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- TODAY is Leander’s 4th birthday! (Cue all the emotions.)
I can hardly believe that our sweet boy is FOUR YEARS OLD.
Part of me looks at him and still sees my tiny baby boy, but mostly I just look at him in awe of how big he’s getting, how smart he is, and how mature he’s growing.
We’ve been celebrating him all week long. Last Sunday night, we hosted a big party in his honor (it was “shark” themed – per his request). We had so much fun and he absolutely loved every moment of being the center of attention!
On Wednesday, we went to visit my Meme & Grandpa (who weren’t able to make it to the party) so they could see him for his birthday and give him his birthday gift. As much as he loved opening more presents, he was more interested in playing with their extensive lego collection and munching on candy (which is what Great-Grandparents are best at, handing out candy, right?)
Yesterday, we visited my other Grandma so she could give him his gift. We had a lunch picnic in her living room, and once again, as happy as he was to open more presents, he truly just wanted to play with her flashlight to search around her house for “treasure”.
Today will bring MORE presents (after all, you only turn 4 once!) I saved a few gifts from his party for him to open today and Braelynn has a slew of gifts she’s created (and one she bought) for her brother.
For his birthday, Leander requested donuts, watermelon, and hot dogs. So, I got him donuts and hot dogs (no watermelon though – he’ll have to settle for grapes and strawberries). We plan on feasting and celebrating all day long!
(If you missed it, I wrote a post full of updates and photos for his “birthday eve” yesterday!) - It’s only December 3rd, but I feel like I’m already so behind with Christmas stuff. I know I’m not, but I feel like it. I’m about 75% done with buying Christmas gifts (I need to just get on Amazon and buy the remaining items on my list). I got my Christmas card photos printed and delivered this week – so this weekend’s big task is getting the cards all signed (Derrick’s favorite task), getting them addressed, and stuffed to mail for early next week! (Yay, a trip to the post office, my favorite – not.)
- We have a rule in our house: we can put up the Christmas lights and put up our Christmas tree – but no ornaments or other Christmas decor until after Leander’s birthday. Since we had his birthday party early, we decorated our tree this week!! And wow, our tree is packed with ornaments this year!! I started collecting Christmas ornaments from all of the parks we visit, so needless to say – that collection is growing quite large. Plus our kids have ornaments, Derrick and I each have ornaments – our tree is full. But it’s beautiful and so many of the ornaments tell a story – so I LOVE it.
- Speaking of Leander growing and maturing – he’s really been thinking and processing things lately, as evidenced by the questions he’s suddenly asking us. For example: He’s obsessed with the book “Harold and the Purple Crayon”. If you’ve never read the book, it’s about a little boy who imagines all sorts of adventures by drawing things with his purple crayon. It’s a cute book. We’ve read it almost every single night for the last few weeks. Well, one morning this week, Leander walked up to me in the kitchen and said, “Mommy, where is Harold’s family?” I was so confused at first – what did he just say? So I asked and he clarified: “Does Harold go home to his Mommy and Daddy?” I realized he was talking about Harold from the book! “Harold’s” parents and family are never mentioned in the book!! Needless to say, I was very impressed by his reasoning and I reassured him that, of course, Harold goes home to his Mommy and Daddy.
- With it being the start of December and also the start of Advent – that means we started all of our Christmas countdown stuff this week!! This is officially my favorite thing about Christmas (and also what makes me most sad when it’s over). The kids have 3 Christmas countdown “calendars” this year – they each have a chocolate calendar, Nana made them a huge calendar with prizes every day, and I filled a castle I’ve had for years with squishies that they get to open every day. We started reading a Christmas book with readings every day leading up to Christmas (this year we’re reading “Jotham’s Journey” – we’ve read it before, but it’s been a few years and Braelynn doesn’t remember – it’s one of my favorite books!) AND for the 6th year in a row (I think this is the 6th year), I wrapped up Christmas books for the kids to open and read every night before bed. It’s funny to me to think, that when I first started the Christmas book tradition, I could barely scrape together 24 Christmas books (I borrowed a bunch from my Mom to make it work). Over the last few years though, I’ve grown my Christmas book collection and now I have enough to wrap two books (one for Braelynn to open and one for Leander) every single night. I have all the Christmas classics, plus a bunch that we really just love. As I was wrapping them this year though, I realized that my next task (now that I have so many) is to replace some of my “much loved” copies with nicer versions. For example, I found a used “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” book 6 years ago, and it wasn’t in the best condition when I bought it, so by now, it’s really rough. So, my next task is replacing those books with better copies of the same classics, so we can continue to enjoy them for years to come. I know it’s a lot
