Happy 7th Birthday, Leander! (7 Year Old Portraits)

I blinked and somehow our sweet boy is suddenly SEVEN years old!

Normally, I don’t wait until a kids’ birthDAY to take their birthday photos – I want the day to be fun and full of birthday celebration (not cleaning up their bedroom, moving their furniture around, and taking photos). So, after a busy (but at the same time delightfully slow) holiday weekend, I had it set in my mind that we’d do birthday photos on Monday.

But Monday had other plans as it dawned and poor Leander was sick (like, stomach-bug sick). Thankfully, it was just a 24-hour bug (that we likely picked up at a Library Lego event we went to over the weekend), but it still threw a wrench into my birthday photo plans.

Thankfully, he turned the corner quickly and since we truly didn’t have much planned for Leander’s birthDAY, we just did his photos then. A quick 20-minutes in front of his signature blue wall (which I touched up the paint on over the weekend so I wouldn’t have to photoshop all the little marks and dings out of this year! That was awesome!) and my Mama-heart was so happy.

Here’s a little update on our sweet boy!
(*note: we still don’t have baseboards on our second floor after it’s renovation ten years ago. I’ve kind of given up hoping that “someday” they’ll happen, so we’re just rolling with it – don’t judge the bottom of my walls!)

We are (almost) officially half-way through Leander’s first, full-blown, “real” school year. 1st Grade has been fun and I have to say: we’ve been doing GOOD (and I say “we” because homeschooling truly is a team effort between everyone in the house). I was worried that I would struggle to do school with Leander because I’m doing 5th Grade with Braelynn (which takes up quite a bit more time) – but as it turns out: teaching 1st Grade has been a delightful break from teaching 5th Grade (mixed fractions and long division anyone?) Leander’s learning how to add, learning how to read – and he does science, history, and geography together with Braelynn.
I think in this season of life, Leander’s middle name should be “Legos”. The kid loves Legos so much. He could literally (and does) sit and build with Legos for days on end. He creates these intricate little worlds for his mini-figures to live in and it’s just so fascinating to watch! He can build stuff out of Legos I would never even attempt – his imagination is SO big!
With that being said: you can imagine that the highest of highlights of Leander’s summer was finally going to Legoland! We bit the bullet (and emptied our wallets) to stay at the Legoland Resort in New York and spend two days in the Legoland park. It was magical and our kids are at the perfect age to really love the experience. It was literally the most expensive trip we’ve ever taken (if you compare day-to-day costs – yes, even to us going to Universal or Disney), but it was worth it. Leander and Braelynn still talk about how much fun they had and how they want to go back so bad!
Speaking of travels: Leander officially became an “international traveler” this year when we got our passports and crossed the border into Canada!! We visited Canada’s Wonderland for a few days and it was so fun to explain to the kids that we were in a different country (even though, it really didn’t feel all that different – we simply drove, so other than going through the border, nothing really felt all that different from home!) We also visited Niagara Falls while we were on the Canadian side (so check that off his bucket list). Canada is actually so “close” to us – so we’ll definitely be going back again – soon!
Our other “big” trip of the year was down to Florida. We hit up all of our “usual” Florida stops, but everyone’s favorite (by far) was the day we spent at Epic Universe. Walking into Super Mario World and seeing Leander’s jaw LITERALLY hit the floor was one of my favorite moments of the entire year. He was in heaven and he still talks about how much fun he had, how much he loved meeting Princess Peach, loved riding the Yoshi ride, and how he just wants to go back.
Through all of our travels though: Leander still remains a non-roller coaster fan. He will ride most kiddie roller coasters, and we were hoping this year to transition him into riding some “family coasters”, but nope – no go. He loves flat rides though (the more they spin – the better), so we’ve learned to balance our days at amusement parks between roller coasters and flat rides.
Leander is an eating machine (I swear, he’s always hungry) – but he’s grown into a fairly picky eater. His favorite foods remain pizza, pancakes, steak, and tacos. He isn’t a big “sweet” or “chocolate” kind of guy, so he’ll gladly skip cake, brownies, and ice cream over a bag of chips. Last night, after church, we said we’d stop and get a birthday treat – whatever he’d like – and he requested a burger from McDonalds. (Yep, we came home and I stuck a candle in the burger so we could sing to him.) He does love gummy bears and donuts, but that’s about it for sweet-stuff – he loves chips in the worst way though!
His BEST friend remains his cousin Layla – but he has a really fun growing friendship with his cousin Leo (his only other boy-cousin who lives local to us). Leo’s only 3 (almost 4), so he’s finally growing out of the “baby” stage into the “little boy” stage and Leander loves having a little playmate to follow him around. We have lunch with my Meme every Monday and Leo is usually there. In the winter months, we eat inside and the boys have been going crazy building forts in Meme’s front room or buiding swords out of Tinkertoys and chasing each other around the house.
There are several little boys at church, but Jackson has become a very special friend to Leander. They’ve quickly bonded over a shared sense of mischievousness and silliness and they are quite the pair to see together.
Let’s be honest though, Braelynn truly remains Leander’s BEST friend. They are constantly off on some adventure – whether it’s in the backyard, the attic, or terrorizing the rest of our house. Leander would gladly follow Braelynn to the ends of the earth and copy everything she does the entire way. Except riding a bike – he really isn’t interesting in riding bikes with her, but he LOVES to scooter! They’ll scooter up and down the sidewalk and around the block forever in the summer (and we took a few visits to the skate park in the warmer weather as well).
Leander would rather be outside than in – regardless of the weather. Super hot? No problem. Freezing and snowing? Fabulous. Raining? Where are his rain boots? He just wants to be outside.
His personality is very silly and ALL BOY. He’ll laugh for days about fart jokes or any toilet talk (needless to say: we’ve been working on knowing when it’s the “appropriate” time to talk and joke about stuff like that and when it’s the wrong time. It’s a work in progress.) He loves to watch what he calls “The Sillies” (aka Fail Videos on YouTube) with Derrick. Speaking of Derrick, I know that I have a special relationship with Leander because I’m his Mom, but I’ve definitely seen a special, deep bond growing between Leander and Derrick over the last year. Whenever Derrick’s had to travel for work, Leander gets so sad and tells me hourly that he misses his Daddy so much.
Oh and somehow he’s picked up a particular obsession with cats.
He remains very much a night owl – typically not going to bed until after 10pm – and routinely sleeping in until after 9am. (If he’s up before 9am, that’s considered “early”.)