Friday, May 16, 2014

Spring at last!

After slogging through some snowy, slushy, sleety days well into April, we are finally feeling securely enough into springtime to pack away the winter coats, boots, hats, and mittens. We've been enjoying some warmer weather outdoor activities, too -- lots of bubble blowing, sidewalk chalk drawing, and bike/trike riding. Leif is getting to be quite the whiz on his balance bike, zooming around the large, open asphalt play area at the school across the street from our house. Bjorn sort of has the hang of pedaling a tricycle, although at not quite two years old, his legs are too short to reach the pedals on many of the trikes he encounters (much to his chagrin). He's also not a fan of having to work too hard while pedaling, so he prefers to have a grown-up push the trike unless he's going slightly downhill. We're humoring him with the trike assistance for now, assuming that soon enough he'll be insisting (like he does already with many other things), "Do it SELF!"

Leif and Bjorn aren't very adept at blowing bubbles the old-fashioned way yet (they do try, but get frustrated with their limited success), so I picked up a couple of hand-held, battery-operated bubble blowers that work like a charm -- quite the hit!


Another popular outdoor activity at our house: scaling the back yard fence. Fortunately, Aaron built it to be sturdy enough to withstand such treatment.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Leif's 4th birthday - VIDEOS

As promised, here are a few videos from Leif's birthday back in February. Well, technically the last one dates from March -- we had the traditional family birthday gathering at our house the weekend following Leif's birthday, and given the short month, the calendar page had already been turned. No worries, it still felt like winter!




Thursday, May 8, 2014

Leif's 4th birthday

Hard to believe that Leify Leifster turned FOUR in February! The biggest surprise of this birthday for us was probably how little (relatively speaking) he had grown and changed since his third birthday. Of course he *did* grow and change, but after the whirlwind pace of growth of any baby or toddler, preschoolers seem to be downright stable in the growth department. (Not in the mood department....)

To illustrate, here are photos of Leif on his third and fourth birthdays:

Opening presents on his third birthday


(He still wears these size 3T "Dirt Dog" pajamas! Granted, they 
are getting a little bit short in the cuffs for him at this point.)

Showing four fingers at preschool on his fourth birthday


I have a few videos related to Leif's birthday that I want to post, as well, but given the late hour and how long it takes videos to upload to Blogger, I think I'll wait and post them another day. More to come soon!