The Art of Smiling on Command and the Wonders of Play-Doh

Grandma and Pop Elkins sent Bears some play-doh for easter and it has been a huge hit.  He's spent at least an hour playing with it today alone.  His favorite seems to be the basic smilie face and really enjoys helping me make them and then pulling them apart.  I also discovered that he knows how to smile on command...well, at least attempt to smile.  He seems to have inherited my astounding abilities at contrived smiling.

Pretty impressive, right?

Good times.

Some Pictures and Videos

Bears decided that he wanted to dress himself yesterday.  He insisted on wearing "Pop's" moccasins and his teddy bear backpack.  That's all he wanted to wear but luckily I was able to convince him to add a diaper and pants to the ensemble.

 We walked around the neighborhood for a while but when I mentioned that Daddy was coming home soon, he wanted to sit in our front yard and wait to surprise him.  Here he is waiting very patiently in the pic below.

Here's Zoey giving him a nice hug...he got shy at the last instant and turned away.

He went Shopping with uncle Matt and aunt Jessica a little while back at Babies R Us and had the time of his life.  As soon as he saw the exersaucers, he insisted on hanging out on the shelf with them and sneakily climbed into one when Matt's back was turned for a moment. I don't think he could be convinced to get out for at least a half hour or so.

Riding one of the tractors at Wheeler Farm

Bears doing the slide by himself with Daddy

 Listening to dog barking and trying to say "I love you."

Here he is opening some easter presents from Grandma and Pop Elkins. This one's just for them but I'm pretty sure that the blog is the easiest place for them to see it.

Hangin With Zoey

Poopers just had her new baby boy on friday morning so it gave Bears and I a chance to have Zoey all to ourselves for a few hours.  It was some good times.  Towards the end they both started to get pretty tuckered out so we got about 5 minutes of lazy couch time in while they watched some ABC videos.

Bears Has a Cuddly New Cousin!!

Last night Bears started coming down with his third cold this month. At least it seems like it...I will admit that the time frame may be slightly exaggerated but not by too much. The combination of his snotsy nose, watery eyes, and low grade fever made him unable to sleep last night from about 3 to 6:30 in the morning. Which might explain why when my mom called at 7:00 to tell me the wonderful news that Tanya had her baby and Bears had a new cousin, I said something along the lines of "glaarbsb...what? yaay! *insert random mumbling* k bye." I don't have any recollection of anything happening after that till just before 8:00, I felt something wet and squishy pressing on my face. This happened 3 or 4 times until I finally opened my eyes to see Bears staring intently at my face before planting a final slobbery kiss on my lips. Ryan had apparently already left for work but I guess Bears woke up before he left so Ryan put him in bed with me before leaving. Who knows how long he'd been laying there with me before taking such a cute measure to wake me up. It was definitely one of those heart-melting moments.

Now that I was a bit more lucid, I was able to call Mom back to see just what the deal was with my new little nephew. They're naming him Emiliano and he's 9 lb 5 oz and only 20.5 inches long so it sounds like he's a really healthy little cuss with all his weight in his chubs. Born via c-section at 6 am this morning and both he and Tanya are doing really well. See how cute he is??

Bears and I went to celebrate the whole thing by taking his trike out to the market to get treats and cold medicine.  He was in pretty high spirits for being so sleep deprived.  I'm sure it was the thought of his cute cuddly new cousin that was the cause of his good mood.  Such a dreamy day.

Here are some random pictures that I just haven't gotten around to posting:

He loves to put my wedding gloves on and then romp around the house growling and trying to scare us with his "monster hands."

Playing the keyboard with daddy.  I've been having terrible luck at getting good pictures lately.  This was the best out of 5.

He insists on dressing up in this costume (designed to fit cats) at least a few times a week. If Daddy's home, he'll run over to him and shriek in a very dainty way because that's apparently how you scare people.

His favorite foods are raw garlic and raw onions.  Here he is showing us all just how delicious whole stalks of green onions are.  He's a smelly little cub whenever I allow him to decide the menu for his meals.

He's in love with our swing in the backyard.  The other day when I was pushing him on his swing, I told him to swing so high that he could touch the sky.  He got so excited at the prospect that he immediately started breathing heavily and squeaking intermittently while straining his arms and fingers skywards.  This effort lasted at least five minutes with him never doubting for an instant that he could do it.  It was so cute.

He loves wearing our jackets, especially this one.  I'm sure it's because he knows that he's a dead ringer for Obi Wan in this outfit.

Here he is at the McDonald's just down the street. This was taken just a few days before a truck burst into flames while in the drive thru -- apparently doing enough damage to the building that it seems to be permanently shut down.  So sad for Bears.  And I suppose it sucks pretty big time for all those people who lost their jobs too.  Pretty lame.  But we sure had some good times in that play land area while it lasted.

Allow me to formally introduce Mr. PC Jenkins

I can't believe how many months it's been since I've posted anything. Seems like the exhaustion of being pregnant combined with trying to keep up with my little cub hasn't left much time for things like blogging (or cooking, cleaning, laundry, or any other such superfluous activities). I'll sleep for a good 10+ hours a night and then dream all morning of the time I'll be able to nap. it's like I'm taking my dream vacation. Good thing Ryan is possibly the most laid back person ever or I might start to feel a bit guilty for not pulling my weight around here.

I'm 20 weeks pregnant today and we just found out that Bears is gonna have a little brother. It took me a bit off guard, as I was pretty sure it was a little girl in there. I was under the impression that psychic feelings were just about 100% accurate when it came to this sort of thing but color me foolish because upon a quick google search, I discovered that in the case of gender prediction, psychic feelings are only accurate to about 50%. Looks like you win this time, statistics. I'm so excited for Bears to get to have a little buddy though. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce the very first footage of our new little cub.



Hopefully Ryan's not jealous of his suspicious resemblance to Skeletor...I'm told that the striking similarity is common at this age and not genetic. We'll see when he's born I guess. Not that I'm admitting to any sort of foul play. *cough*

I guess I should also add some videos for the grandmas since it's been so long.

These first two might need an explanation. I spent the first few months of pregnancy doing my fair share of puking so naturally, Bears came to think of the toilet's function in a new light.



take two. This one didn't go quite as smoothly...



He saw a video of Zoey pretending to be mad and kept trying out acting mad himself...he wasn't quite as convincing though. I think she might need to give him lessons.


Bears love bubble wrap




Playing on the bed with Daddy, Papa, and Diddum for a few minutes.

Hangin outside and random videos

Lately Bears has been really pumped about exploring outside.  We seem to spend around 2-3 hours a days puttering about the neighborhood and talking about the various discoveries he makes.  It's pretty glorious.  Except on the really cold days.  He's got a giant polartec fleece suit for those occasions but I have yet to find such an item for myself.  Here he is exploring on a balmy 58° day.

He's gotten up to around 150 words now but I think that my favorite thing he says his gibberish.



He's got a love hate relationship with this Twinkle Twinkle video.  As a whole he thinks it's brilliant but at the end, the owl has to say goodbye to the star and it just breaks his heart.  Also, he was going through a phase of gagging himself at the time.  It makes for an interesting juxtaposition.



This one is from a few months back.  He's been really into saying "BOOM!!" and stomping about for quite some time now.  This was the first time that Ryan did his version of it and I think it cemented him firmly in place as Bears' hero.  You can just see the awe in Bears' eyes as he looks up at him.

Bears Love Parks

...and even more specifically, he loves the red ball on the front of the locking mechanism for his stroller.  He'd just taken a big lick of it and was going "MMMmmm!!"  I couldn't resist ordering this bear suit when I saw it was only $12 on ebay.  It even comes complete with a little bear tail:

Here he is foraging for berries that, conveniently enough, just happen to be in a bag

he scored big time by discovering this dreamy dirt pile

..and then finished the rest of his berries

Sick Bears

Anyone who knows Bears knows that he's always been far too busy to cuddle with the exception of when he was a newborn.  Because of that, it wasn't all bad when he came down with a tummy bug that left him throwing up for days and needing tons of snuggles.  I felt really bad for the poor little tyke and did everything I could think of to make him feel better but I can't deny that I was eating the whole experience up...with a few twinges of guilt here and there for loving it so much.  He had tummy troubles for about five days and every one of those days involved hours and hours of cuddling.  Since I've only gotten 1-second hugs out of him for well over a year, this was heaven.  We even cuddled up and watched a movie.  Well...half a movie.  He was still Bears after all and did eventually realize that he had more important things to do.  He was patient enough to let me spoon feed him broth every couple of hours and wanted to give out plenty of kisses.  I still feel a bit guilty thinking about it now but I would say that this easily ranks in my top 5 best Bears memories so far.  It was the first time in a long time that I really felt like a nurturing mommy instead of a slightly frazzled person just trying to keep up with her highly curious, adventurous, and (sometimes) troublesome cub.  Of course, it's nice to have him back to his very busy self.  I think,.  As I'm typing this I'm trying to teach him not to bite my arm or head-butt my leg...aggh

alright, grandma videos

I apologize for the really terrible audio.  it seems the mic on this camera doesn't have much of a sound threshold so either things are super quiet or deafening. ah well.

These first two feature chasing games and our constantly-torn-apart apartment




Counting with daddy


Hunting FLIES!!!


Random summer video of bears and his ball

Bears Love Beaches Part 2

My dad filmed a whole lot of Bears playing at the beach.  I managed to edit it down a lot but it's still about four minutes.  Don't worry, it's highly riveting stuff.  At least it is if you happen to be the mommy of this cudger.

They Have Canyons in Seattle

Okay, not in Seattle, per se, but just a short drive out, you can find the south fork of the Snoqualmie river which cuts a pretty sweet canyon. My dad decided that we should check it out since it got pretty good reviews.  Once we got to the pools, we got an inkling as to why.  It's some pretty stuff.

The whole canyon is supposed to take 4-6 hours with about four rappels down waterfalls.  Due to a typo in the directions, we weren't able to find the trail head until really late in the day.  Luckily, there was a way to enter into the canyon halfway down so we opted for that...and a good thing too.  Turns out we are pretty slow hikers, especially when it comes to trekking down a mossy, boulder-filled creek bed.  That sucker ended up taking us almost 5 hours and we even bailed early out by clambering up a mossy cliff before doing the final rappel because we were worried about time.  I'm pretty glad we decided to do that impromptu climb, though, because it ended up being the most exciting part of the trip.  It looked like a relatively easy climb from below but halfway up, we realized that the only handholds were moss and a few crumbling, rotted tree roots.  We were at that awkward point where it would be too tricky to climb down but going up looked even more dangerous.  We decided that the best thing would be to make an anchor out of the most solid thing available (a fallen tree dangling down the cliff with it's roots still seemingly solidly planted) and Dad would belay me from there.  It did the trick because it gave me confidence that I likely wouldn't die if I fell so I was able to kinda just shimmy up and over the last 20 feet of moss crumbles and then belay him from the top.  Action packed adventure at it's best, I tell you.  All in all, quite good times.