Two!

Alder's breakfast this morning was a blueberry muffin with two candles. He was tickled to be sung to and actually successfully blew the candles out! Then our day progressed pretty normally. Off to school for Alder and to work for us.

We returned to Alder's school to eat lunch with him and share some blueberry muffins, which was a really awesome experience. I have been able to volunteer in the classroom once, but we rarely get to see into his life at Central Montessori School and each time we do, we are very pleased with what we see. They waited until afternoon snack to give the muffins out, and Alder was asked to serve all of his classmates and teachers.

Here are some glimpses of one corner of his 'classroom' for those of you that are interested.


We picked him up a bit early and played in the yard some before opening a couple of presents.

Thought we would roll a garden update into this post as well. Alder has started to really share our love for eatin' right out of the ground.

This is definitely a major reason we just love this time of year. And to make this even better : having a little one around that recognizes this same thing. It is very important to us that he is gaining some sort of understanding of where food comes from...

The garden is supplying just about more than we can eat. But Alder never turns down opportunities to put his dent in it before it gets to the table. He loves his "ahcollee ih uh gahdin".

He eats radishes from the ground. Is CRAZY about strawberries (unfortunately not from our garden). Its prime time for them these days in these parts. And the latest, he loves a big leaf of chard rolled up around a leaf of arugula, big stems and all. He'll cruise around the yard, taking bites from this fist full of leaf.
We are very fortunate that his toddler pallet appreciates the same things ours do. We hope the next one is the same in this way.

Last beach trip before we are four!

We will not likely travel any more until our next bundle arrives. So we went to the beach - Kiptopeke State Park on the Eastern Shore of VA this past weekend. It was nice to see Alder finally big enough to enjoy the beach by digging, carrying water back and forth in buckets, exploring the various flotsam, etc. The highlight of the trip was going to Savage Neck Natural Area Preserve and seeing intact Dune ecosystems and a mile long stretch of truly pristine beach. Jason works for the state agency (Natural Heritage) that identifies and purchases these hidden gems throughout the state. Your state has them too and I would highly recommend looking into where they are and visiting them. It is very rare these days to find truly intact ecosystems, especially the rarer ones.

Here are some shots of Alder enjoying Savage Neck:

We also went to visit Grammy and Pa-Pa the weekend before last and had a really great time.
Here is Alder on his second cousin's John Deer tractor. You can imagine that this was a huge hit, right?

Alder also enjoyed Pa-Pa's mini "motor-bicycles" shown here ridden by his daddy....

If anyone is wondering - I am feeling pretty uncomfortable and ready to not be pregnant. However, I am trying my best to enjoy this last month - feeling the giant twists and turns under my taught skin - and more importantly to revel in my last few weeks with Alder as an only child.