The many faces of Leo

We are excited to announce...

 that we are adopting again!

 As of last week, we are officially in "The Book"! We are working with the same Agency as we did with Leo's adoption, and have spent the last 5 months or so completing our Home Study, paperwork, and necessary meetings to be "actively waiting".

 

Leo is incredibly excited to become a big brother!

We have explained the process to him every step of the way, and he has a very good understanding of it, especially for only being 4 years old. He came to the Agency with us anytime we had a meeting and loves to talk about the things he wants to buy for "his baby".

Leo and Nana: A Shutterfly album

I recently made Leo a Shutterfly book with nearly all of the photos I have of him with his Nana Patty. Since her passing last December, Leo asks about her every so often- I always remind him to look at the photos we have up in the house of her, but figured it would mean more to Leo to be able to sit down and look at all of the photos of the 2 of them together... I'm really happy with how it turned out!

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly allows you to customize your photo book just the way you want.

I think I forgot I had a blog...

Nothing like an almost 7 month break in blogging, right?
I've thought about blogging quite often, but sitting down to write and finish a post just doesn't seem to ever happen these days...

What have we been up to? I'd say not much, but it's been almost 7 months!
So last post, Leo was just starting school... He has been doing really well at school. He goes 2 days a week for 2 1/2 hours. We've only had a couple of occasions where he hasn't wanted us to leave. He does quite often tell us in the mornings, as we are leaving, that he just wants to stay home- but once he's at school he loves it! The month of March was all about animals at school for Leo- he had a gerbil, tadpoles and frogs, chickens, pigeons, and a rabbit visit his classroom throughout the month. Leo loved the animal visits!

What else? Um, Halloween happened. Leo was Batman. Leo also insisted that there be 2 Batmans, meaning Nate needed a costume...which of course Nate got. Leo loves playing Batman nearly everyday still!

 

 

In November, we took Leo and our niece, Anya, to a hotel/waterpark for a night as a surprise. They had a blast! We ate an early dinner at Noodles & Co, then let them each choose a toy at Creative Kids Stuff before heading to the pool. They wanted to swim all night! The next day, we swam some more, then surprised the kiddos again by having lunch at Five Guys and playing some games at Dave & Buster's with Leo's BMom, Lanie.

 

December. To be honest, December is blur. Nate's Mom's health declined quite a bit over the Fall months, especially from November to December. She passed away December 17th. She had fought her Stage 4 Esophageal Cancer for just over a year and a half. There were a lot of circumstances that made this more difficult to deal with, but Nate has dealt with his Mom's passing extremely well. Leo seems to have a good understanding of what happened. He'll talk about his Nana Patty every so often and will remind us that we can't see her. I recently made Leo a Shutterfly photo book of pictures with just him and his Nana. I spent quite a bit of time going through all of my photos on the computer to gather nearly every photo we have of the 2 of them together. Nate's Mom was not a fan of having her photograph taken, so quite a few are snapshots I took without her looking at the camera. I'm glad I did that!   

Our Christmas was great, Leo had so much fun seeing what Santa brought him! When we had visited Santa, Leo told us he was going to ask for certain things but when it came time sit on Santa's lap- he asked for "a real stop sign!" Luckily, Santa (along with some help from Leo's Grampa Lee) was able to make that happen- Leo was shocked to see it next to the tree!

I'll recap January-March another day... Thanks for checking in on us!!

 

 

 

Ladies & Gentlemen, We have a PRESCHOOLER!

Leo was crazy excited for his 1st day of school today! He managed to cooperate for the mandatory photos outside (maybe I paid him $1 to do so...) all while asking to "just leave already".

We converted Leo's car seat back into booster mode (we had tried this when he turned 3, but he wasn't quite ready) to make drop-off and pick-up easier and to really let him know we think he's a big boy now. I rode in the back seat with him, so I could unbuckle him for drop-off. His school does a curbside drop-off & pick-up meaning we don't get out of the car with him, they have teachers help the kids out of their cars and then walk them in.

 

We gave Leo a card wishing him a good first day of preschool- he really liked it!

 

After school, we went to Perkins for lunch with Jess' Mom. Leo had pancakes with sprinkles and was super excited to tell us about his day. We learned that he wore the fireman hat, colored, the playground is closed for workers to work on, he had crackers for snack, everyone in his class is his friend and he wants to go back again!

 

Woo-hoo!

Growing Boy

Leo has hit a couple of big growth spurts lately, 

it's been fun to compare photos from last summer to pics from this year!

Here's Leo standing by a big rock at the entrance to our neighborhood...

 

Leo's 3 Year Photos!

We had Leo's 3 year photo shoot done a few weeks ago, here is the link to view all of them:

{View Leo's photos}

 

 

 

I just LOVE how they turned out! Although, Leo looks way too old, especially in the first few.

We had Mike at Honey Tree Photography do the photos again this year. He did Leo's 1 year and 2 year photos and never disappoints!

 

 



3 Year Check Up!

Leo had his 3 year check up on Monday. I still can't quite grasp the fact that he's 3 years old, not sure when that will settle in with me...
His stats are 33 lbs 4 oz (67%) and almost 3' 2" (51%). He is in perfect health. The nurse did a hearing and vision test, both were hysterical to watch. Leo listened carefully to the nurse's instructions about the hearing test (wear these headphones and if you hear a beep in your right ear, raise your right hand...) and agreed that he understood how it worked. Once she started the test, anytime he could hear a beep he would just look at the nurse. He sat there mute while she would ask him if he could hear a beep. This went on for about 5 minutes, she took the headphones off (while trying not to laugh) and finally asked him if he could hear beeping- he said yes. She asked him which ear he heard it in and he said both. She repeated the test with the headphones back on, Leo then just touched whichever ear he heard the beep.
The vision test required Leo to stand at one side of the room with a pair of glasses on that had tape covering one eye. He stood perfectly still while the nurse stood on the other side of the room pointing to the eye chart. The eye chart had pictures instead of letters on it, the top (largest) picture was a cat and the last (smallest) picture was also a cat. Leo got every picture correct through the while test, when it came time to say what the last picture was he quietly said "kitten", the nurse asked him to repeat himself, he said "meow. small cat. kitten.", he is so silly like that to notice the difference in the sizes of the 2 cats on the chart! The nurse laughed so hard, saying no one has ever said that before to her.
He loves going to the Doctor and has always been like that. Leo changed into the little gown thingy after the nurse left our room and jumped up onto the table to lay down. Laughing and giggling the whole time.

 

He laid on the table while the Dr checked his ears and eyes. He was prompt to answer any question she asked both him and us.

When it was time to leave, Leo didn't want to get dresses he kept saying that he wanted to stay there for the day.