Nathan was on his trip.

We also went to Blue Valley Rec open gym time over the break.

I don't think a human body is supposed to bend like this. Well done, Eleanor.

Every once in a while I think Patrick may be ready to drop his nap but I keep being proved incorrect.

Playing Rock Paper Scissors War together.

The way these kids play either drives me bonkers or makes me unbearably happy. They're such buddies.

We think that Juliet may have blue eyes. It's tough to tell but there is great anticipation of which eye color camp she'll join. Eleanor is really hoping that Juliet will start with blue eyes and end up with hazel, just like her.

More cute baby smiles!

If I told Bradley he could stay home from school if he cuddled Juliet all day he would take me up on it in a heartbeat.

Cute baby in bath! She loves the warm part of bath, she hates the hair washing bit.

We were so happy to have Aunt Anna and Grandpa Dan come out to visit us at the end of spring break!

They were good sports about having a long flight in the morning and being drug out to a park almost immediately after they arrived.

Poor Aunt Anna might not have a future in sports. She started tossing a baseball to Patrick while we were at the park. Two throws in Patrick said, "I am DONE with this." He then threw his bat down to the ground and ran off without a backward glance.

We got to eat dinner on the deck their first night here. So fun! 

Juliet was so happy for lots of Auntie cuddles.

And Patrick … he was Patrick.

Patrick started talking about eye color with Aunt Anna while eating lunch.

Patrick: What color are your eyes?

Anna: Come look!

Patrick peers closely, then runs over to me with a huge grin and says in a stage whisper: They're YELLOW!!

He later checked again and decided they were hazel but we all about lost it at the yellow comment.

We had fancy brunch at Pinstripes to celebrate family being in town. The kids say yes to chocolate fondue fountains!

We followed up brunch with some bowling.

And a cool picture of the crew on bunny statues outside.

There was a lot of reading.

And playing games!

We took Aunt Anna and Grandpa Dan to Scheel's to check out the Ferris wheel and the awesome fudge in the café.

Eleanor was very very happy to get Aunt Anna piggie back rides while we were there.

And Juliet got a lot of cozy time with Grandpa Dan.

Time for cuddles and evening shows.

Reading with Grandpa was a very popular morning activity.

Almost as popular as keeping Juliet company during tummy time.

We took the kids out of school on Monday to go to Legoland. They were devastated to miss school but pulled through somehow.

Legoland! So much fun!

Bradley made a rather impressive Pikachu out of Legos.

Building racing cars together.

It's funny to look back on all these pictures and see just how much time Anna and Eleanor spent together.

They were quite the amazing duo!

And Grandpa Dan got a ton of Juliet time.

Standard Patrick picture face when I told him to let me take a photo of him and the Cadbury Eggs we got while we ran errands after we took Eleanor to dance class.

We discovered that Juliet loved watching Blue Planet, a nature documentary. It doesn't count as screen time if it's educational, right?

 Documentaries make her cozy cuddly.

On their last day here Nathan took Dan and Anna to a fancy donut place.

And a marble factory!

We closed out the trip with yet more cuddles.

Patrick went down to say goodnight to Grandpa Dan the night before he was leaving to go home.
Patrick: Why are you so silly?

Grandpa: That's how I am!

Patrick: You need to not be so silly when you come back.

Grandpa (smiles): I'm not going to change.

Patrick: You need to change.

(this conversation was repeated in the morning when Grandpa was walking out the door to drive to the airport)

Anna got amazing cuddles with Juliet the night before she and Dan had to leave.

Eleanor was ecstatic to have Grandpa Dan and Aunt Anna here and I don't know why I was surprised to hear crying from her room while I was getting Juliet to sleep on the night before Grandpa and Aunt Anna were going to leave. Leaving is tough, especially when you get bottomless cuddles and piggy back rides from Aunt Anna whenever you want.

Luckily, she had some cute hats Anna made for her and Juliet to remember her by.

Juliet is mad because we told her the hat would fit her perfectly next winter and she would have to wait a while to wear it again.

Cuddles with my sweet baby. She's pretty perfect. She still does what I call "air nursing" whenever she's hungry. If I'm holding her on her side she'll start nursing at the air. Come on, Mom, feed me already!

Patrick made a fort and let Juliet in on the fun. Turns out Juliet thinks forts are dumb.

Patrick quotes:

Me to Patrick (pointing to leftover food on his plate): What happened to your quesadilla?

Patrick (huge grin): It turned into a Superman cape?

Walking to the car after preschool, Patrick is talking about butterflies.

Patrick: What does homadosis mean?

Me: Ummm, is it something to do with a butterfly?

Patrick: No! I made up the word! What does it mean?

Patrick jumping back and forth across his bedroom while he's supposed to be getting into jammies: I think I have super powers!!

Bradley walks in and starts to change. Patrick: I have super powers! I think I control you! Jump!

Bradley was only too happy to oblige.

And here is Patrick dancing.

More pictures of Patrick cuddling with Juliet to wake up from naps.

Can you stand the sweetness?

Some lovely family members sent us books as presents after Juliet was born. There was great excitement.

Juliet with her new favorite book!

Juliet was no longer interested in photos.

Patrick got to have a much anticipated playdate with his friends Jack and Marcus last week and this kid is a party host in the making because he insists on bringing treats to share with his friends and then he tells them how they should play and everyone seems to have a fabulous time.

Playdates make Juliet oh so very tired.

It's been so nice and warm finally, in the 60's at least a couple days each week. We made 'smores to celebrate last Friday. And of course Addison was in on it, she's been playing with the kids after school in our backyard every nice day.

I got a toasted marshmallow too! Can I still say that it's for the baby?

Bradley's face here - I could smooch this for ages.

Eleanor did have to voice a small complaint when Daddy kept burning the marshmallows he was toasting for her at the end. She was a good sport and ate them anyway though, like a champion.

Camping out in the basement that night. They stayed up late and got up early but they were so excited, it was absolutely worth it.

And if you have 9 minutes, this is what it looks like when the kids play together after dinner. Hilarious, adorable, and high energy. It's what they do.