We decided to celebrate Father’s Day by going out strawberry picking in the morning. We drove out to a farm in Clarence and had a lot of fun. Matthew ate so many strawberries, I’m not quite sure how he didn’t get sick off of them.
I don’t think we’d taken 2 steps down the path before Matthew looked like this:
Because of the strange spring we had this year, the strawberry pickings were a bit slim. But there were definitely strawberries to be had.
You just had to look for them under the leaves:
Hunting for berries:
Still eating:
And eating:
Ian posing with our take:
And I shall call him “Red Beard”:
(Do you see the strawberry juice on Mike’s forearm? LOL)
Daddy and his babies:
Family shot:
Me and Matthew:
Me and the boys:
(Notice Matthew is eating another strawberry. And that he attempted to shove it in my mouth first, leaving strawberry juice on my face near the left side of my mouth. LOL)
Yummy!
We are definitely doing this again next year. These were, BY FAR, the best strawberries I have EVER eaten!
After nap time, we went to Mike’s grandfather’s house for a cookout with his side of the family. It was a really nice Father’s Day. 🙂
THE BIRTHDAY FESTIVITIES
Matthew’s birthday fell on Friday this year. We decided to go to a local bounce house/party center to celebrate. Matthew typically loves bounce houses but was a little slow to warm up to it on his birthday. He spent a lot of time running around the building and checking stuff out.
Once he finally got brave enough to go down one of the slides, it was all over. He turned into a little daredevil wild man. 🙂
Here are some videos and pictures of the night:
Trying out a baby slide:
Going for a sail!
Waiting for the birthday boy to come down the slide:
He’d go about a few steps past this point and turn around to come down:
First ride down the big slide:
Ian and Matthew playing with Nick and Aunt Rachel:
Literally (I’m not exaggerating here!), his second ride down the slide:
Bouncing:
Having the time of his life:
It was a bit of a rough exit from this bounce house for Aunt Rachel:
After that, we went home for a quick dinner, presents, cake and ice cream!
Posing for a picture before tearing into the presents:
Birthday boy looking super sweet in the birthday hat:
Checking out his brand new choo choo trains:
Opening presents:
(Did you like the nose picking at the end? LOL)
Enjoying rainbow cake:
A damn cool looking cake, if you ask me! 😉
Cake information:
*You just add a ton of food coloring to regular old cake mix (2 boxes, prepared according to the box instructions).
*Pour it into round pans and bake. Cake will probably bake less time that what is on the box. Just keep an eye on it.
*Let cool completely (I popped in the freezer overnight).
*Stack layers with icing between each layer, on the top and on the side.
I had a pretty rough trial run a few nights before his birthday and had to retry again the day before. I tried to do layers that ended up too thin. Smaller pans would probably have worked to make a smaller cake.
Here is a picture before I iced the sides:
(I never ended up taking a picture BEFORE we cut it. Oh well!)
THE PEDIATRICIAN APPOINTMENT
On June 21st, I took Matthew for his 2 year well child pediatrician visit. Matthew did really awesome and got weighed and measured like a big boy. (Ian started throwing colossal fits at this point and had to be forcibly weighed/measured for about 2 years. LOL)
Stats:
Height: 34.75 inches (57th percentile)
Weight: 30 pounds (75th percentile)
Because he got measured standing up (instead of laying down), Matthew appears to have “shrunk” a bit. Nothing to worry about, just the measurements becoming more accurate. The doctor showed me Matthew’s BMI on a chart. I can’t remember what it said but it looked very proportional.
After that we had to get his blood tested for iron (thank you, NYS!) and needed a few shots. Matthew was a trouper and managed to survive all the pain and torture we inflicted upon him.
I brought up my concerns regarding Matthew’s language (again) and got the old “let’s wait and see” song and dance. (Mike and I have decided to wait until October to see how he’s doing language-wise. If we don’t see an improvement, we’re going to call for an early intervention evaluation. )
Little man Sass passed his exam with flying colors and doesn’t go back for another 6 months.
THE 2 YEAR PORTRAITS
I took Matthew for his 2 year portraits a week after his birthday. Mike had his Gus Macker tournament in Buffalo that weekend so Mom and Dad helped me wrangle the wild beasts, um, I mean kids. They also popped in for a quick picture at the end of the somewhat disastrous session. LOL
Here’s what you need to know about photographing a 2 year old:
It sucks.
Bad.
And the 12 year old photographers that my studio hires don’t seem to understand that.
We got some pretty decent shots out of Matthew but they just kept going and going. Hi. He’s two. We need to move on before we lose him. It was important that we kept him happy because…..
I also decided that I wanted to get photos of Ian and Matthew together. I haven’t had professional photos taken of the two them since Matthew was 10 days old.
Sooooo, without further ado…here are the 2 year portraits:
This is my sweet baby Sass…look at those gorgeous brown eyes:
I thought the pros would have some sort of magical fix for the “one child smiling, one child stunned” thing. Apparently not. LOL
Matthew being a cheese ball:
With Grammy and Papaw:
And in summary, a picture that captures how the entire session went:
In addition to the stuff I talk about below, please keep in mind that we were adjusting to being back from vacation, I had to complete the August month end close (I had over 300 emails in my inbox at work) on a short 4 day work week while being an employee shorthanded in my department and we also had new living room furniture delivered on Wednesday. And the school/teacher stuff on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday meant multiple trips to and from home/work/school to attend. Needless to say, it was a DAMN stressful week.
Click HERE to see it larger!
Scrapping resources:
-Template: Little Moments, Big Memories-Week/Digital Scrapbook Place
-Background #1: Cabanarama by Brandy Buffington/2ps
-Background #2, background #3 and week stamps: A Year to Remember: Project 365 by Little Dreamer Designs
-Days of week and “week of” labels: Cathy Zielske’s Layered Template 26 at Designer Digitals
-Alpha: Times New Roman
We signed Ian up for a Saturday morning bowling league. He will be playing in a bumper league for 3 and 4 year olds. We figured it would be a nice way to meet other kids/parents. Yesterday was the first day for the league and Ian loved it.
Unfortunately, the experience was a bit stressful yesterday. We brought Matthew and he threw one continuous temper tantrum during most of the first game. He eventually came out of his funk but it was a bit nutty.
Ian’s teammate Eric was a nice little boy but his mother seemed to have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed. Her bad mood kind of made things awkward. Ian later made a comment about “Eric’s mommy was mad at Eric”. When your 4 year old picks up on it, you know it was bad.
Hopefully it gets a little bit better going forward. For the record, we probably will take turns taking Ian to bowling and staying home with Matthew on Saturday mornings. 🙂
I am trying to do some massive photo editing catch up. I finally have processed everything through the end of July and besides all the pictures I took on vacation, I only have 3 days from August to do. Now that, my friends, is what I call SUCCESS!!!
I should be able to finish those last 3 days by the end of this week but I’m going to pretend I don’t have 457 photos from our vacation to deal with just a wee bit longer. 😉
Unfortunately, I’m about 3-4 months behind on blogging. I’m planning to work on blogging next weekend. I will probably post this stuff with current dates (so it will show up on top/as current info) and then I’m going to go through and back date my posts after a month or so. I want to make sure the backlog stuff gets seen but I’d like to keep everything in quasi-chronological order. I tend to go back and look at old blog posts after the fact and if I put something out there that is 3 months late, I’ll never find it in a year or two.
On a completely unrelated note, here’s a picture of me and my best big boy Ian on Friday evening:
Dontcha just LOVE that cheese-ball smile? LOL