Just a few cottage pictures from Nonnie

Cottage Car ride

I haven't uploaded my pictures or gotten the ones from Mom off Brian's computer yet, but we are back from a glorious week at the cottage. I can report that the ride back went about 10x better than the way up.  The way up took about 10 hours (should be around 7 with no traffic or stops) thanks to a number of factors, none of which had to do with the children, and everything to do with traffic and Canadian phone companies inability to provide Brian with a way to tether a phone to his computer to provide internet at the cottage (he needed to get some work done).

Anyway the kids were great on both legs, but especially on the way back. We made it in 7.5 hours with almost an hour stop in the middle. I even perfected the carseat feed, but my ribs are a bit bruised from leaning over... I'm suspicious of Brian's speed, but he swears he wasn't going that fast. We stopped just about once for almost an hour and Viv had an EPIC blowout. We're talking a 20 wipe situation.

The best part of the drives was looking back and seeing this.

Matchy Matchy

Periodically I get the kids dressed in the morning and think, "what would look good in a picture?"  I know it's silly, but it's a simple pleasure I have at the moment. Anyway, this one actually happened on accident (about 2 wardrobe changes in for each), which made me actually take a picture of them together.

Poor Vivian

Vivian is just delightful. She's just incredibly chill, which is a good thing since she's a second child, and I can't be everywhere at once. She spends lots of time sleeping, since she's still so little, but a lot of her other time is spent in the bouncer or on a blanket doing tummy time or just hanging out smiling. She also has a cry that, I don't know how to say it, just isn't that bad. It's the equivalent of, "hey Mom, wanna come over here for a minute, please?" (Note: this doesn't include when she's actually incredibly hungry which flips like a switch. She'll be smiling one minute, and the next she's losing her mind)

Anyway, she doesn't seem to mind tummy time and has pretty good head control by now. She's had one or two flips from belly to back, but I think they were flukes. She does seems to do some scooting though. I wouldn't call it crawling, because that's ridiculous, but I don't remember Nathan getting actual movement out of tummy time! See video:

Today, Nathan and I were weeding a little in the backyard and Brian was doing something with the hose. Vivian was sleeping in her usual nest and woke up. Brian heard her, brought her out, but wanted to get a quick something done. I looked over and he was literally putting her in the middle of the grass saying, this is how chill this girl is.  She seriously, didn't make a peep other than to coo a little bit. It's just not natural.

All of this isn't to say that she doesn't have her moments, she's a baby after all, but still, she's pretty darn easy to have around most of the time.

Adventures in Potty Training

Fair Warning: The post below contains language regarding bodily fluids and may not be appropriate for those who are uninterested in potty training. You've been warned.

We haven't really committed to potty training yet, but Nathan has periodically showed some interest in using the potty. I think if we had committed to the cause, we could have trained him before Viv was born, but I actually think it's been easier to have them both in diapers for the time being rather than have him needing to go to the bathroom while I'm feeding Vivian resulting in accident after accident. Others who have experience with this and did potty train before the next baby came have said I probably made the right call, but we'll see. I hope we didn't miss our window.

We are toying around with the idea of going full force when we are at the cottage later this month, but I'll keep you updated on that. Anyway, we do have a couple small potties from Mom and Liz and Nathan LOVES peeing in them. It's pretty adorable how excited he gets about peeing in the potty. He isn't always in the mood to use it, but when he is it's like a potty PARTY.  He will go some, stand up, look at it, talk about it, and then say, "do more" and we can go on like this for 15 minutes or more. 

So yesterday we were doing another potty marathon, but I needed to do something in the kitchen for dinner. I left him in the bathroom with the potty (we had emptied it twice already so really, how much more could he have in him?) and figured he would be fine emptying an already empty potty. He was banging around in there for awhile and then came into the kitchen saying, "cloth please, mama." He had been helping me with a few of the sprinkles he'd left earlier, so I suspected there were a few drops here or there to clean up, but when we went into the bathroom with our cloth, this is what I found.

Apparently, he'd tried to clean up whatever mess there was on his own. I did have him go in to finish his "cleaning up" just for the photo. The best part was that I couldn't find any mess to speak of. The boy did some darn good "cleaning up."

Nathan Goes Fishing

Brian and Nathan went fishing this weekend in Cape May with Brian's parents, Kylleen, and Andrew. Never has a boy had more fun. These are all pretty much cell phone photos, but Brian's 5S takes some seriously nice ones! They aren't so much in order, but you can tell everyone was having a great time!

Brian was a total trooper given that the flight out was both very late and delayed. They didn't end up landing until almost 11 (Nathan never slept on the flight) and got to the boat around 1 or 2. Nathan took some pretty epic naps over the weekend.

While the boys were away I got some errands run, did some cleaning, snuggled Viv, and drank my coffee while it was still hot. It was just delightful, but I missed my boys.