Deacon's First Easter

I'm about 10 days late, but here is the post about Deacon's first Easter. I've started and stopped this post a bunch of times, so to just get it up, I'm just going to do an Easter photo dump so you can see how we spent a fun, beautiful, sunny day.

We started by dying eggs on Saturday. Fletch really was more into it than he appears here.

On Easter morning, the kids came downstairs and found their Easter baskets full of candy, kites, and small toys. They were so excited.

Their baskets were also full of new bubble blowers and water squirters, which we immediately had to bring outside to try.

After getting filthy and wet in the yard with the bubbles and squirters, everyone got a bath and put on their fancy Easter clothes.

I LOVE this picture below. How am I so lucky to have such adorable kiddos?!?

Deke hung out with PawPaw while P&F did their Easter egg hunt.

And then we captured all of the Woodard men together in a photo.

The rest of the day was spent enjoying the candy and treats inside their eggs and having a delicious ham dinner. 

It was a terrific first Easter for Deacon.

Deacon: 10 months

Deacon turned 10 months a few weeks ago, and oh my gosh, he's just getting cuter and sweeter by the day. This is one of my favorite ages. I remember feeling this way about P&F at this age too. I mean really, how can you resist this adorable little guy.

Height and Weight

We didn't have a check up this month, but I'd say he's well past 22lbs. Not sure on his height. But, he's a hefty little guy, and everyone comments on how big he is.

Clothing Size

He's firmly in 12-18 month clothes, and even in some of Fletch's old 24m clothes that shrank a bit. 

Milestones

Not too many to report here. Deacon isn't crawling or very mobile yet. We actually are starting physical therapy next week through Fairfax County's Early Intervention program to work on gross motor skills. I'm sure in the next month or two we'll have lots of milestone updates. Two things I can report though are 1) Deacon has teeth! He has two on the bottom and three just about in on top. 2) He's starting to play games and imitate us. If I make a sound, he'll make it back to me. Grandma also taught him Pat-a-Cake, and Deacon loves twirling his arms to pretend he's rolling the dough. It's the cutest.

Outings and Adventures

Deacon pretty much goes where we go--the playground, PB&Jack, Target, etc. I'm hoping we get to the zoo this weekend. Last time he was there, he was just a teeny tiny newborn.

Routine/Schedule

We're firmly on a two nap/day schedule (also known as a 2-3-4 schedule, although we do closer to a 2-3-3 schedule). Deacon gets up around 6:30am, naps 2 hours after getting up at 8:30am until 10:30am, stays awake for 3 hours and goes down for a second nap at 1:30pm, and then goes to bed around 6:30pm, about 3 hours after he gets up from his second nap. As for night sleep, he is still getting up once/night to eat. I'm sure it's just a habit at this point, but we've been really reluctant to do any sleep training or to break the habit, mostly out of sheer laziness.

Favorite Food

He loves his bananas, sweet potatoes, and pears. A few months ago, Deacon had an allergic reaction to raspberries or apricots, so I'd been pretty hesitant to try a lot of other foods until we saw the allergist. We had our appointment last week, and he tested negative for the other common childhood food allergens (peanuts, eggs, peaches, strawberries, melon, etc.), so now we're upping the ante and giving him new foods, and trying to convince him that table foods are delicious.

That's pretty much the story on Deacon this month. It's hard to believe in just two short months, we'll have a one-year old. In the meantime, I'm holding tight to this adorable baby smile. Who can resist such cuteness!?!

Pajama Party

When I was trying to think of what to get Eric for his birthday, I knew the one thing he/we really needed was a night off, a night with zero responsibilities, a night away. So, I talked to Eric's mom who so nicely agreed to watch all three kids overnight along with Eric's dad so Eric and I could getaway for an evening. That meant that the kids had a big, old slumber party with Grandma and PawPaw a few weeks ago.

Here are a few snapshots from their fun time together.

They helped Grandma with her garden....

And went for a walk around Foggy Bottom...

Making a quick stop at the house that Eric's parents own and where Eric and I used to live...I don't think P&F have ever really seen it before....

They took beautiful pictures of Piper...

And Fletch made cheesy poses for the camera while Piper stopped to smell the flowers....

In addition to all this outside time to burn off energy, these lucky kids got to enjoy homemade milkshakes, new toys and games, and just an all around awesome time. Eric's parents got to see what Piper and Fletch look like at 5:30am when they wake up early and got quality time with Deacon several times between 1am and 4am. :)

While all this was going on, Eric and I caught up on some much needed R&R at Hotel Monaco in Old Town, since I had a gift certificate given to me by coworkers when Deacon was born. It was SO, SO awesome to have a nice dinner together, walk around Old Town without a stroller or kids in tow, to eat breakfast at a leisurely pace, etc.

So, thanks so much to Eric's parents for dealing with our crazy trio for nearly 36 hours. We can't tell you how grateful we are.

Cherry Blossoms: My Favorite

My favorite day of the year has come and gone....the peak of cherry blossoms. I just love it and can't get enough of seeing them, especially on that one day when they are all out in their full bloom. That day was yesterday. To mark the occasion, we headed downtown with every other person in the DC metro area to see the beautiful trees at the Tidal Basin. This isn't the first time we were crazy enough to do this. See how we've changed over the past few years in this post and this post.

Here's a photo recap of our day.

We started out early and got downtown by 7:20am. Traffic was already nuts, but thanks to Eric's terrific parking karma, we got a spot right along the Mall.

This is pretty much how picture attempts went all day. At least one kid making a silly face in every shot.

We started our trekked over from the Mall to the Tidal Basin and began our "adventure walk," stopping here and there for a few pics. That's what I called our day--an adventure walk--to convince Piper and Fletch that looking at trees would be a good time.

When we made it down to the Tidal Basin, everything was just gorgeous.

I love this picture of Eric and Deke. Eric is lucky to have two mini-me's in Fletch and Deacon.

As part of the "adventure walk," we had to cross a few bridges with extremely narrow sidewalks, where we had to walk single file. Piper and Fletch did this without too much wandering by playing a game of running their hands along the guard rail. This was the end result. They were very proud of their disgusting, soot-covered hands.

On the other side of this bridge, we stopped at the MLK Jr, Memorial and the FDR Memorial, which was really cool.

I think one of the highlights of P&F's day was this series of stone benches to climb on.

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Then it was onto more blossoms.

The entire walk, Piper kept saying she wanted to get to the Jefferson Memorial. We finally made it and stopped for a snack before Eric brought them up the stairs to see good old Tom.

 

Deke decided this would be a good time for a nap.

We hit the trail again to see more blossoms, and at that point, Piper and Fletch ran out of gas. They just didn't want to walk anymore--they'd already probably gone 2 miles on their short legs. Thankfully, the promise of the ice cream trucks along the Mall was enough to get them through the last few minutes.

Sweet refreshment.

Deacon even got in on the action. Obviously mother of the year here serving her 10-month old ice cream from an ice cream truck.

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He liked it!

A lot!

After all that excitement, we got back in the car. At home, we spent the rest of the day outside enjoying the gorgeous trees in our yard and do some bubble blowing.

 

Overall, it was a perfect spring day with my perfect little family. I couldn't be a happier