Landon's 5th Birthday

So proud with his presents on his birthday (March 7). These are his gifts from mom & dad, Arlan, and Grandma & Grandpa.

Arlan is particularly fond of the Lincoln Logs Landon received from his good friends Madison & Douglas!













The Birthday Party! We had Landon's party on Sat the 5th, with 8 guests :-) It was the first real 'party party' we'd had, usually it's just a few kids and it was more about us adults. This time I actually planned some games and fun. Like "Spin the Bottle" (with a beer bottle no less!). Spinning the bottle is how we determined whose gift Landon would open, and also each guest got a small present as well.
Then it was time for cake. Landon decided on Wednesday that he wanted a Transformers cake -- so voila! It was one of the easier of the character cakes I've made actually, and I think it turned out well.

Landon was so excited to receive so many gifts: Hotwheels, Transformers (his favourite right now), and lots and lots of LEGO! In fact, Landon took his birthday money from Great Grandpa and bought even more lego!! He has now discovered that we can take the lego apart and rebuild each piece, so I think he'll be more content with what he has (versus begging to go out and buy more lego EVERY day!).

Oh yeah - Landon also got a RC truck. He and Arlan spent the days immediately following his birthday racing the truck and Arlan's Bounceback racer around and around and around the house. come to think of it, haven't seen them racing for a few days (ah peace!).

Arlan's Birthday

Arlan turned TWO on June 18!! I can hardly believe that my baby is running around, jumping off of everything, speaking in sentences, and generally causing as much mischief as humanly possible! We had a small party for him with Grandma and Grandpa (who made it up here despite the extreme flooding and highway washed out near the SK/AB border!), and our neighbour Trevor with his twins Evan and Dara. It was nice. I had fun decorating his cake, and he enjoyed all of his presents. Lucky kid! He particularly enjoyed the race cars from Dara and Evan, the "fridge phonics" toy from mom & dad, and the chair from grandma and grandpa. All of them have already received a lot of use!!

I finally made his 2-year check-up appointment, it'll be July 8, so I'll have stats then!

Birthday Party Pics

Here's the shot of Landon's construction cake. The toys were a hit with him, of course :-) Thank you to Grandma for helping mom make this cake!!

Landon's favourite present was his new two-wheeler bike! This pic is about 15 minutes after he got it ... he was riding like a pro right from the start! I think we'll be doing a lot of bike riding this summer!


Opening presents - this one is the hotwheels (look at his face!), he has been playing with that whenever he isn't outside riding bike (and Arlan's been scheming to get that monster truck...)

Landon picking the construction vehicles off of his cake, and all the kids waiting oh-so-patiently for their piece!!

Success - and Landon's FOUR

Landon's birthday party (and the entire weekend) was very successful! We had a great party - with no meltdowns or fights or anything (phew!). Landon had a blast with friends here and presents. He definitely has the idea of presents now - it's all he wanted to do was to open presents! LOL His favourite was his new two-wheeler (with training wheels), which he took to immediately. He can even leave "blackies" when he stops! I can hardly wait for warmer weather, he'll be riding his bike all the time I'm sure.
Present fave #2 was his first HotWheels set -- some monster truck slammin' jammin' fire shootin' thing a ma hooey. He plays with it non-stop.
We've also started a "chores" list for Landon. He gets stamps when he does his chores, and when he gets enough stamps he can have money and can buy what he wants (which fluctuates between more monster trucks, Frosters from Mac's - which he refers to as treats - and today he was going to buy a movie). He's quite proud when he gets to put stamps on the chart, as I haven't let him use my stamps before. And the chart is up high, we have to help him up there, so it's a big deal.

Arlan loved the weekend too. Grandma and Grandpa were here. He kept pointing to Grandpa and saying "Look! Grandpaaaaa!" with big grin on his face. He is talking more and more, now it's just to figure out what he's saying. "rhoni" means macaroni, got that one figured out tonight. He loved the toys and people and everything on the weekend as well. He didn't even make it through the party - he went to nap right after lunch and missed the present opening and everything! lol Last night both boys were snoozing early - Arlan didn't even want to hear all of his "tory".
Arlan LOVES stories at bedtime. All you have to do is mention story-time and he's burning up the stairs. I didn't know where he went the other night, I went upstairs and there's Arlan laying in the middle of Landon's bed, looking at me with bright eyes, "Tory!" Too funny! Landon quite tolerant of Arlan sharing story-time with him, thankfully. Although the past 2 nights he's taken to reading his own stories in mom's bed ... Dad changed that one up tonight though. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

I have the camera and all the wonderful pictures sitting here. I have to upload and go through them and hope to be able to do that tomorrow night. The kids are much less tolerant of mommy on the computer these days - I really don't get much chance at all before they're in bed. And I certainly don't get blocks of time to get anything major, like pictures, accomplished throughout the day. So hopefully tomorrow evening...

Oh yeah - and Landon had his 4-year check up on Monday morning. He's just a smidgen under 40 pounds, and is 40.5" tall. 75th percentile for both height and weight, as he's always been. Everything else is great. He was a big boy too. I asked him to sit nicely beside mommy and show Arlan how a good boy waits patiently for the doctor. And he did it! For only about 45 seconds, but he did it!! lol Now to get that patience stretched out a bit further...

until next time...

happy morning...

Well this has been an incredibly happy morning. Landon woke up in the best mood I've seen him in in several days! Likely because we all slept until after 9 am (which makes mommy in a very happy mood too!).
Or maybe Landon's getting the vibe for his birthday coming up this weekend ... the next few days are all about party-planning! Gotta figure out a cake, party snacks, etc. Again, ideas are welcomed! I'm leaning towards a construction cake, using little construction vehicles ...maybe a mining scene with big dump trucks????

Here's Arlan's birthday cake. It's supposed to be a rainbow, but John thought it looked more like a rainbow caterpillar :-/

Arlan was interested in looking at the cake, but he didn't care to eat any of it (on our first attempt). The ice cream was just too cold, and well, he wasn't that hungry I guess. More sleepy I think - it was a pretty big day!

This picture of the 'cake face' is from Sunday - that's when he finally decided to try the cake. And you know what? It wasn't half-bad. The ice cream was still too cold though!


Singing happy birthday to Arlan.















Arlan after his birthday lunch. It was such a beautiful weekend we were able to eat outside.

Arlan's Birthday Present

Grandma and Grandpa bought Arlan a picnic table for his birthday. He loved the one at Uncle Rob and Aunty Liz's so much! It was (well, is) a big hit with both of them!!



While the table itself was a hit, the box was even BETTER!



Both Landon and Arlan liked the box!!



Arlan's got the instructions for dad...see?!!



Dad had quite a helper when putting the picnic table together :-)

Dare I say it???

Landon is pooping in the toilet these days! WOW! Hoping this continues :-) We've always been giving him the option, but he kept choosing the diaper. The last week or so he's been more agreeable to having us take his poopy diaper off right after pooping (WHY would anyone refuse to have their poopy diaper removed asap? Beats me ... we'll have to ask him when he's older ...). And then yesterday he said he needed to poop on the toilet! And he did! TWICE!!
So he got two special trucks, and another one today. Then when I was out shopping he pooped all by himself, and didn't even ask for a special truck. So hopefully we won't have to be stocking up on hotwheels to keep the poop trend on track! LOL But really ... do I care if we get a few more hotwheels? Not one bit!

So that's the good stuff there. He has been peeing more overnight though - we didn't have a diaper on him one night and he peed. That's not a big deal, but he had been dry for so many nights. But maybe he'll be set back a bit on overnight dryness while he gets the poop thing figured out. And again ... do I care? Not at all! If he needs a diaper overnight for a bit longer, I can most definitely live with that.

Arlan is so bloody cute it's ridiculous! What a happy camper :-) He MUST be getting another tooth soon though - he's biting everything! Then when you say "Arlan, no biting!" he just looks at you and laughs. Cute, but scary too! LOL

I'm starting to get plans together for Arlan's first birthday. We're having a small party on the Sat (June 20) for him ... cake and stuff, nothing too crazy, though. Grandma and Grandpa will be coming up, but I don't know if anyone else will make it. Right now I'm on the hunt for a cake pan ... then I'll spend next weekend making my icings, etc. Fun stuff -

Anyways, better head off to bed. Until next time...

Landon is THREE!

It was a paper-flinging extravaganza for Landon on Saturday!! He was soooo lucky to get sooo many nice presents!! In usual kid style, he was asking for more presents on Sunday :-/ But he LOVES his new CARS toybox from Aunty Yvonne & Uncle Greg and Kyle; and his Mack, Lightning, and Mater Mega Bloks from Grandma and Grandpa!! Mostly the Mack and Lightning - which is what he'd been asking for since Christmas :-) He got lots of great presents, hopefully it'll hold him over for awhile! lol

We had a bit of a birthday party for Landon. The neighbours came over with their girls -- and Landon got SPOILED by them as well! Thomson will be so happy to know that Landon now has mini hockey sticks along with nets so that they can play hockey when he gets here!! Landon also really liked his Wall-E cake. He'd known all along it was coming, and was so happy to finally be able to eat it :-D He blew the candle out before I even got the cake on the table LOL

So today we are re-grouping and relaxing a bit. Hopefully Landon will catch up on some sleep. Such a big weekend, plus the timechange. But he managed to get out of bed at 9 am this morning (which is 8 am in his pre-timechange world). He didn't nap Friday or Sunday, and Saturday's was horribly inadequate given the level of excitement he had all weekend. So this week will be recovery week...

Opening birthday presents

Landon got a new tricycle from mom & dad for his birthday. He had discovered it in the garage before his birthday, but finally we let him ride it. He even likes his 'hat' (helmet). Notice the gorgous Thomas quilt he's riding on -- that was a present from Grandma and Grandpa (homemade) and is now on his big boy bed :-)
Taylor is showing Landon how to play with the new Thomas magnet book that she brought him for a gift. He loves that book. Almost as much as he loves the Happy Birthday Thomas book that Taylor also brought for him (THANK you Taylor and Eastynn, and Nikki & Fabian!) ... we read that book several times a day, often over and over and over again...
Grandpa brought Landon a new loader tractor - and that was a definite hit. He had to help Grandpa get all that packaging off, and he's been inseparable since then. That night Landon was climbing out of his crib at 2 am crying for the tractor!! *sigh*
Opening the tractor
Opening more gifts on the beautiful Thomas quilt. I love this quilt!

Happy Birthday my big boy!

Here is Landon on his birthday -- nice face hey?? LOL Gotta love it.
Saturday March 8 we had a birthday party for Landon. Here he is admiring the 'crackle' on his cake (he was WAY more excited about the candle than he was about the cake....hmmmm...maybe next year it'll just be an icecream cake! LOL)
Landon's friend Taylor was here for his birthday party. They played very nicely together, and ate their lunch together too, which was very nice.
Grandpa and dad brought Landon a Thomas balloon in the morning - it was a BIG hit. When you hit the balloon it played a happy birthday song for him.
Here's Landon blowing out his candle. He really did blow, but mom ended up having to help him get it out ( to save the cake from getting too full of spittle!!).

Birthday suits can be so much FUN!

Landon has been loving running around naked the past days. He even wanted me to take his shirt off in the store on Sunday - stinker!! And once we get the shirt off, then he wants pants off, then he wants diaper off....

Last night he spent a fair amount of time naked without accidents. Until he was sitting on me while I was sitting on our bed, of course. But we got that cleaned up without too much trouble.
The troublesome one was when he went to bed. At some time between going to bed (and crawling out of bed 4 times) and falling asleep Landon stripped down. Then he went to sleep. Then he peed. John found him sound asleep, curled up in a ball, cold and wet everywhere. So we had to get him dressed and change the bedding - poor Landon was so upset at being woke up. For a kid that takes to long to fall asleep, he sure is miserable if you wake him up again!!! Poor guy :-( I felt bad for him. But maybe, just maybe, he'll keep his clothes on when he goes to bed now!! LOL

He was very good kid this morning - I had running around to do and he was so well behaved. I don't even take the stroller anymore, he wants nothing to do with it. But he is pretty good when we go shopping. I let him spend about an hour in Toys R Us too, which helps. He checked out Thomas stuff, and ride-on toys (I was there to buy a bike helmet to go with his birthday tricycle this weekend), and all the Tonka trucks and loaders and tractors, and balls and cars. It was a pretty busy trip, but I managed to get away with only a bit more than I went in there for ;-) Then we stopped at Michaels to return some stuff and he was good there, and then we spent some time in the dollar store getting party supplies and he was really good in there too. I was so impressed. Makes life a lot easier when Landon is behaving.
Although I almost missed the naptime window this afternoon - he was out of the crib 3 times before finally sucumbing to snoozer-time. Thank goodness, I like the downtime.

That's the news for now...

Dr Appt went well today

Landon is getting soooo big... makes me amazed and somewhat sad that he's getting so big! lol He's 35.5" tall, and 30 pounds! So that's about 75th percentile for height, 85th for weight (which is somewhat surprising since he's such a wiry little bugger! There isn't much fat on Landon, that's for sure. But he is very strong, which is where the weight is coming from I guess *shrug*
So he's doing well. He still has a bit of an ear infection, so he has ear drops for the next 5 days. Hopefully he'll be fully recovered to go to Grandma's house! Poor kid. He still hasn't been acting like he's in pain - he does pull at his ear a bit, and he wants a soother all the time, and he's been chewing on his fingers alot -> all of which I thought meant he's teething (I hear horror stories about 2-year molars!). But maybe it's just been his ears.

And I'm doing well, and baby #2 is doing well. When the doc was listening to baby's heartrate, s/he didn't like it too much. They moved from one side of my belly to the other, and when the doctor followed with his heartbeat-hearing thingy, the baby kicked him and moved again! LOL Fiesty little bugger already!! aiaiaiai

Last night Landon was a very good boy for his babysitters. John and I went out for dinner with some friends, and they're kids looked after Landon for the evening. He didn't even cry or fuss when we left. But those poor sitters - they were pretty tired by the time we got back from dinner! LOL He even tires out the teen-agers that kid! I was very glad that he was so good, hopefully we'll get out a few more times before #2 comes along.

I'm getting geared up for Landon's birthday party on Saturday. We're hoping Nikki, Fabian and the girls are able to stop on their way through to Edmonton. Plus Aunty Trish will be here, as will Grandma and Grandpa. I know Landon will be very excited to see Grandma and Grandpa, that's for sure. I haven't even mentioned that they're coming yet - he gets so worked up!! LOL I'm picking up the Thomas cake pan tomorrow - then the fun will begin :-/ Ah well, I'm sure it will work out just fine.

So that's our news for today...

poop on pot...

...and pee on floor.

Well, hey, what can a poor kid do?

Landon was pretty good tonight - he of course wanted to run around naked, so we kept asking if he had to pee or poop. He came over to me holding himself, so I said "do you have to pee?" 'no' "do you have to poop?" and he ran to the pot saying 'poo poo! poo poo!'. Then he sat down and pooped! Good boy!! But he still had to have his diaper off. So he would be playing, then say 'pee pee' so we'd take him to his pot, and twice he peed a bit, not lots, but some. YAY! We celebrated (and cleaned the potty for the second and third times :-D). He's still running around naked. Then he sits on a kitchen chair, doesn't say a thing, and we hear what sounds like water running ... *sigh* I think he gets so excited when he starts to pee on the pot that he doesn't relax to let himself finish. So I took him to his potty and sat him on it, but of course he was now completely done peeing. So I just said to him 'that's okay, you missed the pot this time, but we'll do it next time' and John cleaned the floor ... and we put a diaper on Landon (of course, after he's had his accident!! LOL We likely could've left him diaperless for the rest of the evening with no more accidents! ) But all in all, I think it was a good night ... he's catching on, and it is the most action we've had for a few weeks on that front.

We had a wonderful weekend with Uncle Bob, Aunty Rosemary, Juli and Lilja. What an incredibly good little baby!! Wow! Sleeps wonderfully, eats wonderfully, and is SO cute to boot! A real little angel.
We didn't make it to the Home and Garden Show yesterday, like we'd set out to do. Instead we did some shopping for fabrics, I got Kyle's b'day gift, and we stopped at e-Children (which I'd been wanting to do since we moved here!). By then it was time for lunch and we came home again. It was a fabulous day - I really enjoyed the shopping, and it was a real treat to get to eat in a restaurant, without Landon (Landon went with Uncle Bob and John to the motorcycle shops).

Today we relaxed, did a few errands, but nothing major. Just a nice quiet day at home. Tomorrow night we're out for dinner with some friends while their daughter watches Landon for a couple of hours ... hopefully that goes well. Tues is doc appt for both Landon and I (his 2-year check-up! I can hardly believe it!!). Wed I pick up the Thomas cake pan for Landon's b'day cake, and then the final preps for Grandma and Grandpa's visit as well as the making and decorating of Landon's cake for the rest of the week. Should be fun - we are very much looking forward to it!

YAY - for potty peeing!

Landon did another pee in his potty last night - a full pee this time, not just a dribble. He wanted his clothes off after supper, saying pee pee. I showed him his pot, and he peed! He won't stay on there long if we're standing over him, so we have to give him his space. That means he got some pee not in the potty, but most of it was in there, so YAY!

The past days have been good. I finally got all of the Thomas train tracks and stuff that I wanted off of ebay, so I can ignore that site for awhile.
And I never thought I would be excited to take a cake decorating course -- but I am. *shaking head* It starts next week, a couple of hours on Wed nights for 4 weeks. This was spurred on by me wanting to make a Thomas cake for Landons birthday in March. So the decorating course will be very handy (and used very quickly). I'll maybe even practise with a b'day cake for me...we'll have to see.
And I finally found a Thomas cake pan - and I'm able to rent it instead of buying it. Phew! So that's good stuff too.
Birthday party planning has begun :-D Hard to believe that he'll be TWO already!

Other than that, not much new. We went to the gym today for drop-in play. Landon enjoyed it I think. He's starting to enjoy being around other kids more. He likes to follow older kids around. He's pretty friendly usually - he'll bounce up to other kids and say 'hi'. I noticed today that not many responded to him (positively or negatively) - most kids are just playing in their own world. But he had fun, running around and not really playing with anything in particular for about half an hour. Then he said "All done.", so we had some juice and came back home.

It was just so nice to get out of the house - poor kid has been cooped up for so long!! LOL And it was nice for me to not have to be watching Thomas dvd's for awhile ... aiaiai ... as soon as Landon gets up he wants 'choo choo trains'!! At least it's giving me a chance to teach him please and thank you, and I always make him use words instead of just pointing and whining. We get enough of that as it is.

S-L-O-W times...

Not much has been happening here. I've been preparing for John's birthday - baked a cake, made nice dinner, etc, and that's kept me occupied (his birthday is today). *shrug* Landon is cute as all get-out of course. He says 'bubble' all the day long - I think he likes bubble baths :-) He is started to say more, and juice; well really he's starting to make sounds that stand for these words - I have trouble recognizing them so I don't think anyone else would. But at least I'm starting to catch on to his garble. He loves juice, and he always wants more of it :-D

Landon is loving trains too - thanks to Thomas! He says 'toot toot' whenever he sees a train, or anything looking remotely like a train. He loves the C-train when we drive by it, that's for sure. And I bought a little train thing last week for him to, which he's loving. Aunty Liz sent a Thomas puzzle which is a big hit too!!

Tonight we had a snowball-shower here. Really. It was like miniature snowballs falling down (or super soft, fluffy hail if you prefer). Landon was mesmerized. So we let him outside for a bit - he was running around the backyard laughing and giggling, watching the snowballs fall. It was adorable! I took some video - will post on the other site hopefully tomorrow (?).

That's really all the news today. Tomorrow we'll be getting ready for our trip to Saskatoon for the weekend! YAY Looking forward to it :-) Might not post before we leave, but I will when we get back. Until next time...

Let them eat CAKE!

Need I really say more? Heh heh. Landon was a bit hesitant when he first got his birthday cake, but soon enough he tried some out. And well ... you can see the ultimate results!! LOL He loved his birthday cake (Grandma baked a pretty darned good cake, we all liked it!!), and he loved the ice cream he got with it too (it was pretty cold on his hands, but he got it all in his mouth quickly enough!!).

Landon was pretty wired up the rest of the night!! I think it was 11:30 or later before he finally gave in and went to sleep! Much different from Grandpa who had a good snooze on the couch before heading to bed by 10!! LOL

At the zoo...

Well, Landon didn't really know what to make of the zoo. He likes being pushed around, but was very impatient every time we stopped or slowed down :-) Mostly he liked the fences, he kept grabbing them (I guess making sure they were good and sturdy!!). He didn't really notice any animals that were far off or not moving. He liked the ducks (he and Grandpa 'chased' them), and he definitely noticed the elephants (that were out on display). We saw some nice animals though, and it was such a beautiful day just to go out for a walk. I look forward to many more trips to the zoo this summer.

Birthday gifts galore!

What a lucky stinker bug we have. He got so many nice presents!! Yesterday he opened the rest of his gifts from Grandma and Grandpa, and the BIG gift from Aunty Liz, Uncle Rob, Thomson and Isabel. You can see by these pictures just how happy he is with his new ride-on car!! He can't really ride without help yet, but he pushes it around a lot. He also 'fixes' it with the tools Grandma and Grandpa got him. He walks around the house with this screwdriver and his wrench, banging on anything he figures needs 'fixing' I guess!! And he posed oh-so-nicely with his new bubble-blowing tools here too, I had to post it.

Happy Birthday to ME!!!!!

Heeeeeere's the Birthday BOY!! Landon was all dressed up and showing off this morning already :-) This afternoon we are going to the zoo ... it's supposed to get to 12 above today, so we'll take advantage of the nice weather.
The chair -- a new favourite from Grandma and Grandpa for his birthday. Landon played with the chair all last night, tipping it over, sitting on it, pushing it around. I think this may be the hit of his birthday!!