That’s a nice boulder!

So yeah, I’m stealing the title of this post from my favorite line of the movie Shrek. I have seen Shrek about 6,000 times in the past few weeks, as it has officially usurped Cars as Landon’s new favorite movie. He’ll only watch a few minutes of Shrek 2 or 3, but he loves the first one….mostly any part that has the dragon in it. He actually asks for the “dragon part Daddy!” and gets all excited when it makes its appearance. He also likes to ask if we can “go to the dragon castle Daddy?” whenever we’re driving around. I haven’t actually mapquested the directions to the dragon castle yet, but it’s on my “to do” list.

All things Shrek aside, it has been a fairly uneventful week here in Sacramento. The weather was pretty rainy and gloomy early in the week, but I’m glad to say that the sun has been shining as the weekend draws upon us. I actually took advantage of the nice weather yesterday when Landon and I did some yard work. At one point Landon was helping me clean up after the dogs and got a little too carried away. He saw me picking up the “yucky poo poo” as he calls it with the shovel, and thought he’d pitch in by using his hands….needless to say, I was very appreciative of his offer, but thought it best to rush him in and wash his hands.

Landon also got his first pair of flip flops this week, which was probably more of a present for Michaela than Landon. For any of you that know her, Michaela is obsessed with sunny days and beach attire…of which, a key piece of clothing is the flip flop. Being from Arizona, we both wear our flip flops whenever we can (even in the rain when we feel a little crazy)…..anyhow…Landon got his first pair and absolutely loves them…he calls them his “cool shoes”, which he actually calls all of his shoes. I did get him to say “flip flops” a few times though, so maybe we’ll keep working on that one.

We've also really been working with Landon on his dining behavior these past few weeks. We’ve elected to go with normal cups and glasses at dinner time for him instead of the sippy cups with the lids. To his merit, he’s done a pretty good job and has actually improved quite a bit recently. The first few times we did it he was very fascinated by putting his food in the drink or chugging it too fast and spilling it everywhere. Lately he’s been a lot better about drinking it slowly and putting it back down on the table when he’s done. It’s obviously a work in progress but we’re getting there.

He continues to be a great eater and has even started eating salad with us from time to time. We weren’t sure he’d like it, but he specifically asks for it when he sees us with some, so we just let him go with it. Some of his other favorites include French toast or waffles for breakfast, and grilled cheese sandwiches, chicken nuggets, yogurt, spaghetti, veggies, pizza, and chicken for dinner. But really he’ll eat whatever we give him, which is definitely a blessing.

It occurred to me that I forgot to mention in the last post that we had Landon’s 2-year checkup recently. He’s still on the tip top of the charts, weighing in at 36 lbs and measuring 37.5” tall…so basically 95-99 percentiles for both. It’s funny, but we recently had to go buy an outfit as a birthday present for a friend’s kid who was turning one. As we were trying to pick something out, I was showing Michaela all of these different outfits in the 2T sizes…she was like “no, no, no! The kid needs 12-18 month sizes”….then it dawned on me that normal kids aren’t wearing 2T’s when they’re a year old…so I guess our doctor was right when he recently told us that “we have a giant on our hands”…

On a personal note I wanted to mention that my previous employer (and my Dad's current employer), Raley's, recently laid off nearly 200 workers from their corporate office. While I have not yet learned the full extent of who was laid off (thankfully my Dad wasn't), I know many of the people that were let go and I wanted to send out best wishes to them and their families. When something like this happens, it really makes me stop and think back on what could have been. I only left Raley's about a year and a half ago, so I easily could have had my head on the chopping block as well. Whether it was a business savvy move on my part, or just sheer dumb luck...I'm very thankful that I found a great job that I thoroughly enjoy and that my family has come through this recession without any lasting damage (knock on wood!)

Other than that, there’s not much to report here. We’re going to a birthday party this weekend, and other than that, most likely just going to hang out, relax, and enjoy the sunshine.

We hope you have a great weekend and we’ll talk to you soon.