Leander Roxas || 4 1/2 Year Old Update

Every year, for the kids’ “half-birthdays”, I take them out & do some fun (typically “themed”) portraits of them. With Braelynn being born in January and Leander born in December, I knew that we would never be able to do “fun”, warm and glowy, outdoor “birthday” portraits – so I have simply compromised with “half-birthday” portraits every year. And it’s so much fun!

So, to be technical, with December and January birthdays, I should take these photos of my kids in June and July – but my June and July this year were absolutely bonkers, so I waited until August.
And guess what? These are my photos that I take of my kids, so I can do whatever I want (and after several years in a row of taking photos in August, I feel like I should just call these “summer” portraits instead of “half-birthday” portraits – maybe I’ll change my titling.)

Every time I take photos of my kids, they get easier and easier.
And I love the results more and more.
How can my babies be so big? (So big, so cooperative, so hilarious, so adorable?!)

Here is a little “half-birthday” (or summer) update on our sweet Leander Roxas:

• Leander is my sweet, precious boy. He’s kind, loving, soft-hearted, and hilarious. But don’t let that fool you into thinking he’s a softie – he loves to run, climb, wrestle, and use sticks as swords to fight imaginary dragons.
• Leander has officially started preschool this year and he loves it! The tricky part is that he’s a leftie, so teaching him to hold a pencil/marker/crayon is interesting.
• He still has his beloved blankie and still sucks his middle and ring fingers on his left hand when he’s going to sleep each night, while brushing the corner of his blankie up against his nose. (Every once in a while he’ll “share” his blankie, but brushing the corner of it up against our noses – it’s the sweetest thing ever.)
• He adores Braelynn fiercely. He would follow her to the ends of the world. They spend hours every day playing together (their current favorite game is “Kings and Queens”). They built huge forts in our living room, create entire cities out of blocks for their animals, and love to have “sleepovers” in each other’s bedrooms. When Braelynn was sick last week, Leander was like a little lost puppy dog – he didn’t know what to do with himself and just kept asking when Braelynn was going to get better so she would play with him. I love their sweet friendship and I pray it only gets deeper and stronger as the years go on.
  (Don’t take all of those fancy words to mean that they never fight – I literally just had to break them up after Leander poked Braelynn in the butt with a stick outside and they started screaming at each other – but most of the time, they are each other’s best friends.)
• Speaking of best friends, Leander has a slew of them! He loves his cousins, Alethea and Layla, but he and Layla get along particularly well. He has also (finally) become friendly toward his little cousin Leon, who isn’t quite big enough to play with yet, but Leander is at least finally acknowledging that he exists. (He calls him “Wee-Wo”.)
  He also has some friends at church – most of the little kids his age are boys, so that makes for a whole gang of easy friends. His best friend is Orion though – and they are quite hilarious together.
• Leander is my only child who will sleep in in the mornings – most mornings he’ll sleep until 6:30am, 7am, 7:30am, sometimes even 8am! Braelynn rarely sleeps past 6:30am, but Leander loves sleeping (he has ever since we did sleep-training with him when he was 5 months old!)
• Speaking of sleeping, Leander got upgraded to an official big boy bed (a twin) this year! AND he’s fallen out of his bed so many times (usually still staying asleep – how does one do that?!) that we had to get him these “bumper pillows” to help him stay in his bed.
• Leander officially hit 42″ tall this summer, which is the base height for a lot of smaller roller coasters. However, we cannot get him to ride anything bigger than a kiddie coaster (and even some kiddie coasters he shies away from). It’s okay, he’s just not ready yet and we aren’t interested in forcing him into riding anything he’s not ready for. (On our trip to Epcot earlier this summer, he was excited to ride Test Track, but was scared by the dark parts at the beginning of the ride – and after that, he was TERRIFIED of riding Frozen! Oops!)
• He learned how to ride a bike (with training wheels) this summer, while his big sister was mastering riding a two-wheeler. He loves to go on bike rides with Braelynn! They will happily peddle all around the sidewalks around our house and the alley our back, but their favorite thing to do is pack up their bikes and go down to the park to ride!
  We’ve only had one “major” accident where Leander got going too fast, forgot how to brake, couldn’t stop, and went head-first over his handle-bars. He was pretty scraped up after that.
• Speaking of which, he hates the sight of blood – if he can see it bleeding, he’s done (wonder where he gets that from -cough Derrick couch-). He got stung by a bee last week though and he hardly flinched – go figure.
• We have finally “mastered” potty training, although I use the term “mastered” loosely. He does great – don’t get me wrong – he does really great, but every once in a while, especially when he’s busy and can’t be bothered to stop what he’s doing, he still has accidents.
• His favorite foods are steak (he’ll eat an entire steak without blinking), chicken nuggets, pizza, ham rolled up with mayonnaise, tacos, and pancakes.
• He loves Mario, PAW Patrol, Blaze, and Sonic (but will sit through watching My Little Pony and princess movies with Braelynn too.)
• He loves Mario so much, that I got him a Mario costume for halloween this year and then I found him a Luigi hat and suspenders too. He has worn that green hat and suspenders everywhere (out to lunch, to church, to the grocery store, to Kennywood). It’s adorable and he gets the best compliments. He calls the suspenders, his “miss-tenders”.
  So, obviously, we had to play off of that with his photos this year! I even gave him a mustache to wear and he LOVED it! Ever since we’ve taken these photos and he’s worn that fake mustache, he tells us every day that, “When I get taller like Dad, I’m going to grow a real mustache.”

If you’d like to compare & contrast this summer’s photos with the summers of the past, you can go back & check out Leander’s 3 1/2 Year Update, 2 1/2 Year Update, and his 18-Month Update here!