Kansas, Part 1

A few photos from our recent trip to Kansas. These are from my phone. More to come once I get the pics off the camera too.

Mesmerized watching his cousin Ashy make granola.

Driving the pretend train. We rode the real one last time and probably next time, but not this time.

Discovering new things in my mom's backyard. Who knew how interesting pinecones were?

Amy says this is proof he's a city kid -- the place he spent the most time was on this steel grate despite grass all around him.

I guess Elliott doesn't like Hall and Oates as much as his parents.

Hanging out with Parker, whose dad I've known for (gulp) 25 years.

Second try at ice cream -- a few weeks ago he didn't seem interested.

But this time it seemed to take a little better -- after this shot he was begging for more.

Elliott always steals strollers when people leave them sitting around at the park. So he had a great time in Nana's driveway with this one.

He also enjoyed watering the plants -- we did it every day at his request!

Bye bye Kansas.

New Deck

Last year our co-op built a new deck behind the building. We didn't use it last year but now that Elliott is walking it's great to have a place to go and let him run around when we don't have time or energy to walk to the park. Elliott likes it so much he knows we have a little red bag with the deck keys and a ball and toy car in it, and sometimes he drags that bag over and stands by the front door looking at us like, "let's GO!" There are lots of fun deck activities.

Sometimes we play ball.

Sometimes Elliott rearranges the furniture.

Sometimes we play with the car.

When the weather is nice, we eat lunch.

And sometimes we just hang out.

Role reversal

We went to a birthday party the other day and there was a little red wagon in the backyard. Elliott got confused. He thought he was supposed to pull his mom around, instead of the other way around.

Bibby

Elliott has always hated bibs. Got mad when we put them on, yanked at them, wouldn't eat, just hated them. Then, all of a sudden recently we tried again and now he's obsessed with them -- he will barely eat without one, and sometimes if we leave a dirty one hanging on the highchair and put a clean one on him, he won't eat until we put the old one on OVER the new one. Kids are weird.

Park park park

Elliott loves the park and playground. In fact, even though it's chilly today, he and Amy are there right now. See what I mean....


Going down the slide like a big kid.



He loves the ramp.


But then, when he's ready to go, he's ready to go. The other day he grabbed my bag off the bench and started pulling it toward the gate, looking back at me like "Come on!"

Little duck

We went to Red Hook recently to have lunch with Julie and Justin, and when we were leaving Julie handed me a ton of clothes and toys the boys had outgrown. Among them was this awesome duck robe that Elliott struts around in after his bath.

Elliott works hard; needs to unwind on the weekend

On Friday we met up with Ezra and his parents and went to three of our favorite places: first some playtime at Gantry Plaza State Park, one quick drink at LIC Bar (we've been following the "if it's still light out a toddler can go to a bar" rule but I don't know how much longer that will last...), and then dinner at Bella Via.


On Sunday we went out for brunch with Matt and his family to celebrate his graduation. Too bad we couldn't get to the ceremony, Matt said Jacques Pepin's speech was great. Brunch was fun and tasty, though. Elliott and Amelia particularly enjoyed the yogurt treats.