First Day of Preschool

First day of preschool!  (Three weeks ago, but at least I'm posting about it!) 

Kiddo was so excited for school, I had to remind him to give me a kiss and hug good-bye when I dropped him off.  It was a little daunting to leave Kiddo with a bunch of strangers--albeit perfectly wonderful strangers--but he is having a great time.  At bedtime I like to ask Kiddo what his favorite part of the day was and three days a week, his answer is always preschool.

I don't think I'm an overly sentimental mom, but as I was driving out of our apartment parking lot that first day, I could see in my mind's eye the passage of time in a blink.  Suddenly, I saw myself teaching Kiddo how to drive, instead of just taking him to preschool.  I could hear myself say to him, "How did you get so big so fast?" 

Reston Zoo

The National Zoo is fabulous because it's free, has a lot of great animals, it's big enough to spend an entire day, and ... it's free.  But when a neighbor told us about the Reston Zoo, we had to check it out.

You can immediately tell that the zoo started out as just a really big petting zoo--there's an entire barn of animals waiting to be fed from your hands.  BG was thrilled to see the animals so close in front of her.

Farther into the park, they keep the more unusual animals.  Some favorites were the monkeys, foxes, snakes, porcupines, and alligators.

If you're so inclined (and who wouldn't be?) you can take the "zoofari wagon ride" through the gated-off portion of the zoo.  In some ways, it reminded Brandon and I of the drive-through safari we went on during our honeymoon (you didn't know Oregon was so exotic, did you?).  The llamas and ostriches were pretty gregarious when the truck stopped, trying to find the people who had food to share.  Wild animals shouldn't be that comfortable approaching a truck full of people, right?  It was almost as entertaining to watch the people around us react as it was to watch the animals themselves.

(that's not Brandon's hairy arm.  just fyi.)

My favorite part of the zoo was definitely the bird house.  Kiddo was not a fan of all the birds diving around everywhere, but BG and I stayed inside for as long as we could keep birds perched on us.

And to top it off, we bought a cherry pie from the farmer's market outside the zoo entrance.  Wild animals and cherry pie?  That's what I call a good day.

11 MONTHS!

Seriously--how is time going by so fast?  My little baby is growing up so quickly!

Lancaster [LANK-iss-ter]

After much planning and then changing our plans, we finally met up with our good friends from back in the day, Austin and Taylor, for some family adventures.  Since central Pennsylvania is about half way from both of our homes and we knew our kids would need some running around space, we decided to check out Lancaster.  Actually, with all the driving and such, we really only had about one day to see anything, so we had to set our priorities: chocolate and then Amish.

So first stop was the Hershey Chocolate Factory tour, which is more of a kiddie ride, complete with singing cows.  The kids loved the rides, the parents loved the gift store.

 Then it was time to check out the Amish country.  Actually, we had already had an encounter with the Amish when we noticed a couple going through the bank drive-through:

We went to an Amish farm and the kids had a great time checking out the farm and its animals:

Somehow we never got a picture of the four of us adults (seriously!  how did we not think of getting a pic of the four of us?), but we had such a great time with Austin and Tay.  Let's do it again soon, guys!

TOOOOTH

As far as teeth are concerned, our family are notoriously late bloomers.  At least, that's what my mom is always saying.  It proved to be true with #1 and I fully expected #2 to follow suit.  But BG surprised us all when she got her first tooth almost a full two months before her first birthday!  And, since it's been a couple of weeks since that happened, now she has another tooth or two coming in, as well.

Btw, it's ridiculously hard to get a picture of baby teeth.  I remember I got that pic of Kiddo's first tooth by laying him upside down on my lap.  I finally realized I wouldn't be able to get a decent picture of BG's tooth unless I did it while she was trying to eat her dinner--which also meant trying to dodge her messy little hands and consequently making her cry when I wouldn't let her play with the camera.  This was the only pic I could get without any tears.  Poor girl!