You and me and the bottle makes three

Today's milestone for L (or at least for me) was that we tried, and she accepted, a bottle for the first time! Meh's women's choir was performing at Folklife, and while I'd initially pondered taking the three kids, I recalled a number of past performances where I'd had to quickly flee in the middle of the set when one or more got sad. I wasn't quite ready to try that yet with three kids solo. Ah well, we'll have to settle for the streaming edition -- congrats to Dunava on what sounds like was a solid and well-received performance!

In the government-documented milestone department, L is also the first internationally prepared kid in our family; her new passport (good, ridiculously, for a full 5 years) arrived yesterday -- one more step completed on the path to her and mommy's upcoming choir trip to Bulgaria! Still can't believe that's going to be happening, and that it's only one among a number of trips coming up this summer -- in just a few weeks the boys and I head to Michigan to visit Grandma and John as well as for my (slightly belated) 21st high school reunion.

A pattern has been developing in our weekends as we start to move from spring towards summer: the boys get too bonkers to stay home, so I take them to a local park while L (and sometimes mommy) naps. This one is still Z and O's favorite. Per the picture, yesterday O was literally climbing the walls. It's always amusing when there's another kid in their general age range there, and O has to (very shyly, and preferably with daddy company) approach the kid and find out their age and name. Once the social ice has been broken though, he's friends for life; as we were driving home yesterday, he was asking when we'd see the boy he'd met at the park again, and if he could have a playdate with him. We may need to move onto kids business cards or something (and yes, as soon as I typed this I checked -- of course those are already apparently a thing).

Party animals

It's been another birthday party weekend, with two separate events to keep the boys occupied. First we went to an incredible gym at a local athletic club I didn't even really know existed, where there was a blow-up bounce house, basketballs, and much happy giggling and running around. Later on in the party room, Z ate multiple pieces of pizza (crust-first, naturally; we've started briefly discussing his own party, and he keeps talking about how "there will be pizza" -- so there you go, we may have our food option selected!), and both boys enjoyed the cake, O getting impossibly more of it on his face than in his mouth, and Z delicately eating the cake away from under the frosting, which he left behind. There were gift bags with a much coveted pair of red-bulbed flashlights that kept both boys up for the past two nights, as well as a mix CD - alas, no Frozen tunes (wait, I think that should be considered a plus?), but the boys were game to listen on the drive home.

Party two was earlier today, at a favorite local children's museum. In addition to the usual building, pneumatic tubes with silk scarves, running around, climbing through a big rig, and water toys, there was an art project where each of the kids got to make their own crown. Both boys were totally into it; Z's featured a few months of the year (May and June being the most prominent), while O's was a more abstract self-described "rainbow forest" of marker scribbles and hand-smears. The previous party's lack of Frozen content was more than made up for here, with cake, plates, and decorations all nicely themed to the kids' favorite current film.

In L news, she's been doing some nice grasping and has moved on to coos when she's happy, and thankfully slightly less frequent sadness in the car. The boys continue to adore her; I still struggle to get shots of Z's interactions (he does great at soothing her, and sometimes helps unbuckle her when it's time to get out of the car), but O is more than happy to mug for the camera when I catch him interacting with his sister.

OMG TRUCKS!!1!#@!

The promotions and warnings had been coming for weeks, but today was finally Truck Day at O's preschool -- and it did not disappoint. Ambulance, Seahawks truck, SWAT team truck (O popped his head out the top hatch), and many more. The drivers were all fun too, clearly super proud of their vehicles; the cement mixer guy had a bunch of toys and even a Xeroxed coloring book that he'd had growing up in the 1950s!

Meh braved the entire morning with L in tow, bringing yummy baked goods as thank you's for the many truckers, and first helping O's class and then volunteering with other parents later in the day.

When asked which was his favorite for today's class documentation e-mail, O commented: "The fire truck, because I liked it."

Proud papa

Happy mothers day! The birthday march of April and May continues; papa's birthday was last weekend. Mima and papa had retreated to a lovely island inn, but this weekend we got to come celebrate with them for mother's day brunch. The boys ate alarming numbers of chocolate chip pancakes while we had slightly more adult (and super tasty) fare courtesy of papa.

Afterwards, of course it was time for a park adventure. The boys' current obsession is this one, and we've even already booked out the covered shelter location for Z's upcoming birthday party. The park's namesake rhododendrons have started to flower, and one of Z's favorite activities is to circle through the "forest" (sometimes he describes it as a tunnel) and spot the various colored bushes. O for his part enjoys burying and digging up treasure in their giant sand beds (when other kids happen to bring or abandon shovels) and spinning dizzily (alternating between asking to be spun faster and slower) on a rotating playground disc. Today a bunch of the dandelions were in full fuzz mode, and he was picking them and making wishes. O: "I made a wish. I actually made lots of wishes. They were all about cars."

L continues to enjoy morning and afternoon time to both interact with her family and get to check out her toys. We've been seeing increasingly frequent and successful partial rolls; here she made it from her back onto her side to say hi to some friendly stuffed animals:

Everything is awesome

O and his school friends have been continuing to try to find opportunities to play outside of school, which has been wonderful to see. He and friend A have playdates frequently on Friday afternoons, and friends M and A have either booked, or expressed interest in booking, future playdates too. When I speak to their parents, they mention their daughters have also apparently started declaring their intent to marry O. When I ask O, he always insists he's going to marry friend J instead. Oh, those pre-school love triangles. Anyway, friend J proactively invited us for dinner last night while I was picking up O -- while I correctly presumed his parents didn't actually know about the invite (and I politely declined), we did go ahead and make plans for today at their house for playing and watching the Lego Movie. Of course, Meh and I were enjoying the bits and pieces we could see (in between interacting with the boys, fetching snacks, negotiating toy sharing, changing L, etc.) more than Z and O were, so into the Netflix queue it goes!

While L was conked out on Meh's shoulder, we noticed that she even sleeps daintily -- notice the extended pinky.

Two month stats

Eleanor's two month well-check was yesterday. The gratuitous stats:

• 11 lbs 1.5 oz (25th-50th percentile)
• 22 1/4" length (25th-50th percentile)
• 14.9" head circumference (25th percentile)

Meh reported that L even started to coo a bit yesterday morning -- though alas, that was followed up by several shots at the doctor's office that had her sad for much of the rest of the day. As the boys would (and do) say: "It's okay, little lady." Poor pretty and super cute girl!

Birthdaze

We're deep into birthday season here; last weekend was of course mommy's, but also one of Z's bus-mates invited him to a (for me) sensory-overloading affair at Chuck E. Cheese. While I remembered the animatronic music band, I don't think I recalled that restaurant staff would intentionally rile up the kids for a countdown to the live action appearance of the mouse, literally for the last minute telling the kids to scream as loud as they could. Z did great, and he also discovered the joys of skee ball, eventually redeeming a fistful of tickets for laffy taffy. This weekend there were three more parties (alas, we only made it to two of them) for friends of the boys. Yesterday, O's friend J celebrated his fourth birthday at the School of Rock. It was great fun (and mass chaos, as one would expect) celebrating with electric guitars, keyboards, microphones, shakers, and oh so many loud drums. I felt for the teacher, who was trying to teach/explain while the kids were clearly pretty ready to just get on with the singing and dancing.

And today we had an indoor bounce house birthday party for O's school friend D; both boys were invited (and L as well!), and had a blast jumping and running -- though I really need to start to remember lighter clothes for the high energy parties, as O was a sweaty mess whenever he came to check in with me.

On the topic of L, she's started having a bit more quiet alert time especially first thing in the morning when we come downstairs. She seems to enjoy occasional tummy time along with time on her back looking up and smiling at her sheep mobile, pull toys, and her always interested/interesting brothers!

Daily planner

In addition to an awareness and interest in the goings on of the day, Z is really into days and months. When he gets on the school bus, he often will cheerfully say "Happy Monday!" (and yes, when it's Monday) to the driver. In the morning, he always checks in with me - "Today is Monday. Yesterday was Sunday. Tomorrow will be Tuesday." He also distinguishes days of the week based on whether "we'll make lunch" (Monday through Friday) or "we'll do something fun together" (Saturday, Sunday). And new months are a point of interest as well - "Today is May; yesterday was April." (Close!) Anyway, Meh thought Z would enjoy having his own calendar of day-by-day activities. He's been checking it every day this week and talking about what's on tap for the day -- but this morning we noticed he had a pen out and was at the calendar making his own modifications. And indeed we were able to (hopefully?) make that appointment work; next I'll have to show him how to make it a recurrence. Nice job, Z!