Fun New Habits

How did two weeks go by without an update? I guess we've been busy!

And we've been cute. Look at this face. I love this face.

Bradley is so awesome these days. He is such a little personality. Right now as I'm writing this he's taking a plastic easter egg apart and insisting in a rather bossy manner that I put it back together again time after time. He's being hilarious about it, so I'm going along with it. How soon before he figures out that as long as he's making me laugh he's pretty much good to do whatever?

This happened this morning as well, while he was doing this. Letting him have access to the tupperware cupboard was the best idea ever.

Please note that the face is smushed against the side of the tupperware.

Yes, my child was running around the kitchen for a full five minutes or so with the tupperware smushed against his face. Both he and I laughed quite a bit.

I draw the line on other things however, I think I'm kind of going to be mean Mommy about a number of pet peeves of mine. For instance, we were out today and he kept on trying to run out of the little room that we were playing in, even when I told him to come here. Um, not allowed. I drug him back in and chastised him in a not incredibly kind or sensitive manner. Same thing happens when he whacks me on the face when I'm holding him and he wants something. I say no and if he continues the behavior I set him on the floor in a way that lets him know he's being ditched. And it's not that I want him to cry when I do this but I'm a little happy when he does because it means he's getting the message. Mommies do NOT get whacked in the face and if Mommy says you do something then it WILL be done. I aspire to be like my mother. My siblings and I had no doubt that she loved us more than anything but we were also knew better than to disobey when it was something that truly mattered. Bradley gets cut some slack for being 13 months old ... but he KNOWS what's going on and he can obey some basic rules of conduct.

Happily, he has many adorable habits that he's picked up as of late that far outnumber any naughtiness. He'll bring books over and plop down in my lap so I can read them to him. And when I say this, it's a tossup between having the book handed to me or having it thrown in my general direction. And sometimes it's tough for a little boy to care enough about a book to make it through the whole thing. But still, it's darned cute and it makes this mommy melt every time it happens.

He also likes to carry around his giant stuffed toys that are about the same size as him. Hilarious and adorable.

And here's the link to the youtube video. It won't let me embed it right now and I don't know why ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiwRbEtkXl4

His love for the kitties remains strong and he likes to try to bring kitty toys to them, much to their distress. We have a long stick with a thick ribbon attached that we tied a little stuffed raccoon toy to and Bradley will grab it from me and flail it around in imitation of what I've been doing to entice the kitties to play with it. Doing this, he'll run up towards a kitty and try to throw the whole thing at them. Shockingly enough, they run away every time. It's very funny to watch. Here is Layla trying to hide in a box downstairs and learning to her horror that she has picked the worst hiding place ever.

There is no escape!

Bradley loves swimming and bath time so I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that he went nuts when he encountered his first water table at a little indoor play place I took him to the other day.

This photo does not adequately demonstrate the amount of ecstatic splashing that took place. The video below does a much better job.

Link to adorable video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU4t98XFd5o

Not only was there a water table, there were ball pits to play in and big kids to watch and follow around and many rooms to explore. And we made it an hour past our normal morning nap time.

We were very tired after our busy time at the play place.

We go out somewhere every day, otherwise Mommy goes stir crazy. It's going to be interesting to see how that goes once there's a baby girl thrown into the mix.

At the park in the sandbox a couple weeks back. Note Bradley's forehead injury from chasing girls. I like to think I'll be able to manage outings like this on my own with Bradley and his little sister but we'll just have to see how things go.

He had a grand time at Union Station today when my friend Fatima joined us. She helped me work on his cool kid look at a little gift shop. Because, really, teaching your child to be cool is an important job for any parent and an issue that gets far too little attention in any baby book I've ever encountered. It's a major oversight.

After this we saw a miniature train display that impressed even Bradley and then ran around chasing a bouncy light up ball (purchased in the gift shop) for at least 15 minutes in the main walkway of the station. Bradley loves throwing balls and running so this was pretty much the best thing in the world as far he was concerned. Fatima chased him around and he loved that too. I'm extremely curious to see if this is just a boy thing or something that's just part of Bradley's personality. I wonder if his little sister will be the same way or if she'll be quiet and a bit more shy. Can't wait to find out!

Here he is reading with Fatima after we got home. She's great with him and he loves her.

Bradley is really into climbing now but gets frustrated because he's still too short to make it onto the couch or recliner on his own. But he found out that he can get up on his toddler bed that we're storing for him in the family room until it's time for him to use it. He throws balls up on it then climbs up after them. Everything goes great until it's time to get down. He refuses to scoot down backward, he prefers to walk forward and be caught by a person. The first time he went up there I waited across the room on purpose and sure enough, he walked straight off and landed in a heap on the floor. It's a good thing the carpet is soft and he's a tough little cookie. 

He also loves to point at lights, cars, people, dogs, and often times nothing at all. Here he is pointing at the light in the kitchen. I'm pretty sure this is going to be his uniform of the summer, socks and a diaper. I love a Bradley in no clothes, it's just the cutest thing ever.

And while he has been extremely easy to put down for naps the past couple months, it doesn't mean he isn't a bit of a ridiculous goober while he's in his crib. These photos are why I'm so glad we have a video baby monitor, I take pictures and send them to Nathan so he can laugh with me. 

Here we are awake in the middle of a nap and button mashing Baby Tad.

And here we are out cold after our trip to Union Station today. I don't know why I even bother trying to drape a blanket over him, he's wriggles around so much it rarely stays on him.

But this child sleeps at least 10 hours straight on a bad night and about 11 on a good night. And he slept in until 8:30 this last Saturday so he can do pretty much whatever silly stuff he wants to in the crib, it's all fine by me. No, I am not ready to train another one just yet. It has been so glorious to get a full night's sleep every night.

And in grand finale style, here is a video of Bradley at bath time. The last bit of the video demonstrates my favorite new trick of his. Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJD3ijo1MZs

Oh, and one more video. Nathan has been gone on a work trip all week and Bradley and I have been doing pretty well until Bradley watched this video with me. It's from last week and it was taken when Nathan got home from work. Bradley watched the video and got very excited when he saw Nathan and was a bit upset when the video ended and he couldn't see Daddy anymore. Nathan gets back tomorrow and Bradley will get to see him Friday morning, he's going to be such a happy boy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ-W24zn7dg

I started recording this video because Bradley was playing toys and hollering in an adorable manner and it happened to be right as Nathan was getting home. Lucky timing!

Our little boy is such a joy. I know it's going to be a bit hectic when our little girl arrives but I like to think that we make AMAZING children and I can't wait to meet kid #2 and see all the new ways in which she is wonderful, marvelous, and charming.

Chasing Girls is Hard Work

Well, our little guy definitely has a thing for chasing after little girls. It's adorable but not without its perils. He managed to injure his face not once, but twice yesterday. BLEEDING facial injuries.

Here's the best photo I currently have of the face of destruction. We went swimming today btw, more on that later!

He got his lip at the library while chasing two little 4 yr old girls through the book stacks in the children's section. They were squealing with joy and Bradley would give a happy shriek whenever he got close to them and since the children's section was downstairs from the rest of the library and the other mom didn't seem to mind, I didn't have the heart to break it up. Fortunately, Bradley took care of things for me by falling into a metal shelf with his mouth. Only small amounts of blood resulted from this, we were still able to make it to the story time program afterwards where my little imp actively tried to escape from my arms and make new friends for the entire 20 minute duration of the program.

Making friends. If you click on the picture it will show up larger.

The big ugly scrape on his forehead is from trying to chase our cute neighbor girl on her driveway and managing to fall in such a way that you do half a cartwheel using both hands and forehead as balance. On concrete. He cried for maybe 30 seconds and then wanted to get back down and play with the little girl some more. I guess when you're constantly falling down and injuring yourself you have to get over it quickly or you'll just spend all your time crying, which is such a waste when there are delightful people to play with.

Bradley has making his new friend strategy down pat. All you have to do is make delighted cries when you see a new person and toddle over to them and stick your face about 1 inch away from theirs if possible. Touching faces is even better. You keep smiling and laughing/shrieking while this is going on. Kids who are used to any personal space don't really know what to do around my child. But man, little girls eat this stuff up.

Interest in new people does not go away at the grocery store. This is the only way my child will sit in a cart, otherwise he's stuck looking at boring me instead of seeing where we're going and being able to have enough time to holler at people as we walk by.

We've dropped him off at the church nursery a grand total of three times and two of those times he's come back with head injuries. They're always so apologetic yet seem excited to tell us that although he may have a mild concussion from taking himself out on a rocking chair he barely even cried. Or that despite the giant red mark on his forehead from knocking heads with another child (a peril of having zero personal space) he was happy and played well the entire time. Meanwhile other children are pushing past us to get back to their parents and our sweet Bradley may smile over at us but really would prefer to continue playing with all his new toys and people.

He is not so cavalier about being around us at home though. Well, it's more that he would prefer to not be left alone in a room at any time. He'll play independently, someone just needs to be in the room with him. So I do things like tell him I'm going upstairs to get something and then wait for him to be able to follow me so the poor child doesn't have to deal with his very real abandonment issues. It's a very sweet feeling to have a little fellow following you all over the house and "helping" with housework. He loves the vacuum and will sit and watch with rapt attention. He's a big "help" with laundry and I have never unloaded a dish washer faster than when I have Bradley standing next to me grabbing at everything within reach. We have a lot of fun.

Really, everything is fun these days. We still have our tough moments but they are few and far between. Bradley is such a happy, fun, easy kid right now.

Look at this. Just look at this! I am so happy that our boy likes to cuddle now.

Nathan had brought him downstairs so I could give him a kiss goodnight and Bradley was super smiley and kept trying to lay down on me. Yes, I melted.

We DID have to make an adjustment in his sleep routine because we'd lay him down in his crib and no matter how tired he was he'd play with his Baby Tad toy for a while. I'd think he was going right asleep and then I'd hear something on the baby monitor and it would be "That's the green square! That's the red heart! That's the that's the that's the purple triangle!" (Our guy is a bit of a button masher). So baby Tad was moved to the other side of the crib and Bradley is less tempted to play instead of sleep.

He also has developed a few new less than ideal eating habits. Our kid that would eat anything is now getting pickier. They said that this happened when a child got to about 12 months old but I didn't think they meant MY child! The most ridiculous food development is Bradley's new grape eating method. He used to love and adore grapes above all other foods but all of a sudden it changed. He still gets excited whenever he sees grapes but all he wants to do is chew on them a couple times and then spit them out. He does this for every grape we give him. Chew, chew, eject! I thought this was crazy behavior but then I compared notes with another mom and apparently her oldest child who is four still does this. What is with kids these days?!

 IF YOU WATCH ONE VIDEO ON THIS BLOG POST THIS SHOULD BE THE ONE

My boys are beyond adorable together.

In addition to this, Bradley has decided that his love of throwing his toys into and out of bins would work well at the dinner table. So I'm constantly battling a child who is trying to "sort" tortilla bites or pieces of toast into his applesauce container or water cup. The other day he managed to sneak a piece of tortilla into his water cup and then was very upset with me when I wouldn't let him fish it back out. He's such a little goober.

And here he is at Kaleidoscope, a free art place sponsored by Hallmark. We didn't do much art but we had a lot of fun.

Still at Kaleidoscope. We like to chase big kids around and find buttons to push.

He has some other fun things he does now, we get excited and yell and point at cars and dogs and lights. Our dining room looks out on the little neighborhood road we're on and there is great joy during meals when we see any of these things. He also has a first word! Sort of. When I previously wrote about him saying waowaowao over and over again it turns out I was mistaken. His Grandma Colleen was the one to figure out that he was trying to say row row row. As in Row Row Row Your Boat - a song that Nathan and I MAY have been singing in an increasingly silly way as we would get Bradley ready for bed each night. Nathan would try to sing it in a round and I would try to thwart him and we would both end up cracking up while Bradley apparently absorbed all that he saw. So people sing Row Row Row Your Boat with him whenever he starts singing rowrowrow to himself and he seems quite pleased about it. I've been trying to add in the word "mommy" to songs now in hopes that he'll pick that up, no luck yet.

Here he is playing with wise Grandma Colleen

 He also goes down the slide now. He LOVES the slide. This video shows a little more discomfort than glee (and a bit more booger than I would like) but the kid goes nuts over slides.

Swings are okay too, although not quite the same adrenaline rush unless Daddy is doing the pushing. This poor kid had a look of terror on his face half the time we were at the park. Of course he loved everything Nathan was doing with him, but still. A mother gets to protest.

 He also has a thing for stuffed toys these days.

New favorite game: being buried in stuffed toys and then escaping

Or just chilling for a bit. You know, how the cool kids do.

We went swimming today at a community center pool. Bradley had a blast, he shows no fear of the water and it's quite a job to hold onto him when you first get in because he wants to go go go and he's pretty sure I'm holding him back much of the time. Again, within minutes he found a couple little girls that wanted to adopt him. I can dunk him, he doesn't care although it's not his favorite activity. We went with a sweet little boy two weeks younger than Bradley and a friend that I made at the library. HER little boy will stand next to her in the locker room while she is changing. MY little boy tries to run away every time I put him down. He cackled at me when I ran some defense and tried to block his escape but he never stopped trying to run away. There are definitely some pros and cons to this active, social child business. We actually went swimming twice today, once during the day and once Nathan got home from work. We swam for a total of three hours today, which is a lot for anyone. Bradley is going to sleep well tonight.

Note that I'm rocking the maternity swim suit. I think Bradley is busy pointing at a light.

We have a belated 1 year checkup for the kid this Friday. Fingers crossed that he doesn't get any more face injuries that I'll have to explain prior to then.

And our little girl is growing larger and kicks more and more every day. I'm 31 weeks pregnant, getting closer and closer to that June 27th due date!

Getting close to being able to balance bowls of food on my stomach again. YES!

1 Year Photos!

We got Bradley's one year pictures done today AND I made Nathan do family photos too. My goal was to hide the baby bump in all these photos and unfortunately my favorite is the most pregalicious of the bunch, but oh well. The sweet girl at the end tried to talk me into doing a maternity photo shoot and I laughed and asked her if I could do an "I lost the baby weight!" photo shoot instead. I truly do love this child and am having a fairly easy pregnancy so I know I'm not supposed to complain ... but I do anyway. Here are the photos!

Aww, family! And look, I'm pregnant and big.

There was little sitting still during this photo shoot.

I read you're supposed to stick to a similar color scheme for family photos and then have a pop of color. Done and done!

He actually has three more teeth coming in on the top now, they just don't really show up in photos yet

Bradley was such a sweetheart ... as long as he was being held

This is not the first time this has happened to him

Love this and the next photo

Love! I was making monkey noises for Bradley at this point.

Note how Bradley is not sitting on the floor for this shot - every time we tried he would crawl away as fast as he could

This block ended up being in many of the photos

One of my favorite pics from the session

Oh, who is STANDING on the middle step? My child is. We don't sit if we can help it.

This may be my favorite picture, I haven't decided yet!

We'll use this picture in the future when he is making Daddy proud shooting hoops

We did not care about the silly block, this was the period where Bradley went rogue. He's wearing an 18 month top and 2T bottoms by the way. Little chunk.

What a little doll!

We'd put him down and then run away and he'd run toward us or the photographer. Both Bradley and his daddy took naps immediately following this very active photo shoot.

I'm one now. Whatever.

This is a nice chair to sit on ...

But it's way more fun to push it around the room!

So happy to have some professional shots of our little guy, he's growing up so fast!

Such a Delightful Child

Bradley is such a delight to be around these days. There is no sarcasm in that statement. He is such a fun, happy boy. He babbles nonstop and while he'll say the occasional mamama or dadada his favorite thing to say currently is waowaowaow upon repeat. I'll say it with him sometimes and he really seems to enjoy that.

A boy can get tired from all the hard work he does all day long

The cats are growing more tolerant of mobile Bradley. They still prefer not to be chased and whacked (we're working on gentle behavior) but Layla got between Bradley and a door downstairs and kind of got sat on and neither child nor cat seemed to mind too much. And Sookie gets desperate for cuddles and this happens not infrequently when Nathan is snuggled up with Bradley watching cartoons.

We're having fun playing outside now that the weather is getting nice. Bradley prefers walking to crawling at all costs which is cute except when we're outside and he refuses to go down the two steps from the upper deck to the brick area the baby way (where you kind of crawl backwards down the steps). We prefer to walk like the big kids down the steps. You have to be pretty quick to catch him so he doesn't eat it on the brick. This kid has little sense at times.

Here he is sitting on the step enjoying a goldfish cracker snack. There is NOTHING Bradley loves as much as goldfish now, he's been this way ever since Easter. He'll freak out and make anxious noises if he even sees goldfish crackers package in the cupboard. Shocking that my child would be this way about food ...

He's so active and fun, we can't go anywhere without making new friends. If we're eating out he'll yell at tables next to us which generally gets a positive response. But the poor fools don't realize this means he's going to harass them for the duration of the meal. It's a good thing people are so nice here.

We're at a petting zoo and this is the only picture I have where it looks like he might be paying attention to the animals. We were still way more interested in all the people we encountered.

It may not be great for his emotional development to be at home with me sometimes. When the picture below took place my first reaction was to laugh and take a picture before saving the child from himself. I then sent the picture to Nathan and he asked which wicked witch had been crushed by the cat bed. This child never stood a chance.

I also chase him around growling sometimes because it gets shrieks of delight. And then I wonder why he's not a calm child who will sit in a corner and carefully look through books on his own.

He is so much fun though. Such a happy, joy of a child. And as rambunctious as he is, he is a bit of a delicate soul. When he is doing something that requires a stern "no" from Mommy or Daddy, like whacking at the sunglasses on my face, he melts into tears at the rebuke. And doesn't try to do it anymore (at least so far). What a little sweetheart.

Here are both my sweethearts together. They love to snuggle for naps, it's the cutest thing.