What's been going on with the Bryson's

Gabriel has a very strange obsession for an 18 month old.... He's obsessed with Chester Arthur - the 21st president of the United States. Yep. I told you it was strange. His second favorite president is George Washington. At least we've all heard of George Washington. I didn't even know who Chester Arthur was until Gabriel pointed him out to me. We have a placemat that shows the presidents and during all of his meals Gabriel likes to keep his finger on Chester Arthur and grunts "Uh! Uh!" until we say "Yes, Chester Arthur." And then a few minutes later "Uh! Uh!".... "Yes Gabriel, Chester Arthur". He gets so excited for good ol Chester. It's really bizarre. Occasionally he'll point to other presidents and request that we name them, but he just can't seem to get enough of Chester. Mimi seems to think that maybe Gabriel used to BE Chester Arthur in a past life. Ha ha!

Cameron is still impressing us. Not only is he starting to add two double-digit numbers in his head (ex: 11 + 12), but the other day he started (on his own) adding 3 numbers together (ex: 6 + 9 + 5). This is 6, 7 and 8 year old math. I know it's annoying when moms overly brag about their kids, but I can't help it, I'm just so proud of him...(and still a little shocked). Cam is like a little 4 year old calculator. It's crazy because we didn't teach him any of this (so it's not like we force feed him math or anything) he just experiments on his own.

At bedtime Dylan reads to us. It had always been us reading to the kids, but now Dylan reads the books at night. I can't believe how quickly he's growing up. I volunteered in Dylan's class the other day and it was fun to see him in school. I even got to eat lunch with him and sit at the little cafeteria table with him and his friends. I caught myself saying things like "Dylan, you're making a mess.", "Dylan, don't play around with your food."....then I realized what I was doing. I'm sure the last thing he wants is me nagging him at school - it's his time to be a kid and be with kids and eat like a kid and play with his food like a kid and make a mess like a kid - that's what makes being a kid so much fun and that's one of the big advantages of getting to go to school. I bit my tongue the rest of lunch so that I didn't sound like a 'mom'.