Monday, June 7, 2010

Ryan's point of view

Over the weekend, we had a family reunion of sorts with my mom's side of the family. We all had a wonderful time. Ryan especially enjoyed documenting the occasion with photographs. He took hundreds of photos on Aunt Lolly's camera! When the memory card filled up, he moved on to my camera. We only got about 30 images before it started thundering and Ryan turned off my camera & took it inside because the rain was coming - "raining, raining." But I'm amazed by how much I've enjoyed looking through Ryan's pictures. They are very insightful into what the world looks like from his point of view. I can't wait to see the ones he took on Lolly's camera too!!

I never realized how tall we (especially Daddy) must look when you are short like Ryan!



And when you are short, you take a lot of pictures of knees. Here's great-Uncle John doing some sort of jig for Ryan :)


What do you suppose Ryan was thinking when he walked right up to Steve's shoe and took a picture of the bottom of it??

Saturday, May 22, 2010

I don't want to forget!

As many of you know, the last month has been a crazy and hard month for us... But I did want to take just a minute and write down a few of the cute things Ryan has been doing, I don't want to forget them! He is talking so much more and says the funniest things!

The first: Probably two months ago, one of the first unprompted spontaneous phrases - "Horse eat grass" - We've never discussed what horses actually eat, he just put that together while watching the horse.

My favorite: While driving in the car a few weeks ago apparently Abby was sucking on her hand - "Abby eat fingers!!"

Grandma's favorite: When driving by a Chickfila (not even ours) and Ryan recognized it - "Chickfila turn right here ... Chickfila turn right here!" - over & over until she did eventually take him to Chickfila!

It's so much fun now that he's actually communicating instead of merely repeating us or responding to prompting. I love listening to all the fun stuff he comes up with!

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Abby!

Sorry for the delay in posts! We've had an eventful week :)

Abby Caroline was born on Tuesday, April 13th. We are so glad she is finally here and we are loving being a family of four. She was 9 lbs, 1 oz and 20" long - tiny compared to her big brother! So far she has been a great baby, very calm and laidback, and already sleeping well at night - hopefully that will continue! Ryan is adjusting and doing quite good. He is a very helpful big brother, almost too helpful :) But he loves his sister and is taking good care of her.

Hopefully I'll be able to continue to update and even add more pictures eventually. Unfortunately I dropped my computer last weekend and it's at Best Buy. :( Here's hoping they can retrieve all my stuff and getting it working again. I'm on Coleson's work laptop right now so it's hard to do my pictures and stuff the way I'm used to!

a few pictures

Our family of four!







Three April birthdays now!









Coleson, sis Sarah, and the cousins
 

Monday, April 5, 2010

Happy Easter

Easter egghunt at preschool!
 
Neighborhood egghunt at Nana and Pop-Pop's
 
Hunting eggs at Grandma and Grandpa's
 
"Candy!!"
 

Friday, April 2, 2010

G-E-O-R-G-I-A !!!!

Ryan loves to read letters and I finally caught him on video reading the Georgia Bulldogs flag. He does this just about everytime I put him in the car :)

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Locks of Love

As many of you may have noticed, I cut all my hair off! I've been growing it for a good year now and it's been driving me crazy, but I finally made it! I donated 10 inches of hair to Locks of Love. It was a really fun hair appt - my mom & sister went with me and we had a great time. I felt like a princess getting my hair cut, highlighted, washed, styled. It was a good feeling and I'm glad I did it ... but I don't think I'll be doing it again any time soon :)

Measuring 10 inches!

Woo-hoo!

After, feeling pretty :)

Friday, March 19, 2010

Maxim's here!

the Petting Zoo with Maxim and Madeleine!! Ryan had a great time hanging out with his two best friends!!
 
Ryan was scared of the turkeys and I was having a very pregnant day, so Ryan stuck to Mrs. Tara who could pick him up whenever the turkeys came near! Thanks Tara!!
 
Catch-Air with Maxim and Auntie Sarah. Ryan was very brave and did great. He actually ran all over the place and tried new things instead of merely following the bigger kids, yay!
 
We've had a great start to our weekend and look forward to more fun to come!! All our siblings will be here and we have lots of good stuff planned - haircuts, Abby's shower, celebrating Maxim's birthday, celebrating Grandma's birthday, Ryan's friend Peyton's birthday party ...

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Vroom- Vroom!



Yesterday, Grandma & I took Ryan to his first race! (Ours too!). My mom's boss races cars for fun on the weekend and we enjoyed hanging out with him & seeing his car. It was a very laid-back and relaxed atmosphere. We were able to walk all around the cars and go anywhere we wanted. Ryan loved watching the races, he would get so excited!! "Race-car, vroom-vroom!!" However he didn't really like the cars all that well up close and would not get in Al's car. Grandma did get to go for a ride though (I don't think I could have gotten in & out what with being 8months pregnant and all!). It was something very different & fun and I am glad we had the opportunity to experience it!

Friday, March 12, 2010

Updates!

We've been doing really well recently. Ryan's growing up so fast. I know that's cliche and everyone says it, but it's true! I don't know when he turned into this little boy instead of my baby. I'll try to highlight some of the exciting things he's saying and doing, although there's so much fun happening everyday, I'm sure I'll overlook something ... But here we go anyways ...

- Ryan's vocabulary is improving all the time! He says all sorts of things now, and is getting pretty good at doing so unprompted vs always just being my parrot.

- He can name probably 2/3 of the alphabet (only capital letters). It still catches me off guard to hear him announce "E" or "B" or "H" seemingly out of the blue. But if I look around, he's always right and there's the letter on a sign or something. He has a set of large cutout alphabet shaped books and he loves to match them to the correct letter on his alphabet caterpillar. Even if he doesn't know their name, he always matches them right. And he does this on his own, he's really smart :) He also knows his name. He reads the label on his sippy cups: "R-Y-A-N"

- He tries to do numbers, but doesn't do them in the right order. He just starts naming them ... "6, 2, 5, 3,9, whatever" and wiggling his fingers. He can finally hold up just two fingers which he likes to do. For a long time that third finger just wouldn't stay down and he'd try to hold it out of the way.

- He also can name the colors. Unfortunately he just doesn't put the name with the right color yet! Pretty much everything is either green or yellow. Funniest thing: Twice now walking up the stairs, he has recited "green, ye-yow, green, ye-yow" up the stairs. Not really sure what that's about.

- He loves school. He's all smiles and happy to go now. And when I pick him up, he's very talkative. "Bye School, Bye Friends, Bye Vickie (his teacher)" followed by "Home, Sampson- Dog, Kitty- Nellie." Occassionally he's offered "fun" and "ball." It was hard those first few weeks to leave him, but I'm starting to enjoy my free time!

- He can open doors now which is mostly bad, but has some positives. He gets his own sippy cups from the fridge and that's nice. Not so nice is opening the pantry or the garage doors - those both have baby proof handle covers now. He hasn't quite figured out the front door, but he's way too close to that one too. He can open the deadbolt, but not the little lock on the knob. Aargh!

- He's becoming very independent. Really like to put on his own socks and jeans, which he can't quite do. So getting dressed can take a very long time now if I let him help! It's hard trying to balance letting him try these things and just wanting to do them myself since it's easier & faster! Esp on the mornings when we are trying to hurry to get to school or a doctor appt.

That's about all I can do right now, my attn span is running out and I'm tired of sitting here at the computer! :)

Have a great weekend!!