Birthdays and the end of preschool....

Landon turned 18-months old on May 11, which is hard to believe! Everyday he just seems to turn more and more into a little boy - no more baby left! At his 18-month doctor's appointment, he weighed 24 lbs, 1 oz (48th percentile) and was over the 90th percentile for height (can't remember the exact measurment). Landon is really a funny little guy...we can kind of see him being a class clown down the road! :)  Here is a perfect example....

He'll do things like this a lot, and then excitedly say, "Look Mommy!" (or direct it to Brandon or Grady) and then start hysterically laughing. It's just so cute! He'll do other things like dangle his shoe from his toe or pretend to burp and think it's just the funniest thing. We just can't help but laugh at him! 

Landon's talking a lot these days and now says about 150 words. He seems to pick up words and phrases pretty quickly and has started saying two and three word phrases, such as "Bye-bye Daddy," "Night-night Grady," "Head hurts" (if he bumped his head), "There it is," "Here you go Mommy," "Eewww...a bug!," etc. Earlier tonight, he was sitting in his highchair, and I took something out of the oven, and he said, "Heiss(a)! Heiss(a)!" Most of you probably have no idea what that means, but it's German for "Hot! Hot!" I grew up thinking that was something everyone said, but realized later that wasn't the case. Ma (my grandmother) said it all the time, so I say it too, which is where Landon picked it up. Soon after that, he ran into the kitchen from the living room and said, "Puter boom!" (computer boom). That definitely wasn't something I wanted to hear! :)

In other news, Gramps celebrated a big birthday in April! He turned 80, so we went up to Boone last weekend for a late celebration. The boys of course had loads of fun, and Grady loved helping Gramps blow out his candles.

Today was Grady's last day of preschool for the year. It was kind of sad because he'll be going to a new preschool next year that is a lot closer to our house, so it was hard saying goodbye. I always have a hard time with goodbyes and new phases because I feel like time is going so fast, so of course this prompted me to go look at pictures from the beginning of the year and year before. This is Grady's first day of preschool in the 2-year-old class (September 2009).

And here is Grady on the first day of preschool in the 3-year-old class (September 2010).

This is a picture after we picked him up today.... He got a pail/shovel filled with goodies from his teachers.

Finally, here are a few other pictures of the boys.... Our neighbors gave Grady and Landon capes yesterday. She had some left over from her daughter's birthday party. (She made these for party favors, which I thought was a brilliant idea!) You can tell the boys love them!

Landon spotted a plane so was looking up at it....although in this picture it looks like he's about to take off flying in his cape!

Here they are looking for ants. Grady was determined to find an ant that would eat his cracker. :)

Easter...

The boys had a great time celebrating Easter! Aunt Kelly and Hannah came to visit about a week before Easter to keep us company while Brandon was at a conference for the week. (Thank goodness because I might have gone crazy if I didn't have some adult interaction for a whole week!) The kids had a great time together as always. We went to the Museum of Life & Science one day, which was a lot of fun. (In this picture below, Grady is covering his nose because he didn't like how the animals smelled!) :)

No trip to Chapel Hill would be complete without a visit to Roses to stock up on Carolina gear! :)

We also went to the park during the week and went over to Aunt Carleen and Uncle Kevin's new house for a visit. They have chickens, and one actually laid an egg while we were watching. Then they all went over to dig for worms to feed to the chickens....I'm not exactly a huge worm fan, so I'm glad their aunt is willing to do this with them! :)

After a nice visit to the park....

Once Brandon got back from his conference in Baltimore, we all headed down to Pinehurst for Easter (and Uncle Louis drove up that same day). The next day Uncle Kevin helped Grady decorate eggs (which is a tradition he started with Grady when he was just about 10 months old).

On Easter morning the kids went to an Easter egg hunt, where the Easter Bunny made a special appearance!

Mimi and Popeye with all their grandkids!

These two little girls came to the hunt late, so didn't get any eggs, so Grady shared with them! :)

Here is Grady opening one of his many Easter baskets (with chocolate already all over his lips)! (We've always had a tradition where the Easter Bunny hides all the Easter baskets, so we continued that! They had a great time searching all over the house for their baskets after they got up!)

Every Easter we get to see our extended family from Ohio and Charlotte (my mom's brothers and their families), which is always a lot of fun! Here is part of the crew after church on Easter...

Celebrating 5 years!

On March 25, we celebrated our five-year anniversary! We were so lucky in that my parents agreed to watch the boys for us so we could have a weekend away...thanks again Mimi and Popeye! While we REALLY enjoyed sleeping in and relaxing, we definitely missed our little guys. The boys of course had a great time with Mimi and Popeye!

Here is a picture of us from our wedding day five years ago!

And this is me five years later..... I would say this is pretty accurate. Exhausted and frazzled! he he... only kidding. (Grady drew this of me last week, and I absolutely love it! This is pretty much what my hair looks like every day! Last time I checked I didn't have a goatee though.) :)

Other than that, we've just been enjoying the warm weather! We pretty much play outside every afternoon and are generally outside when Brandon gets home from work. Here is the greeting he gets from the boys almost everyday. He can barely get out of the car!

Grady and I have also been doing a lot of planting in the yard, which has been fun. I usually have a helper for about five minutes before he decides that he'd rather go play, but that's okay. :)  The other day he went over to the hose and started filling a bucket up with water. When I asked him what he was doing, he told me, "I'm giving the mosquitos and fleas water because they are thirsty." I thought that was so cute. It's just hilarious what little people say. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I'd rather him squash the mosquitos. Here are some pictures of the boys playing outside....

Landon taking a motorcyle ride in the woods. :)



Landon is pretty much obsessed with the mail, so every afternoon we walk (or ride in the wagon) down to the mailbox to check the mailbox. He always gets a piece of junk mail to play with, which just makes his day!



 Landon turned 17 months on April 11, which is hard to believe! He is just so much fun and a really funny little guy. He loves playing tricks - like pretending to give us something and then pulling it away, at which point he dies laughing! He is also talking a lot, and his new favorite thing to say is "No way!" We definitely see him asserting his independence a lot lately...he even says "No!" and "No way!" to things he really wants just because he likes the fact that he can say it.. If he doesn't get his way, he lays down and bangs his head on the floor, which causes him to get more upset and cry because he hurt his head! We've learned over the years that the best thing to do in these situations (with this age) is nothing. So, we just wait for it to pass, and then he snaps out of it and acts like it never happened. Too funny! Here is a video of him in action with his "No!" and "No way!"

Landon has always had blonde, slightly wavy hair. Lately it's becoming kind of curly, especially when it's humid or wet, and I absolutely love it!

In other news, we finally got Grady a twin bed since he was pretty much growing out of his toddler bed. He loves it! This was his first night in his big bed.

We took the boys to the new bounce house in Raleigh last weekend, and we all had a great time!

Family, Running and Haircuts Oh My!

We've been staying busy and definitely enjoying the warmer weather. Now that Landon is running around so much (opposed to last Spring) we can really go outside for long periods of time and just play, which is a lot of fun. This is one of their favorite spots to hang out....Every time we get out of the car, Landon says "bench! bench!" and runs over and sits on it.

The weather has been so nice that we've taken the opportunity to eat outside, which the boys love!

Just thought this one was so funny! He really curls his lip when he's not happy about something!

A few weeks ago Brandon decided to run in another 5K, and this one was in Whispering Pines (about 10 minutes from Pinehurst), so it worked out great for a visit with Mimi and Popeye. Right after Brandon started running, Landon immediately started looking for him at the finish line, saying, "Daddo, Daddo, Daddo..." over and over again. Then he plopped down to enjoy a snack and wait for him.

Brandon beat his time from the last 5K, which was exciting!

These events are always fun for the boys because there are always great activities for kids....this one had a bounce house, so of course Grady loved the idea. Unfortunately, as Grady was bouncing (about 5 minutes into it) the whole thing started to lose air and collapse! As everyone was trying to quickly get all the kids out, it blew back up and was fine, but Grady was pretty traumatized and wouldn't go back in. Here is a picture of Mimi trying to explain to Grady that someone must have stepped on the plug, but cones were then put up so it definitely wouldn't happen again. (Of course Mimi completely made this up, but it made Grady feel better and he went back in a while later!) :)

Here are some other pictures from the weekend....

This is actually my Dukes of Hazzard Hot wheels bike from when I was a little! I have vivid memories of riding down the hill at our house in NY on this bike....so crazy to see my son riding it now! :) 



A couple of weeks ago I finally decided that it was time for Landon to get a haircut. I was actually intending to just let his hair grow because I think it's so pretty (blonde and wavy), but I realized it was quickly turning into a mullet because he doesn't have very long bangs (not the look I was going for!), so I decided to just trim a little bit off the back. Plus, everywhere we went people would tell us we had a beautiful little girl! :)   This is a good pre-haircut picture:

For Grady's first haircut, we took him to a salon, and he even got a "first haircut" certificate! Being the second child, poor Landon just got a haircut at home! :) He did surprisingly well with it...his favorite part was playing with the clothes pin that held his towel on.

We're pretty sure Landon is going through a major growth spurt because he is literally about to eat us out of house and home! He will eat an entire plate of food (and I give him a lot!), and then always asks for more. His favorite foods these days are blackberries ("ba-berries"), avocados ("cados"), green beans ("gee bees"), melon ("mel-yon"), yellow rice ("ice") and pasta with marinara sauce ("noonles"). The picture below is after he ate pasta, avocados and blackberries.  We also recently discovered that coconut milk is now available in the dairy section (half gallon)...not the canned stuff. Landon absolutely loves it!

We went up to Boone this past weekend to celebrate Uncle Scott's birthday. Granny's birthday is also this coming weekend, so it was a nice way to celebrate with her too.

Scott recently rescued a 10-year-old dog from the shelter, so we finally got to meet her! Her name is Esther, and she is so sweet! Landon loves dogs, so he really enjoyed meeting her too.

Grady has really taken a special liking to Scott's girlfriend Charlotte. It's really cute because he gets really shy and usually ends up whispering to us that he wants to sit next to her or play with her. They went to the park with us one day, and Grady found a spot where he could throw sticks and rocks into the water (one of his favorite things to do!).