Bday's & Boys

We recently celebrated Landon's 18th month birthday, and then today we celebrated my birthday. Phillip surprised me with the best surprise ever - pics of Landon and him!  So I thought I'd share some of those below. As you can see, Landon loves balls (and bubbles, by the way).

Since I last wrote, we moved into a new house, rented out our old house (about a mile apart from each other), and started the new school year.  Landon has learned so much in the past several months; he is now in "Early Preschool 1" at school.  They sit in regular (small-sized) chairs at a regular (small-sized) table, drink out of open cups, have regular backpacks, and do lots of lessons and play time. Although we don't think he's quite ready, they even will help potty-train at this point (crazy to think we're almost there already!)

We get fun notes from the teachers all the time about how he loved the "weather" lesson, or how he loves to color and can draw straight lines, or how he is one of the best participants in "circle time" in the morning and he can even put puzzle pieces in the right places. They probably tell all the parents these things, but we are very proud of our smart boy!  We are most impressed lately with his breadth of sign language vocabulary. He can do signs for a lot of common words, which really helps in deciphering what he wants, but he also does a lot of random ones, like animals, airplanes, etc. And he picks them up so fast - just one time and he seems to remember them permanently. Along with the signs, he is saying more and more as well, so he's always talking and on the move. (We think his favorite word at the moment is Papa, followed in close second by ball, bubble, box, blocks, and other words that start with 'b').  He definitely loves his bath with bubbles, and says "bubble" over and over while it's running. So funny. 

Needless to say, this is a really fun stage and we are enjoying it immensely.  Enjoy the pictures!

June News

I just realized I haven't written in about 2 months, so here is a quick update. We have been busy busy busy lately, ever since about 3 weeks ago when we suddenly became crazy-in-the-head and decided to buy a new house in the same neighborhood! So, 3 weeks later, we have now spent countless hours getting our house ready to sell while watching the new house being built. We'll have a bit more room inside and a lot more room outside in the new house, and we'll be even closer to Nanny and Papa. So we are very excited about this adventure -- our first *new* house...slated to be finished mid-August.


We have moved so much stuff out of our house that I no longer have access to the computer where I keep all our pictures. But we have been posting some on Facebook, so hopefully anyone who reads this blog can check those on my or Phillip's profiles.

Landon is at a really fun stage now. He is imitating everything we do and he very clearly understands most things we say. He seems to be learning a lot at daycare too - his current room has a lot more structure than his previous rooms did. When I drop him off at different times they are learning signs, having story time, having dance time, doing messy art, playing outside, etc. They even sleep on little cots now instead of cribs, so they are definitely growing up! And it's just precious to watch them eat snacks at their little tables, sitting on their little chairs. No more high chairs at school!


I know I say it a lot, but we are so blessed to have such a good, fun, happy kid. He generally follows directions and listens when we say 'no' (although he throws his share of tantrums when he doesn't want to hear no...). And he is developing a great sense of humor - just playing little jokes on us like acting like he is going to give a kiss and then psych!, no kiss. He loves to rough-house and has no fear in general...definitely did not get that from his mama.

I do have one prayer request - we've been fighting ear infections since January and we have an appt with the ENT doc in a week or so. He's currently on his 3rd consecutive round of antibiotics and none seem to be working. During the last round he went from a single to a double ear infection. So I just ask for prayers that the ENT can help him heal and that his hearing has not been affected by this (that's his ped's main concern right now). Again, we have been very blessed because he doesn't seem bothered by the ear infections, so I know he has some divine protection keeping him feeling fine. But I'm sure we'll have to have tubes unless we receive a miracle between now and then, which I will never rule out! Thank you for any prayers you can send up on Landon's behalf.

Our First Year with Landon

We celebrated Landon's first birthday this past Monday. It was a great day in so many ways.  Nanny Judy and I took Landon to the zoo - his first trip. We even noticed 11:11am on the dot so we got to say a special happy birthday to Landon at his birth time.  And he really did enjoy the zoo - especially the chimps and the petting zoo (he made fast friends with those goats).  Then we got home and discovered the 11 Muscovy duck eggs (that Daisy the duck had been incubating in our flowerbed since mid-March) were hatching. What a fun gift from God to Landon on his birthday!!  Then, after a 3-hour nap, we celebrated Landon's birthday with an airplane cake and presents. All in all it was a fabulous day and we thank God for the past year with Landon and every second of every day to come!

We've had a lot of milestones since I last wrote. The biggest is probably that Landon has been walking since April 6. He started out with a few steps at a time and by the following week he was walking more than crawling. Now he's running!  He loves going up and down stairs, even just small steps like the front porch or the curb. He also loves trying to climb onto things. His teacher said he empties out boxes and turns them over, climbs on them, and tries to use them to climb up on the bookcases.  So we definitely have a monkey on our hands!   He also loves being outside...he could literally stay out all day and be content.  He's definitely an explorer and a climber.   I'm looking forward to swimming in the summer - I think he's really going to enjoy it this year since he loves being outside so much, and also seems to love the water.

Other notables are the fact that he knows quite a few words. We were trying to count them the other day and came up with this list: mama, dada, nana, ba(ll), bo(ttle), du(ck), bye-bye, hi, hey, aawww (don't know if this counts as a word but it's cute when he says it).  He's also such a copycat that he does the funniest things after seeing them - from us or the dogs. He lays his cheek down to the floor and says awww; we think he's imitating the dogs rolling on their sides/backs to get their bellies rubbed.  He also has learned to kiss and he's mastered high fives, low fives, clapping, shaking hands, drumming, and several other fun tricks. We're working on fist-bumps now.

I hope you enjoyed this update and the pics and videos below. We really just thank and praise God for giving us such a blessing in Landon!

Dad's special gift to Landon:

Happy boy after birthday cake

God's birthday gift to Landon - 11 brand new ducklings

"Farm boy"

Little drummer boy - he loves drumming!

Our own little monkey

Looking at the baby and mama elephant 

First stop at the zoo - birds and squirrels. He loved them all!

First Easter

Being a boy - He took a spill in the gutter





A Quick 9-Month Update

We've hit all kinds of milestones since I last posted - it's been an exciting 2 months! We had a great Christmas with a visit to Nashville and then with Christmas morning at home (Landon's 8-month bday).  He has had a great time playing with all his new toys since Christmas - especially the ones that help him stand and walk!  He loves to push his walker toy around and he's getting very fast at that. He is also standing more stably now for longer periods of time, but not quite walking yet. We think it will be soon though.

He started crawling proficiently on Jan 1 (What a happy new year!), just in time to start in the "older baby" room at daycare, where everyone else can already crawl and/or walk. So we are now chasing him all over the house as he crawls at top speeds. He loves the dog bowls (water and food) so those have to stay on the counter most of the time now. (Poor puppies have to wait to have a drink until I notice them standing in the spot where their bowl is supposed to be!)  He also loves to chase after the dogs themselves.  He's not quite as fast as them yet, though.  Lucy is still his best friend and Leroy still wishes he would go back to where he came from. :)  But we hope that will change as soon as Leroy realizes how much attention he can get from Landon (besides pulling his tail, which is about all Landon tries to do so far).

In other notable milestones, he's down to 1 nap a day (part of the older baby routine at daycare), but he's sleeping better at night . We love the nights where we get to sleep uninterrupted and hope we have many more of those to come!  We did stop feeding him at night, so that has helped a lot with reducing the wake-up's.  Dad and Landon also now have some  very nice bedtime routines, so that makes it much easier on Mama!  He now has 6 teeth (4 on top, 2 on bottom) and seems to be cutting another tooth as we speak.  He continues to be in a great mood most of the time and then turns it off like a light switch when he is ready for bed.  He is eating more solid foods and drinking less milk, so I guess that is really a sign of growing up. Although he's not a huge fan of veggies (typical I guess!), he LOVES bread, meatballs, yogurt, Cheerios, and other such things. I'm starting to make some recipes out of the Deceptively Delicious cookbook in hopes to get some more veggies into him. He never did take to baby food so it is a constant challenge to try to make sure he eats enough good stuff. 

We're also enjoying his increasing communication skills. He can now sign "more", "all done", "bye bye", and he loves to clap. Another funny thing is that he LOVES the piano. We got him a piano for Christmas, which he has a ball playing, but just in the past few days he has discovered the real piano and he wants to sit on our lap and play it. He hits keys all the way up and down the keyboard.  To make it even more entertaining, Leroy always "sings" when we play the piano, so with Landon banging on it, he really belts out the tunes. We do not have a quiet house, in case you were wondering...

So overall, Landon is doing great and we continue to enjoy every minute with him! We've had to battle a few infections in Jan, but are hoping we finally kicked it and can be done with antibiotics for a long time now.  Enjoy the pics - they are a random assortment from the past 2 months. I'll try to post some videos soon.

I want to play the real piano!

Playing my own piano

First Christmas!

Swinging at the Horrell's on a playdate in January

This was back in the early stages of pulling himself up - he kept getting stuck under the tables!