I haven’t posted a really substantial post here in a while, but as I was making dinner last night I realized that Zachary is turning three in just over two very short months, and I have not made time to write an update about all the amazing things going on in our lives! He is such a fabulous little boy learning so much every day and doing the most fun things, and I’ve always made a point to use my blog as sort of a baby book to make sure I record my favorite happenings and special moments. I’ve been so busy lately editing weddings and portraits and putting together print orders and albums for my clients, that I haven’t taken too much time for myself.

As you’ve probably gathered from some of my recent photo posts, we recently came back from an amazing summer trip to Vermont! We went out of town for two weeks. The trip was planned because I booked a wedding in Burlington, VT, so we planned our entire vacation around the wedding photography schedule.

We drove through 12 states (FL, GA, SC, NC, VA, MD, DE, PA, NJ, NY, NH, VT), visited 5 capitol cities (Washington DC, Montpelier VT, Richmond VA, Raleigh NC, and Philadelphia PA – which was the first capitol of the United States!). We also made a point to stop in Bartlett, NH in honor of our favorite TV show, The West Wing. 🙂 In every place we stopped, we saw all kinds of interesting historic and patriotic sites, and we were able to see several friends and some family members during our trip! Our total mileage driven was 4,070!

We had such a fun time on our trip, and the first time we’ve really taken Zachary away on a family vacation that didn’t involve going to visit other family members. 🙂 He got to experience so many different things and learned so much about the world. I really hope that some of his memories from the trip stay with him – and I’ll be sure to print up a photo book from our trip some time soon so that he can look back and recall the fun times that we had. While I haven’t finished processing all of the photos (I’ve only made two posts – one here and one here), I do have a ton of iPhone images that I captured on the trip, and I’ve uploaded those to my Flickr account, so feel free to browse those. I think I took more interesting photos with my iPhone on this trip than I did with my SLR!

When we got back from our trip, Zachary was pretty excited to start Preschool again. He really loves school and settled in wonderfully! He is such a big boy now and runs right into his classroom to join his friends. I love that he is now old enough to tell me stories about his day and the things his friends are doing in class. He tells me what his favorite things are (he loves to draw & paint, play with blocks, read books, and go on the playground), who he spends time with at school, and loves showing off the things that he’s learned. This week I learned that Zachary can now recite the ABC’s (we’ve been working on that a while but he’s never done it all in one go until this week) and he also knows the days of the week! He has also become extremely caring, very helpful (he LOVES helping to cook and prepare food and help with the dog related chores) and notices the feelings of others around him. He often asks “Are you okay?” when he notices that I’ve hurt myself or that I’m upset. He is such a sweet little boy.

In the last couple months he has become even more curious and adventurous than ever. I think our trip to the Northeast definitely inspired more curiosity in him – he is always asking what something is, why we are doing things, and wants to know all about everything.

He can’t get enough of certain books, loves reading anything about trucks and diggers, and his favorite bedtime story at the moment is Peter Rabbit. He still loves Thomas trains, Hotwheels, the piano, music, and the iPhone/iPad. He has taken to sleeping with his two dachshund stuffed animals, which we’ve named Maya (after our dog) and Penny (after my parents’ dog), and he loves his big boy bedroom which we made up for him a few months ago – complete with a twin bed!

Here’s a fun conversation we had today:

Zachary: Let’s get the mail, Mommy.
me: ok, but I have to hold your hand in case a car drives by. (I took his hand and he tried to wriggle away)
me: No, Zachary, you have to hold Mommy’s hand!
Zachary: Mommy. Be nice to me! I’m a big boy!
me: ok, but you still have to hold my hand!

How cute is that? 🙂 Zachary’s vocabulary has simply exploded over the summer! It boggles my mind that I am now having conversations with my big boy. Well – he thinks he’s a big boy. I know he can stay a little boy for a while longer…. 🙂

Oh, and one more. In order to have time to write this post, I invited Zachary to sit on the couch in my office and play with my iPhone (he LOVES Angry Birds as I’ve already mentioned, as well as Talking Tom Cat). He took my phone and sat down, saying “OH-kay, Mommy. I’ll play with your phone. I’ll play Angry Birds. AL-right.” I laughed out loud hearing the inflection in his voice since I’m sure I’ve used the same tone of voice with my own mother! Sometimes he talks like he is 3 going on 13! 🙂

What fun things are your children doing?