Strawberry picking.

This morning we headed out with my dear friend Anna to pick some strawberries.  I was extremely excited because this is Leeland's 1st time picking. So exciting to see his reaction to new things, and seeing him get into so many more activities as he is growing up. And after I got home this afternoon and started thinking on it a bit, I'm pretty certain that this was my 1st time actually picking strawberries too. At least I can't recall ever picking before. Sad, huh?
Anywho, other than the fact that it rained yesterday and we got a little muddy, it was pretty perfect.  Leeland got into it, and had fun picking the berries off the vine and collecting them in his little red basket.  And of course the part he really liked was the fruit of his labor, literally. We were trying to take a few photos at the end, and he was munching away at the sweet berries before we headed out.  Of course picking the biggest berries in the box to eat. He's a smart one that kid!

 Now it's on to cleaning, chopping and storing all of these delicious strawberries! I do believe we have some tasty smoothies, and strawberry bread in our future! :)

Leeland is 2!

Over the weekend Leeland turned 2! Holy wow! We celebrated by going to the zoo on Friday (Leeland's 1st time going), and we had a small family birthday party on Saturday. His birthday party was "choo choo" train themed in orange and blue matching this birthday invitation we ordered from Etsy.  Leeland loves all things transportation-- cars, trains, airplanes, helicopters so he really really enjoyed it.  The menu was very NC, we had BBQ, slaw, baked beans, chips, fresh fruit, pasta salad, and of course I made cupcakes for my boy.  Along with some choo choo candy pops that I made with blue and orange candy melts and a candy mold I ordered from Amazon. Here are some photos from the party--

I think he had a blast! He was showered with gifts, enjoyed some really yummy BBQ, and of course lots of sweets with cupcakes and ice cream cones and candy.  You only turn 2 once!

Also, today he had his 2 year check-up at the doctor and he is a healthy growing little boy!  He weighs 26 pounds which puts him in the 25th percentile (up from the 15th percentile at his last appointment), and he is exactly 3 feet tall in the 85th percentile for height. 

Dying Easter Eggs

Yesterday, Leeland died Easter eggs for the 1st time! And come to think of it, it's Daniel and I's first time dying Easter eggs together as well.  We waited until close to bath time to do it because we knew there was a big chance it could get messy.  We also put a disposable diaper on him, and no other clothes (not risking dying one of my fancy cloth dipes. Haha!) And of course, we kept everything outdoors on our balcony.  Leeland had a lot of fun! He liked to dip the eggs in all of the colors, making some new interesting colors-- we thankfully only had 1 egg turn out brown. And he also insisted that the eggs, be in dye at ALL times, when Daniel and I would declare one finished and put it back in the carton, he would pick it back out and throw it in another color.  It was a lot of fun! See here:

Free Cone Day.

 Today is Ben & Jerry's free cone day!  They essentially give out 1 scoop of ice cream per person, you choose a cup or a cone and they have buckets for you to make a donation to charity.  My understanding is that they choose different charities each year, though I'm not really sure.  This year, the money was going to the local Children's Museum. 

Free cone day lasts from 12-8 at our local Ben & Jerry's but there's always a wait and a long line, so I wanted us to get there early to try to avoid that.  Getting there early, essentially meant that Leeland was having ice cream for lunch.  For the record, we have never substituted a meal for ice cream or cake or any other sweet before, so this one time, I didn't think it would hurt.  Plus, I have to admit, it was kind of fun breaking the "rules".  This may become a yearly tradition for us!

Leeland made a TOTAL mess, so I just have to share a few photos from our lunch.  We had a blast!!! And bodies and clothes can be washed, so I wasn't bothered by the mess. 

First Easter Egg Hunt.

We recently purchased a family membership to the local Children's Museum. It's a birthday present for Leeland a little early, and a present for Mommy too because letting him run some energy out there keeps Mommy somewhat sane since Hayden was born.  Mondays are "members only Monday" and they always offer little events along with a special weekly sing and dance time.  Yesterday, they had an Easter egg hunt.  I picked up some Easter eggs a couple weeks ago for Leeland in hopes of teaching him what a hunt is all about-- he just enjoys opening and closing them.  With that said, the hunt yesterday was fun, but he didn't last long.  We found about 7 eggs and then got distracted with some Tonka trucks and called it quits.  There were special eggs marked with a heart or a star though, and if you found one, you got a prize.  One of the 7 eggs he found, was a star egg and he got a Dr. Seuss Horton stuffed animal.

So apparently Leeland is always scared of Santa, but not of the Easter bunny! At least Santa has a face!

On a hunt!

Can't resist a Tonka truck!

And a pic just for fun... enjoying the Fire Truck.

Our Cloth Diaper Stash.

Since the arrival of our 2nd little dude, our cloth diaper stash has really grown.  Having two kiddos in such a short span of time, 2 little boys under the age of 2, that means 2 tushes that need diapers.  I had hoped to get the potty training train going a little for Leeland prior to Hayden's arrival, but he isn't interested right now.  I hear that little boys take a little longer.... And to be honest, it's probably a blessing, potty training is hard work on a Momma and takes incredible diligence and with a lot of my effort going into a newborn right now, it's one less thing on my plate.  I've been wanting to get some shots of our stash for a while now, but all of the diapers aren't typically clean at once-- so here is the majority of it.....

The following diapers are currently used for Leeland...
22 one-size bumGenius 4.0's
2 one-size Kawaii diapers
2 one-size Bamboo Kawaii diapers
1 one-size diaper without a name
2 one-size Charlie Banana diapers
2 one-size Fuzzibunz

....And these diapers are used for Hayden right now
24 Oso Cozy size small unbleached indian prefolds
5 Thirsties diaper covers (4 are duo size 1's and 1 is an extra small)

Also not pictured we have 2 dozen size medium Green Mountain prefold diapers, along with about 7 size medium and size large covers (combination of Bummis and Thirsties).  These prefolds were purchased when we first started cloth diapering Leeland at 6 months old.  Then he got to moving around a lot, and we upgraded to the one-size pocket diapers so that they were easier to wrestle on him.  Hayden will grown into them soon enough and until then, we tri-fold the prefolds and stuff them into a pocket diaper for night time use for Leeland. 

We also have over 50 cloth wipes, about 85% are handmade from receiving blankets.  And we have 3 wet bags, (a Planet Wise, a Bummis and a Thirsties). 

Teeth.

My worst fear came true this week-- that's an exaggeration, it's not really my "worst" fear, but it is one that I have talked about and hoped and wished not to happen.  What is it?  Something happening to Leeland's teeth.

I remember running into another Mom a couple months ago at a football game, and Leeland was about the same age as her youngest son and they ran around and played so we were chatting.  She asked if I had other children and I told her we were expecting (at the time not knowing it was a boy yet) and she told me that she had 3 sons.  She followed that with, "if you end up having more boys, there's a support group for Mom's like us."  I giggled and said something about how from all the stories I have heard about my husband and his brothers that we needed to make sure we have good medical insurance.  And she said, "no, you need good dental insurance," and followed with a story about a freak accident with her youngest son and his tooth having to be pulled.  Mind you, he was only about 16 months old at the time. 

That has been my fear.  In all actuality, we of course get 2 sets of teeth in our lifetime so it's technically not that big of a deal, but knowing that Leeland may have a jacked up tooth for at least 7 years before his permanent teeth come in is really scary to me.  

So anyways, Leeland chipped one of his front teeth this week.  Thankfully it's a small chip so there wasn't any sort of root or extreme damage causing us to rush off to the dentist office, but it's a chip in his tooth none the less.  Daniel says that it is small enough that no one would notice if I didn't point it out, but I know it's there! The way it's placed in the corner of his front tooth makes his tooth just look, not straight across at the bottom (if that makes sense).

He bonked his mouth on the side of the bath tub the other night.  He cried and I consoled him and remember checking his lips and glancing at his mouth to make sure he wasn't bleeding.  (He has been known to get a bloody lip in falls from now and then).  I don't recall looking at any of his teeth (dumb me) and he stopped crying after about a minute so I assumed he wasn't hurt too bad.  The next morning, we were sitting on the couch enjoying our cheerios together-- and Leeland likes to take very large fist fulls of cheerios and put them in his mouth.  When he did, I noticed his tooth didn't look right and thought for whatever reason there was cheerios stuck in his tooth.  But it wasn't cheerios-- it was the chipped tooth. I beat myself up about it most of the day because it took me to the next day to notice and I felt horrible about being a "bad mom."  And then I just got sad for him that his teeth are perfect anymore.  :(

Santa

We took Leeland to see Santa this past weekend. Let me remind you of how it went last year when he sat with Santa for the first time at about 8 months old....

Leeland would be on the left in the above picture with my sleeping nephew on the right, who never flinched at any of Leeland's screams might I add and enjoyed his little nap with Santa.

And here is this year-- he still didn't care for Santa much this year, though it was the wailing of last year....

Just a little bit of whining this year. :)

New foods.

Leeland is starting to develop an excellent palate for food. He went through a stage in the past few months where he refused to eat several different things but mostly vegetables.  I offered him vegetables every night at dinner anyways but they unfortunately typically got thrown to the dog. But now he's starting to come around to them and can be found scarfing down carrots and corn and squash at the dinner table.  And we also recently discovered that he likes things that are a bit spicy!  He downed several bowls of chili that his Grandmother (Daniel's mom) made us last week, and he was surprisingly very in to some spicy BBQ chips that Daniel was eating last week. Here are some messy chili photos--

Family Photos 2011.

We had our family photos taken this past weekend! I am so excited to share a little sneak peek. Photos taken by Alisa at the Old Guilford Mill.