Is is spring yet?

Lately, Luke has been ridiculously bad with climbing. I think it's a combination of a lot of things: 1)it's winter and we spend way too much time inside at home (plus someone is usually sick, Matthew currently...again.) 2) He is a toddler 3) His gym class where he has really improved his climbing skills 4) New baby is an attention hog, climbing gets him attention, AND it's really a PITA to interrupt feeding Matthew to stop and get Luke down from the entertainment center.

This has been especially a problem this week because prior to this week, we had a long baby gate all the way across our entertainment center which kept Luke off of it and from pressing buttons. (It was really a superyard that we just made straight all the way across the living room.) He figured out how to climb the superyard and onto the entertainment center. So we moved it, and today was just ridiculously bad. No amount of yelling, time outs, redirection, positive attention, etc. was helping.

After awhile, I got fed up, trapped him in his high chair, gave him a couple markers and a snack and turned on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse while he colored and I fed Matthew. That worked well for awhile, though his coloring got sidetracked by his body art:

He was bad about being trapped in the high chair and also me taking his picture without letting him have my camera. The purple is marker...and here is his tummy "tattoo":

The kid does love to draw and color, though.

Anyway, THANKFULLY, it was nice outside today because Luke was making me seriously contemplate getting a job at McDonalds just to pay to bring him to daycare/a babysitter. It was a BAD day, up at 4 am, again for the day at 6, only took a half hour nap (timed while Matthew was awake), it was just ROUGH.

I bundled both boys up and outside we went. I decided to try to get Luke to sit in the bottom seat of our stroller and figured out how to turn the top seat facing me so I could see Matthew while we walked. It took an animal crackers bribe but once Luke was sitting there he liked it and climbed back in later on his own, so that's good, because Joe would have had a cow if I had to tell him that our new pretty expensive stroller was useless as a double because Luke won't sit at the bottom and the top seat is only for up to 35 lbs and he's already 32 lbs plus I don't really like the baby at the bottom anyway (even though that is supposed to be okay too.)

I ended up splurging yesterday for the car seat adapter so now I can take off the top seat and put our car seat on it. That was the main reason I haven't been using it much for out and about. With as much as we've already spent, for the stroller, and the 2nd seat, I was trying not to buy anything else. But meh, the convenience will hopefully be well worth it, especially this spring and summer when we're out more.

Matthew sleeping up top

Luke holding his animal crackers at the bottom

 (yes, his coat matches)

FYI, even though our stroller has a really nice one handed push, pushing 30 lbs of stroller and 45 lbs of kids (combined weights), up a hill, is not that easy but makes for an excellent workout.

Anyway, I can't wait for it to be nice enough to go outside EVERY DAY for as long as we can stand it. It is looking like we are going to be logging in lots of pool time this summer because staying inside with Luke for multiple days in a row really stinks.

Luke has thankfully decided he mostly likes his brother. He still does the "bayyybeeee" thing and points or touches him. He likes touching his head/face while we TRY to get him to back off and only touch Matthew's face. Poor Matthew.

 Also, Matthew is getting really big, really fast. I really need to try to catch a picture of him smiling: