Wandering Browns

Sand baby with his shovel and pail For my birthday this year, I could not figure out what I wanted. So, I decided I wanted to go camping. CAMPING with an almost 1-year-old. Also, I wanted to go to the "beach". So we did. And it was grand. We started out right after lunch on a glorious Friday afternoon, prime Landon nap time. We drove around the bottom of Lake Michigan and made it up near Grand Mere State Park in Michigan. We could not quite find the beaches of this state park, but we randomly drove down some roads until we found parking for a public beach. Turns out that most of the beach is actually private and owned by people who have lakefront properties, but there was this little slice of public beach. Not very many people knew about it, so it was not at all crowded and we were able to play in the sand with Landon to his heart's content. He loved it! Entering Indiana on our way to... Pure Michigan! One of Landon's favorite things to do in the sand...

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I feel very accomplished that we have kept Landon alive for this entire year. Although Landon was a relatively easy baby, he is transitioning into this mischievous, devious little toddler boy. Here are some of Landon's favorite things : 1. Throwing things away (or putting things "in")... into garbage cans, down air vents, etc. His favorite is sending things into his diaper pail because he puts things into the spot where the diaper goes, and pulls down on the handle, and the object is gone when he raises the handle back up. We have found desitin, wash cloths, socks, and other things in his diaper pail. He also is getting tall enough to reach up to both of our desks, which typically contain important papers and things like Austin's wallet and keys. He has managed to get both of those down the air vent, but fortunately the vent has a bend in it that makes everything get caught before it actually goes down the wall into oblivion. This was a few weeks ago when Lan...

We had a great time celebrating Landon's birthday this past weekend. He had to open presents starting the evening before his birthday and ending the evening after because he had so many and he got bored after opening just a couple (plus, he wanted to play with them!) I think this post is best illustrated with the pics from the weekend: Landon posing with one of his many gifts... he learned how to efficiently open presents by the end On Landon's actual birthday, we went downtown to visit the Shedd Aquarium. First, we stopped by the Buckingham fountain. Posing at the aquarium Landon wore his "Chomp Chomp" shark shirt for the aquarium Since we knew Landon couldn't handle hours and hours of the aquarium, we purchased tickets for just the main floor, which ended up working out just fine. Landon petted a sturgeon, marveled at lots of different kinds of fish, and generally had fun. We also got the book "Baby Beluga" which i...