Elliot's favorite toy

A couple of months ago, I posted a couple of pictures of the things Elliot likes to wear around the house and you may have noticed that one of the things he wore was an upgrade of our harness/leash situation.

I've mentioned many times what a snuggly baby Elliot is, and he extends those snuggles to stuffed animals as well as us.  I think that's why he was so interested in the monkey harness to begin with--the monkey part of it.  When we showed him he could wear it, man, that was something else!

He even took to wearing the harness while carrying around the fuzzy brown jacket he'd been in since late winter.  Apparently it's close enough to a stuff animal to snuggle, too...

Indoor fun

What with having spent the past six months either 17 months pregnant or caring for a newborn, we have spent more than our fair of time indoors.  On the few occasions it's become clear that we're not leaving the house, I get out toys to promote a little more activity.

I saw this little igloo tent at Ikea for $10 while we lived a reasonable distance from one in Chicago and have not regretted bringing it home with us...

Okay, so that's actually a lousy shot of the tent, but you get the idea.  When I was a kid, I had a little play tent at my Grandma's house and it was just the coolest thing ever and I love giving my kids a similar experience.  They have a ball when I bring this puppy out.

The very cool collapsible tunnel Kendra got from Poppa for her last birthday has also seen a lot of playtime in the past few months.

It's a lifesaver to have stuff like this around for those we-are-WAY-too-cooped-up-here days.  Especially because once they've had an afternoon of fun, we can just fold it up until the next time we feel the need (or until Elliot finds the tunnel package and brings it to me and begs me to open it, which happens on a fairly regular basis as we store it on the floor next to the wardrobe in their room).

It's also SO nice that the older two are old enough to be playing together and keeping each other entertained for such long stretches of time.  They seem to have a lot of fun together, and we love watching it.

Sweet Elliot

Elliot is a very, very sweet little boy and always has been.  Even as a small infant, he began smiling weeks before Kendra did and soooo much more than either of his siblings have.

All these videos are several months old, but they capture different parts of his personality very well.

This one was right after his birthday in June and we were trying to record his little kissy face, but Grant got him to demonstrate how cuddly he can be, too.


One evening we were playing around before bed and caught a little video of it.  I spend loooots of my time doing stuff like this with Elliot.


And this last one is more recent, right before Paxton was born.  As a parent, it's easy to get sucked into wanting to buy your kids ALL OF THE CRAP you see in stores, but it turns out kids are so easily entertained with the simplest things.  Like a $1 pinwheel...


I know they're not much, but I feel like little videos of simple things are pretty neat.  I know I'd be totally fascinated to see footage like this of my own childhood and we already appreciate what we've got of Kendra at this age because it turns out kids go and grow up whether they get your permission to or not...

Our sweet little Elliot.

Playing in the rain

I thought I was behind with blogging our pictures...it's downright embarrassing how many videos I've neglected!  I'll try to space them out instead of spamming them at you all at once...

I think everyone has at least a few ideas in their head of, "When I have kids, I'm going to..."  One of Grant's firmest pre-parenthood pacts with himself and his children is that he would take his kids out and play in the rain.

So, most times it rains while he's home and the weather is at least a little warm, he does just that.  We put Kendra in a swimming suit and he takes her around for a long time, playing, running, splashing, looking at the worms that come up out of the ground.  They have a ball together.  It's their "thing"...at least until next summer when Elliot will be old enough to join them.  :)

This video is from last summer, and it's a pretty good representation of the kind of fun I'm talking about...

Paxton's First Month

I have been a little slow with the blogging and quite a bit behind when I do get around to it.  So here is a little photo dump of Paxton's first month (or so) on Earth, in chronological order...

Grant noted a while back that we have far more pictures of Kendra's first month than that of either of her brothers' and that's true, but I think we're doing pretty well--I only took one or two from each series we had and I actually have blogged plenty of them, especially ones with siblings.

Paxton is a pretty laid-back baby, who often has a rather concerned look on his face.  But he is an adorable and wonderful addition to our little family!

Unattended blueberries

My go-to treatment for cutting teeth is frozen blueberries.  Nothing seems to work quite as well to help with the discomfort, and!  It's also a nutritious snack.

So when Elliot was cutting molars a while back, I busted out the frozen blueberries.  But one day, I forgot to put them away when we were done at the table.

Do you know what happens to unattended blueberries in our home...?  At some point later, I heard a "tink, tink, tink..." of a spoon hitting a bowl but I hadn't yet learned that if I'm not eating and Grant isn't eating, that noise is NOT one you want to hear!

Do you know how hard it is to get blueberry juice off a white wall?  It's still that exact same color, I can't even lighten it half a shade.  I'm pretty sure we're just going to have to paint over it to remove it.

Oh, well.  At least he was feeling better.

The Farnsworth Boys

From the moment Elliot laid eyes on Paxton, he has been completely hooked on his little brother.  And that's impressive, because Grant couldn't find his glasses when he brought the kids to see us at the hospital.

And while Elliot just adores this baby, he's not even 18 months old yet and is still learning a lot about how to handle an infant.  Specifically, we DO NOT poke them in the eyes or slap on their heads with an open palm (or a closed palm, for that matter).  So we end up spending most of Elliot's waking hours protecting Paxton from him.

But he is usually very, very sweet to his baby brother.  He is totally fascinated with this tiny person that has come into our home.  It won't be toooo long before they can play together and have all kinds of fun.  Though that's pretty hard to explain to Elliot at the moment (and heck, I have a hard time believing that he won't be a baby forever, even though the other two sure enough went and grew up before my very eyes)...

I don't mind being outnumbered.  I really, really love all these Farnsworth boys.

Three little monkeys lying on the bed...

I can't often convince the older two to stay still and near the baby for very long bursts of time, but I sure am grateful for the shots I get when it does happen...

When I manage to squeeze them all into a space I can fit into the frame of our camera lens or have them in the same room or start taking them out of the car (I feel like I own a clown car the way I keep hauling another kid out of it over and over when I unload them every time we go to the store) it often occurs to me, "Look at all of these people!  Where did they come from?!  Oh, yeah...WE MADE THEM!  That's so WEIRD!"

Awesome, yes.  But very, very weird.  My brain is definitely not wrapped around the fact that I gave birth to all of these little monkeys.

Sleeping on the couch

Apparently, I *have* to get a picture of each of our newborns sleeping on our little loveseat (Heaven knows we spend enough time napping there during this period, why shouldn't they?)...

Kendra:

And Elliot:

And Paxton:

I know from plenty of experience (both with and without one of these guys nuzzled with me) that it is a comfy little spot...

Nothing so peaceful as a sleeping baby, is there?

Preparing for Paxton

A couple of weeks before Paxton was born, we snapped these:

Just practicing for the new baby, I guess...she is one terrific big sister.

Just 'cus

We have maintained our goal of taking pictures at least once a month.  We keep the camera ready to go at a moment's notice and in a very accessible location.  Often moments stand out and just demand to be recorded but sometimes we just pull out the camera for the sake of taking some pictures to keep up with our goal of recording the kids' lives.

this was a combination of those--I grabbed the camera because it was there, even though there wasn't much going on besides having all three children with me in the same room awake and happy.

Yep.  I am incredibly blessed that I get to spend all day with these three, ain't I?

Elliot's favorite game

We have found that each stage of our children's lives have their own charm and fun, but Elliot is smack dab in the middle of one that is particularly chalk-full of it.

As such, he does this several times a week and we think it's adorable.


(In case you're wondering, that thing he's playing with is a piece of reflective material we put up over our windowed side door.)

This parenting gig is a whole heap of fun sometimes, that's for sure.  :)

Pumpkin Patch

Since I was up taking care of Paxton anyway, and Frankenstorm hasn't knocked out our power yet (though we're hardly out of the woods), I might as well do a little bloggin', right?  Right!

Kendra's Preschool class took their first field trip the week before last.  The usual class was cancelled and we all met up with the high school students at a small farm just outside of town to go to a pumpkin patch.  I took the opportunity to leave the boys home with the babysitter and had a special little date with Kendra, just her and me.  I loved that.  The boys are awesome and our family would not be complete without them, but sometimes I miss that special time Kendra and I had one on one before Elliot was born.

We rode out to the patch in a trailer hitched up to a tractor and got our pick of the pumpkins.  There were still lots to chose from, and we searched around for a nice Kendra-sized one just for her.

After the tractor brought us back to the farm, we had some time to wander around.  They had a little corn "maze" we enjoyed (though it was less of a maze and more of a loop) strolling through a couple of times.

I have no idea what she's pointing to, I think this is just her pose of the day...

 There was also some livestock to take a look at, and all the children got quite a kick of out it.  Kendra was the first one to grab straw and start offering it to the cows, and soon there were lots of handfuls of the stuff getting shoved towards big wet noses.

My first trip with small children to a pumpkin patch was ten years ago when I went with the class I worked with at a daycare center during my second year of college, and I also went while I was a nanny.  Kendra and I went to a different farm with our local friends our first fall here, but this was the first "school" trip and it was way weird for me to be a parent and not a teacher.  It was also super weird to be with the high school students.  I am thirty years old, I have traveled multiple corners of the world, I have a family of my own that includes three children and hopes for more--how do I not feel like a grown up?!

Anyway.

There are actually two classes of students who teach Kendra's preschool class and one of them gathered to take a picture, so I snapped one, too.  Unfortunately this class doesn't have either of the girls who are particularly attached to Kendra--hopefully I can get pictures of them another time.

What's worth noting about this picture is the ratio of high school students to preschool students.  Most preschools have several students to a teacher (the daycare I worked at tried to keep it 5:1) but this situation has multiple teachers to a student, it's wild.  Not all of the preschoolers are in this picture but there actually are only five or six missing.  Not hard to see why any child wouldn't have a ball here, it's complete individual attention!

I had met the students at the open house before the preschool began, but it was fun to get to know them a little more and see them in action.  They're a fun group and it was definitely a fun trip!