Thursday Brad came home a bit early in anticipation of his mom coming into town that night, but as the day wore on it became apparent that Brad was getting really sick. He got a fever and just generally felt terrible, but when the time came to get his mom from the airport he felt a bit better and went ahead and went (instead of me).
Friday, miss L was so excited to wake up and see that Grandma was here! Brad was still feeling under the weather, but didn't want to miss a thing so we decided to do something where he could sit and not breathe on anyone. We decided to head to the park!
He started out feeling kind of pitiful.
Sweet baby W was feeling pretty good though.
The kids spent the late morning/early afternoon running around the park. This particular park is really big and miss L LOVES to run from place to place to place. For now, sweet baby W (along with the rest of us) follows where she wants to go, but I know those days are numbered.
Brad started feeling better and better.
Grandma got a chance to hang out with sweet baby W, while miss L got her climbing fix.
As she always does, miss L found a group of girls perhaps just a little older than she is, to play with. What cracks me up is that she rarely speaks to the kids she's playing with until they speak to her. She's a good playmate willing to do what the older kid tells her (I'll be the mom and you be the sister and you go to the store and...). I have a feeling that will change as she gets older, but it's cute for now and it's so miss L. She is so outgoing and so, well, wild at home, but when she gets with other kids or in a strange situation she is completely serious just taking all of it in. This day she mostly followed a group of girls from place to place running with them as one of their moms tried to "get" them.
She was just enough slower than her chosen group of girls that she lagged behind when the equipment got more challenging. The girls kept saying, don't fall in the snake river! At one point miss L looked at me and said, "Dis a snake river?" It was too cute.
She would stop and look through the telescope every once in a while looking for daddy, but you'll notice both eyes are closed. :o)
There was a wall with holes in it that you could climb, but miss L was not too interested in climbing. She loved looking through though!
I think her favorite activity was the fireman's pole. She was a little nervous at first and wasn't sure she wanted to take the leap to go down, but once she got it the first time she was hooked. She ran back to the ladder over and over to go down the pole.
When we had been at the park for a good long while, we went to visit the swings before leaving. This park has a variety of swings so that kids of all abilities can swing. They even have a family swing which is lots of fun.
Sweet baby W enjoyed doing the one thing at the park that he can really really do. Swing! I enjoyed trying to get some good photos with some sun flare in them. Some of them are better than others, but I really just love the effect!
Miss L enjoyed pushing her brother on the swing. Look at how short sweet baby W's pants are. Those are 12 month sized pants and he's completely outgrown them. Looks like the boy needs some new pants!
Miss L LOVES helping with him. She loves feeding him, helping dress or diaper him or really doing anything with him. You can see how much she likes it.
I think he likes it too.
After that we went out to eat and took poor Brad home so he could sleep.
Saturday afternoon we headed out to a local garden to walk around and enjoy the lovely weather and fall foliage. I heard the weatherman say that this was the best weather week we'd had all year and I believe him. It was GORGEOUS. (and there I go with the sun flare again ;o)
When we got to the bottom of that giant hill miss L announced that she really needed to go potty. Grandma volunteered to take her and I think we were all happy to stay at the bottom while they climbed back up to the top. While they were gone we took the opportunity to snap a few photos of Brad and Wes. We had our portraits taken at this park a couple of years ago (when miss L was 7 months old!) and it's a beautiful place for photos. I meant to get some photos of miss L and Brad too, but at least for now he's a much more cooperative model. ;o)
Notice that leaf sweet baby W has in his hand? Remember that...
So sweet baby W is loud. I mean really loud (I know that comes as no surprise to some of you). He does this thing where he makes fists with his hands, turns bright red, gets kind of tense and squeals and squirms. It's a happy noise, but it is something else for sure. It's not that far away from what he does when he's really mad, but it's just funny!
After that miss L returned and we walked along the path. I eventually noticed that sweet baby W still had that darn leaf and some was in his mouth so I pulled it out and then snapped a few photos of miss L on the bridge. She loves bridges and there were plenty to look at and explore.
Shortly after I took those photos, we noticed that sweet baby W was having a rough time. We tried to figure out exactly what it was and up and out came... a part of that dumb leaf! I'm sure it's the first of many things like that. Miss L proceeded to act out what happened. That's what she's doing in this photo, pretending to eat a leaf.
We had some fun in the children's garden and rolling down a hill and I took the chance I had to snap a photo of the siblings.
That was the best I got!
We continued along the path and miss L found a little pier and threw her leaves to the geese below who scurried over to find that it was just a leaf. They may have been disappointed, but miss L certainly was not.
Miss L also spied a bird's nest. She announced that it was a bird home and there were babies in there. I'm not sure that it was currently occupied, but I was pretty impressed that she knew all of that!
...and we kept walking.
Miss L, as all three year olds do, enjoyed stopping often to look at whatever she found that was interesting. She wanted me to take her photo on these rocks, but did not want to smile. I'm not sure why I think that is so cute, but I do. She's definitely got opinions.
She tired of that pretty quickly and enjoyed walking along the rocks. (she's got a pine cone that she found in her hand there)
I just love watching her.
We discovered a new pagoda that we hadn't seen before.
We decided to follow the path up to see it, but got distracted a couple of times.
One of the things miss L really loves doing lately is taking photos. She took this photo of me. She said, "say cheese!" and I did.
Then we finally made it around to the pagoda.
Grandma and sweet baby W had some time while miss L explored the pagoda.
Miss L found this pile of carved stones that I'm guessing will go somewhere in the pagoda when it's finished. Miss L loved looking at this stuff and climbed up on the turtle and just sat there for a minute.
Miss L borrowed the camera again and got this shot of Brad and his mom. Not to shabby for a three year old!
Finally, we headed for the exit. Brad was on the mend but tired, and the sun was getting low and we were starting to get cold. I needed to nurse sweet baby W before we got in the car so we took a minute in a gazebo. Miss L took the opportunity to dance.
... and then we were all ready to go home. She's got water in her mouth in this photo that she held there for the majority of her dancing. She's too funny.
Sunday we mostly took it easy. We decided to have lunch at a local shopping center. The ice rink was open, which sort of blows my mind since I think it's still summer, and we watched the skaters. Miss L announced that she would like to try it out. I bet before the season is over, she'll get her chance!
We stopped for some cupcakes and then we headed home for the day.
Sunday was a big day for sweet baby W. He cut his second tooth, so now he's got two on the bottom and he started crawling all over the place. He can now go anywhere he wants to go and often follows me around. I knew that this day was coming, but it's crazy how old that boy is. It went fast with miss L but it's gone at lightning speed with him.
Monday was Grandma's last day in town. The weather was alright, overcast and kind of cool so I figured it was the perfect day to go to the zoo. It turns out I was right! I think we saw more animals than any other time we've ever been.
Don't they look thrilled to be going to the zoo?
Well, I guess sweet baby W is happy at least. :o)
We got to see the pandas which I'd only seen once before. Really, if you ever get the chance to take a three year old to the zoo. Do it!
Of course, we snapped some photos of cute kids around and about.
We stopped for lunch and I'm very much ashamed to say that I started this, but she so very much enjoyed it and we didn't let it go on for long.
After lunch we kept on our way finding whatever animals we could find.
We saw the most amazing thing at the Orangutan house. When we've gone before we've only randomly seen a few of them out, but today they were out and playing.
Miss L was nervous about lots of the animals until she was reassured that none of them could actually harm her.
These particular Orangutans were playing with one another, but not the way that miss L thought was appropriate. She kept saying, "They not playing nice," and flinching a little when one would get close to the other. I asked if she wanted to stop watching and she definitely didn't. She just had a sort of love/hate relationship with the whole thing.
The one would be sitting...
..then the next would come up and just give a little tap.
Next, it got much more exciting.
...and then peace again.
It was awesome to watch! Miss L was a little bit concerned about their behavior and that they weren't playing nice (she kept saying "He hit and he try to bite. That not nice.") but it was hard to convince her to leave the area.
We found another statue to climb.
Sweet baby W started getting fussy and the rest of us headed into the invertebrate house while Brad sat down to help him take a nap.
I even got the chance to play around with my macro focus in the butterfly room.
Then we swung past the kimodo dragon on our way to the big cats (which for the very first time in my memory were out!).
Brad did a pretty good job with the baby.
Did I mention how beautiful the trees were? They were gorgeous.
Eventually sweet baby W woke up and we took the chance to take another sibling photo. For whatever reason I just can't get enough!
All in all, a WONDERFUL day.
(okay... full disclosure or something... this has actually been sitting in my browser for DAYS as I tried to get all my links for photos and stuff in whilst juggling life, so it was already long, but now I'm just going to tack this week on too, so it's about to get longer!)
Now... as Grandma left Brad started to feel better. and then worse. and then better again. The rest of us started to get sick. Sweet baby W really only got a little bit sick, maybe a little extra tired. Miss L also only showed tiny symptoms of being sick, maybe she was a little extra tired or maybe just a hair whinier. On the other hand, I was down for the count. I was so very sick. I cannot even remember being that sick. I had a fever, body aches, sore throat, the whole nine yards. I went to the doctor who told me it was... the flu. I was the only one in the family not to get the shot and even though Brad's clearly did not fully protect him, at least the kids' were fine. It was two weeks of back to back sick and it was no good! I'm so so so thankful that I don't have to worry about two kids with that kind of illness as well.
Here's a photo of Brad and sweet baby W convalescing.
Here's one of miss L that same day. She doesn't miss a beat!
By Sunday night we seemed to be enough better that we even prepared an actual meal. Sweet baby W has been getting progressively busier since that fateful night the previous week that he started crawling all over the place. We knew it was coming. I think we'd sort of blocked this stage out from miss L's babyhood, but it was definitely there and he's headed straight into it. Sweet baby W has a severe case of the "into's." To help remedy this we gave him a bowl and a wooden spoon hoping to keep his attention off of all of the things that it shouldn't be on. He loved it and it reminded me of photos that we took of miss L when she was around the same age so I had to take a few!
Here's miss L:
Here is sweet baby W:
This year (and I hope in all the years to follow) our family packed a box for Operation Christmas Child. I've done this in years past with my MOPS group and each year I filed it away in my brain as something I'd like for our family to do together. The idea is that you fill a shoe box with toys and things for a girl or a boy within a certain age range and the boxes are then shipped around the world to kids who need them. We decided to do a girl in the 2-4 age range (just like miss L) and we packed that box to the brim. It was fun to pack it with miss L, who didn't get just exactly what it was but kept saying that it was for a little girl just her age. When we took the box on Monday to the distribution center so that it could go on its way, miss L was very proud of our box. She handed it to the volunteer and told her again that it was for a little girl just her age. I hope that some lesson of generosity got in and that we can continue to reinforce that each year. I also pray that a little girl, just miss L's age, is blessed by that box.
Sweet baby W has been teething. The boy knows what to do in front of a lens, so he is hamming it up in these photos while I'm trying to get a picture of his two little teeth. You can see the drool all over his chest.
BUT then he yawned and there they ARE!
Miss L is also no stranger to the camera and lately she just loves having her photo taken. Here is a random shot.
Sweet baby W knows he's not supposed to get in the art cabinet. We talk about it all the time. All the other cabinets are locked and he steers clear of them. He'll open this cabinet and shake his head no while he's doing it. I think I'm in for it.
Who me?!
Have a Happy Thanksgiving! See you next week!
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