Splash Park

Greg and I took Brayden to the splash park yesterday afternoon. He wasn't too sure of it when we first got there. He was holding onto Greg for dear life! But after running through the waterfalls with daddy for a few minutes, he eventually warmed up to it. He enjoyed walking around in the water and splashing himself. Greg even made some new friends while we were there....he was splashing water on Brayden, and a little girl saw this and started splashing water on Greg. Her younger sister and brother soon followed! I thought it was pretty funny. Brayden had a big time in the water and did NOT want to leave. We'll definitely have to take him back soon.

Busy boy

Brayden is acting more and more like a toddler everyday. He is constantly on the go it seems, and is exploring everything he sees. Here are some things he has been up to; he likes to splash around in Callie's water bowl and I've caught him rubbing the water in his hair a few times the past few days; Brayden really loves to give Callie treats...he has figured out where we keep them and he constantly gets them for her. Greg finally had to move them to a higher place to keep him out; He got a hold of a bottle of hand lotion on Sunday and managed to unscrew up the top...within 30 seconds there was lotion all over the room! Needless to say, he is keeping us pretty busy these days.

Here are a few pictures from the past few weeks of Brayden in action. The video at the bottom is of him "helping" me sweep the other morning. He had been doing it for several minutes, but he pretty much stopped when we started recording.

Pretending to play Wii

Future hockey star?

After he practiced feeding himself some yogurt

Watching tv in his chair...such a man already!

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Playset

Greg has been hard at work this past week building a playset for Brayden. I must say, I am pretty impressed because he did it all by himself! Brayden did try to "help" a little though. Greg finished the main part today and put the slide together, which Brayden was very eager to test out....over and over again. The only thing left is to add the monkey bar and swings. I'm sure we'll get plenty of use out of this playset in the days and years ahead.

Finger painting

Brayden recently started going to a Mother's Morning Out program at our church two mornings a week. He usually brings home some kind of craft that he made each day. That got me thinking of trying to do some arts & crafts activity at home, so today we tried "finger painting". I found a recipe online for homemade finger paint using flour, water & food coloring. After getting everything ready, I let him go to it. He enjoyed it all of about two minutes before he was ready to move onto something else!! Oh well...he did make quite a mess in those two minutes, getting the "paint" on his clothes, my clothes, the chair and in his hair. He also sampled a little paint, so it was on his face & mouth as well. Here are a few pictures of him in action and the final masterpiece!

Snow Day

It snowed this past Friday & Saturday in Smithfield...we actually got about 4 inches! So on Saturday we spent the morning playing outside. Greg, Brayden and I went to play with Madeline, Lydia, and Margo at their house. Aunt Catherine and Caroline even drove up from Wilmington to come play too. Brayden was so bundled up that he could barely move! But he seemed to enjoy it a little more than he did when we were in upstate NY at the beginning of January. He tossed the snow around in his hands and Greg pulled him on the sled for a little while with Margo, Madeline & Lydia. Other than that he mostly just watched everyone else and took it all in. After an hour we were all so cold that we had had enough and decided to go home to the heat. Here are a few pictures of our day.

And this is a picture from last January when we had snow....he's changed so much!!

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