Dual Use

Who knew that a tummy time blanket would also make for a good parking lot?

Ah, the perils of having big brothers.

I'm an Alligator

A few months ago, Brady comes out of the bedroom crying really hard and saying Luke bit him. I can tell from the way Brady is crying that he is feeling some pain, but I'm slightly confused as Luke has never bitten anyone before.  He didn't go through a biting stage when he was younger, and he just turned 3, so it's a bit late to start that. I take a look at Brady and sure enough there's a pretty good red mark on his shoulder. I ask Brady if he did anything to provoke Luke and he said, "No, I was just sitting there and he just walked up and bit me." Very odd, I think to myself. Luke gets called in for questioning:

Me: Luke, did you bite Brady?
Luke: Yes.
Me: Why did you bite Brady?
Luke: Because I'm an alligator.

Perhaps I shouldn't put him in this shirt quite so often. A short discussion about how it's okay to pretend to be an alligator but not to bite people was followed by an apology from the alligator to his victim. I'm happy to report no additional biting incidents since then.

Lather Rinse Repeat

Last winter Luke went through a phase where it took him a long time to fall asleep after he went to bed.  He was always allowed to sit in his bed and look at books or play with toys until he fell asleep though.  Unbeknownst to us, one evening he took to roaming around the upstairs of our house.  It turns out he can be very quiet if he wants to.  About an hour after bedtime we finally hear him moving around upstairs and it sounds like  he is playing in the bathroom.  Instead of going upstairs to check things out, we tell him from the bottom of the stairs to quit playing in the bathroom and get back in bed.  He's a pretty compliant kid, not prone to get into things and we never heard any running water, so no need to go upstairs, right?  Luke protests a little more than usual, some whining, a few tears, and some unintelligible complaints, but after a second warning he heads back to bed.  At this point, not much of a story.  About an hour later, we hear Luke wake up and begin crying hysterically.  He comes downstairs and we find this.

Apparently his bathroom adventure involved spreading shampoo on the top of his hair.  I guess he wanted to give himself a bath.  Because we sent him to bed site-unseen, by this point the shampoo had dried and hardened into a helmet-like coating.  I guess that is what woke him up and upset him so much.  As you can see in the pictures, Luke is quite upset while I was laughing so hard I was crying.

Surprisingly, there was no mess at all in the bathroom, in fact, we couldn't even tell the shampoo bottle had been disturbed.  Ryan said it took a long time to get all of the shampoo rinsed out of his hair.

BFFs

Somehow Brady and I got on the subject of BFFs the other day.  I asked him if he knew what a BFF was and he said, "Yeah, best friends forever."  I then asked him if he had a BFF.  He paused for a second then said "My dad is my BFF... (at this point Ryan and I are saying 'aww, how sweet')... until I get a new one."  And precious moment over.