Happy Birthday Landon!

Our little man just turned TWO!  Although if you've asked him how old he is during the past month or so he'd have already said two.  We started practicing early so that he'd be ready, but it's weird that he actually is two now.  It's funny because people think he's so smart that he knows yet if you ask him anything that starts with "how" and ends with "you"(e.g. how tall are you?) he will answer "two"!  It's quite cute.  For some reason this birthday hit us more than his first.  Maybe because he still felt like a baby at one year.  At two though, we feel like he's such a big boy and definitely lost the baby.  It's fun and also sad to realize how fast the two years went.  Then to think in two months we'll have two kids, yikes!

Landon enjoying his forward facing car-seat now that he's TWO!

Anyway, we still do believe he is a smart boy :-)  The other day John looked up toddler milestones and we were actually quite impressed with how well Landon is doing.  Although his speech definitely has room for improvement, he is putting 3-4 words together, knows above the 50 minimum amount  words, knows 10 colors (they say 1 color at 33 months), can for the most part count (although he's starting to skip around again), can stack at least the 5 blocks, has essentially been potty trained for the past 5 months (minus poo poo), and many more.  We've never really cared where he was and figured that he would be where he needs to be and we would just encourage his growth and development, but it's nice to know he's doing pretty well. 

Last year Landon ended up with Roseola for his first birthday which had him fevering over 103.  Not the first birthday Shani had in mind for him.  Although we know he wouldn't remember a thing, it was sad for us to not really celebrate and have a fun day with him.  This year we made sure was much different!  We started the day by going to breakfast with Nonni and Papa at the train restaurant that Landon likes.  Then we went downtown to a place called ArtBeast studio where they have all kinds of great activities for kids.  There is a drama room with dress-up, instruments, puppets, etc, an art room with paint, play-dough, moon sand, clay, craft paper, etc, a playhouse type kitchen room, tumbling room, and outside they had water and sand activities.  It was a great place and he loved it.  So after playing there for 2.5 hours we got some lunch and headed home for his nap.  

Once he woke up we played around the house for awhile, made chocolate chip pancakes and cut out shapes using cookie cutters, then we made a healthy dinner (you'll understand the need for it to be healthy in a second).  

Then for the most exciting part, we went to Leatherby's for ice cream!  Landon probably had more sugar that night than he's had in his 2 years of existence!  Shani was really good at letting him just enjoy his birthday ice cream and the "cancer berries" (a.k.a. maraschino cherries) that were on it.  It cracked us up because everyone already had their ice cream before they brought out Landon's. Then the waiter brought Landon's clown ice cream with a candle on it and he kept saying "pretty please" and pointing to the spot in front of him.  We have no idea how he knew that was his or that he'd enjoy it, but he just knew.  They had everyone singing Happy Birthday (the place was packed because of Valentine's day) and then he was ready to dig in.  It was so much fun to see our boy so happy!  Landon, we love you so much and we hope you had as great of a day as we've had with you!  Happy birthday bud-bud!

Can you tell where Landon wants his ice cream?