Pillow Talk with Laine and Eve

Chris just tucked the girls in to sleep and I am across the hall in our bedroom right now listening to their little ramblings and conversations. I'm recording this as it is being spoken:

Eve: Laine, do you want to play princesses or heroes with me?
Laine: I'm trying to sleep. Eve, you're bothering me and making me not sleep.
Eve: I wasn't talking to you, Laine! I was talking to my pretend cousin friend, Laine Hendricks.
Laine: Oh, ok.
Eve: Laine, I'm wearing my red pajamas because I like my red pajamas. They are so cozy. Hey Laine, is that Marshall's water bottle?
Laine: Yup. I just found it.
Eve: But you're big enough not to have a water bottle.
Laine: I didn't want to spill on my bed.
Eve: Some times I like to pretend I'm fighting dragons.
Laine: I wish I had a place to put my bottle on.
Eve: Could I sleep in your bed?
Laine: No.
Eve: I know, but could I borrow it for a little while?
Laine: No. If you had your own bed you could have it. Too bad you don't have a bed like me.
Eve: Well if you had a little bed like me, I would share my bed with you. Too bad you don't have a bed like me.
Laine: NO, it's too bad you don't have a bed like me.
Eve: Well my bed has a gate to keep me from rolling off. Your bed has drawers, but they're not pink.
Laine: Nope, they're white.
Eve: Hey Laine, this is the sign for pillow.
Laine: No, that's the sign for crocodile. This is the sign for pillow. You were signing crocodile. See?
Eve: Do I need to put my hands like your hands to sign pillow?
Laine: Yeah, but Eve, you're making me not sleep.
Eve: No I'm not. I'm talking to my pretend cousin Laine Hendricks.
Laine: Yeah, but you're making noise and noise makes me not sleep.
Eve: You're trying to shake my hand.
Laine: I'm just trying to shake your hand. Just try to reach my hand.
Eve: You're trying to touch me!
Laine: Eve, just touch my hand and then I'll stop talking and I'll let you snuggle me.
Eve: Unh uhhh. I'm snuggling with my pretend friend. You're not letting me sleep.

They're so ridiculous. I think I need to go intervene now. Laine just came into our room and said "I was letting Eve snuggle me, but she did not want to snuggle me. That was not so nice. Hey! You forgot to check on me. When are you gonna come check on me?!" Silly girls...

Super Heroes

I sometimes wonder if I've let the superhero thing go a little too far with the girls. Their favorite shows are all superhero cartoons. Half the time when I let them pick a book for reading time they bring back one of my Spider-man comic books. They know the names, aliases and powers of all the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Justice League, and every hero or villain who appears in the XBox superhero games that we play together. They wake me up in the morning to tell me how they dreamed they had super powers. I regularly hear pretending games that go something like this:

Laine: "Okay, I'll be Storm."
Eve: "And I'll be Jean Gray."
Laine: "Oh no! It's the bad guys!"
Eve: "Let's use our powers!"
Laine and Eve: "bjooo! boom! weeeeooo! zoooooo! pkkkkkkppppppp!"
Laine: "Help! The supervillain got me!"
Eve: "I'll save you!"
Laine and Eve: "bjooo! boom! weeeeooo! zoooooo! pkkkkkkppppppp!"
Laine: "Okay, now I'll save you."
Eve: "Okay."
Laine and Eve: "bjooo! boom! weeeeooo! zoooooo! pkkkkkkppppppp!"
Eve: "Oh no! We have to save our daughters!"
Laine: "Yeah, let's go save our daughters!"

Enter Dad, stage left.

Dad: "Who are your daughters?"
Laine: "Bun and Buntle. We're going to save them using our powers."

Exit Dad, stage right.

Laine and Eve: "bjooo! boom! weeeeooo! zoooooo! pkkkkkkppppppp!"

Just another typical day at the Bradley home. It could be worse, at least they don't like Barney the Dinosaur or Teletubbies or any of the kids shows that would drive me nuts. They're probably the cutest superheroes I know.

-Christian

James Still Hates Baths

So, James still hates taking baths. Chris really worked with him and got him to be comfortable in a bath if he or I are in the bath holding him, but if a grown up is not in the tub, he screams his head off. It's really one of the few times James yells. He's normally the greatest kid ever. Laine tried holding him and comforting him, but it didn't work. I had a really cute little video of them all bathing, but it contained way too many crotch shots of Eve for me to post it on the internet. In other news, Chris is still really enjoying his job, even though some times he finds it very challenging. I am loving every minute of school and I just accepted a position as a labor and delivery scrub tech at Virginia Hospital Center. It's actually the same one I turned down a couple of months ago when I thought I was going to be finishing school in Salt Lake. I talked to my academic advisor today and due to the fact that so many of my courses need to be taken in sequential order, and because certain classes are only offered at certain times, it's going to take me a full 2 years going part time to complete the program rather than the year and a half at full time that I originally thought. So, I'm back doing the night shift thing, only this time I'm going to work 1 job, not 3, and I'm only going to work on weekends when Chris will be around to let me sleep. One of my nursing professors told me this story of this nurse she knew that was 24 years old and worked 12 hour graveyard shifts 7 days a week. One day, she went in a patient's room to start a foley and just dropped dead. I have no idea if her sudden death was at all related to her working like a dog, and for all I know, this professor could have been making it up, but judging from the way I feel after going 72 hours with no sleep, I wouldn't be surprised if the story is true.

I'm going to try to post a poll to the right, so please take a minute to respond. I would like your input on the sort of decor you would like to see in our guest bedroom. Later this spring or summer, I'm gonna try to get it looking cute. Regardless of your input, the room will probably be furnished with $25 IKEA nightstands and random thrift store crap, but your opinion may mean the difference between an antique looking clock from the thrift store or a seashell candle from Costco. If you have any further suggestions or if you are home decor savvy, please post further thoughts in the comment section. And please visit us!

The Boys That I Love!!!

Look how cute my boys are!!! Aren't they adorable? These are probably the two cutest boys in the world. I was holding James while Chris was fixing dinner today and James reached out to Chris and said, "Hey Dad Daddadad." They are just the greatest little buddies. Here are some pictures of the girls acting silly too. Laine is just really into heroes these days and she's blab on and on and on about which heroes she likes the best and what their secret identities are and what their powers are and who she's pretending to be, etc. She spent most of the afternoon today as Storm from the X-Men whose mild mannered alter ego name is apparantly Aurora Monroe. She told me I could call her Storm or Aurora Monroe, either one was fine. Eve is really into belching. Any time she eats anything, she lets out like 5 enormous belches afterward. It drives me nuts! My sister used to do that and it really bugged me. I can't quite tell if she's doing it on purpose or not. It's also really hard to get a good picture of her latley because she's always doing that silly scrunched up face when I pull the camera out. Eve has made enormous potty training progress, but still has at least one accident a day. At least she poops in the potty now. Those are the worst to clean up!

Dad's kitchen helpers. Also: Why kids shouldn't dress themselves.

Yesterday, the girls wanted to be Chris's little kitchen helpers so they got their aprons on and did what they're best at which is getting in your way while you're trying to cook. They were awfully cute though, so I took a picture. Today they were into more pretending games. We played Charlotte's web all afternoon. James was always cast as Wilbur or Jeffrey the littlest gosling (He's not in the book. They added a runty gosling to their play version.) I was Fern's mother, Eve was always Charlotte or Fern, and Laine played various supporting roles such as Avery, Mr. Zuckerman, Templeton, and the sheep. When Eve was Charlotte, she would stand on the coffee table humming the theme song from the animated film adaptation of the book, waving her hands and spinning. Of course. I mean, how can you spin a web if don't spin?! Then she would get out her pretend marker and write things like "Radiant Gosling" on the pretend web.


I've always felt that there are many situations in life where you must pick your battles. Parenting is no exception, and one battle that I've long ago resigned to losing is picking what the kids wear (or in Eve's case, don't wear.) I've just figured that there are way more important things to focus on like reading to them, teaching them to be kind to others, sharing, etc. But my decision to be lenient on choice of apparel is not without consequences. For example, see below:


Yup. That's a pink striped turtleneck over a Valentine's undershirt half-tucked into a denim skirt with floral trim, brown floral leggings, and white athletic socks. Oh and don't forget the pink light-up cowboy boots and compass around her neck for when we go on excursions. Yes, she went out in public like this. No, she didn't get arrested by the fashion police. She can outrun them as long as she isn't wearing her platform metallic silver clogs - or "high back ups" as she calls them. I mainly only purchase solid colored clothes these days which I thought would put a limit on the heinousity of the outfit combinations chosen, but some days, well... you saw the picture. As a consolation prize for sending me two daughters with NO sense of fashion, God gifted me with an adorable boy that wears what his mother makes him. See how much cuter this is?

I keep telling myself that the ugly outfit thing is just a phase. I went through it too when I was little. I used to pair my Hard Rock Cafe Tokyo shirt with these really atrocious spandex multi-colored pants. But then, that was the eighties , and everyone looked abominable in the eighties. Even the fashionable ones. It was like everybody stopped manufacturing attractive clothing between the years 1979 and 1996 so you can't blame me! Laine and Eve don't have the "I was a child of the '80's" excuse.

Laine and Eve's magical imaginations

As most of you know, Laine and Eve are incredibly imaginative and make life magical. Lately, they've been really getting carried away. The vast majority of their playing time this week has been spent playing pretending games. Some times they play really cute pretending games like this:

Laine: Hey Eve, let's play with our pretend-girl-cousin-friends Laine Hendricks and Eve Hendricks.

Eve: Okay! Let's all play crazy dance dance.

And they'll wiggle around and sing and dance with their pretend cousins for a while.

Other pretending games are really dumb.

Eve: Laine, let's pretend I'm a witch and I'm going to cast a spell on you to put you to sleep and I need to touch your eyeball to do it.

Laine: Okay!

Eve: Hocus pocus...

Laine: OW! My eye!!!

Other times they turn chairs into motorcycles and footstools into steering wheels for their Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang-esque cars. Other times they play grocery store with their new Christmas toys for a long time. The other day, Eve burst out laughing all of a sudden and when I asked what was so funny, she told me that he pretend frend Grandma had just told her a really funny joke.

This weekend, we drove to Baltimore, which is about an hour away in good traffic, to visit the aquarium. They have a huge aquarium there with dolphin shows, rays and sharks, an australia exhibit, and tons of other fun things. We had a fun time even though Eve got pretty tired toward the end.

More pictures of our house

We've sort of gotten the bedrooms organized. We call this room James's room, but he really doesn't use it. He still sleeps in our bed, so it's more of a kid's reading room and diaper changing room. We let them keep a couple of toys up here too, but most of them are in the basement.


Here's the girls' room. It's really tiny, so when Eve grows into a twin size bed, I think we're gonna have to do bunk beds because there's no way we can fit two twins in here. The girls really like their room. All of the bedrooms get a lot of natural sunlight and they're very bright and cheery.

Here's our bedroom. That little lump on our bed is James taking a blessed nap. Chris and I finally got all of our clothes into drawers and closets, so it doesn't look like a wardrobe tornado blew through it. The blinds are arriving in a week and a half which will be very nice.

We really need someone to visit us so that I can get motivated to make the guest bedroom cute. Right now, we're putting the boxes in there that we aren't sure what to do with. We're going to IKEA tonight to get some shelves, so I think we can finally unpack some books soon.

Several hours later... So we're back from the IKEA run and I just need to blog about how great IKEA is. IKEA is the coolest place ever. For like $380 we got 3 big bookcases, 1 coffee table, 2 side tables, 2 decorative baskets, a shower curtain, and a pack of batteries. And they're all cool pieces of furniture. I mean, they're nothing fancy, but they're sleek, simple, well-designed pieces of furniture that we will use for a very long time. Everything from IKEA is so well thought out and efficient. Chris was saying how weird it is that good-products-low-prices is not like some amazing concept, but somehow when the Swedes do it, you get IKEA and when Americans do it, you get Walmart. How come Swedes do stuff way cooler than us? Maybe some day when I'm a rich novelist and order stuff out of the Horchow catalog, I'll look back and cringe with distaste at my poor college days when I thought $13 end tables made out of particle board from IKEA were the greatest thing ever. But for now, I'll sing praises to IKEA.