Mommy's Little Helper

Brayden is acting more and more like a toddler everyday. He wants to get into everything! Lately, he has been wanting to "help" Greg and I with everything we do around the house. We can't do laundry, sweep or vaccum the floors, empty the dishwasher, etc without Brayden at our feet wanting to pitch in, or pretty much just take over completely. He'll grab the broom from my hands, push the dishwasher closed while I'm trying to put away the clean dishes, and take over the keyboard and mouse while I'm trying to get some work done on the computer. While I appreciate his efforts, it makes it a little hard to get things done! Especially when I'm folding clean clothes...he'll take the folded piles and toss them across the room. I hope he'll keep up his love for cleaning up around the house when he gets older, but somehow I don't think that will happen. Here are a few pictures of him in action.

Visit to NY

We went to visit Greg's relatives in upstate NY last week. We drove straight through to Ithaca, NY on Wednesday (normally a 10 hour drive). It ended up taking us about 11 hours and Brayden was not happy for 10 1/2 hours of the trip!! OK...that may be stretching it a bit, but he did not enjoy the ride up one bit. He had a little cold and didn't take good naps, so I'm sure that played a big part in our terrible drive. We played in the snow and went sledding on Thursday and then rung in the New Year with Greg's brother & his family (Skip, Bernadette & Luciana). On Friday we drove even further north to Greg's hometown of Oswego, NY to visit more family. It snowed nonstop from the time we got there and it was still coming down hard when we left on Sunday morning. It was so pretty to see, but I definitely could not live in it! We really enjoyed visiting all of our northern relatives who we don't get to see very often. Brayden got in some good bonding time with his cousin Luciana, who was a very big helper in "reading" to Brayden, changing his diaper and giving him a bath! Brayden was feeling much better and more rested when we left on Sunday, so we were able to drive back in one day without having to stop for the night halfway like we were planning to. He was such a trooper for the ride! He is worn out from our travels today though....as I am typing this is he is working on his third hour of a nap! Below are a few pictures from our trip. Reading with Luciana Ready to play in the snow (with some pink boots from Luciana) Sledding

Our attempt to make a snow angel...Brayden wasn't very happy