"Moo-tee Book!!"

So Ryan's new favorite book is the "Moo-tee" book. He loves it, he's asked for it before each nap & bedtime for a week. It's a special book, so much so that it stays on the top of the dresser out of his reach. So what exactly is this "moo-tee" book. Why Snoopy of course. What do you mean you didn't you get Snoopy out of Mootee?

He's gotten so much better at his speech and can usually say the s's & p's, but for whatever reason he doesn't when he talks about snoopy. We even clap out "snoopy book" so he can work on the individual syllables to no avail. Although it is pretty funny to watch him dancing around clapping " Moo tee book, Moo tee book!" Oh well! We'll keep practicing, but until he gets it, I just have to laugh whenever I hear "Moo tee" :)

Vote for Abby

Please vote for Abby as the cutest Baby Girl!! Not only will get lots of bragging rights, but it's also for free tickets to Sugarland (for those of you that don't know country music, they have a hit called "Baby Girl"). Everyone tells us how beautiful Abby is, so we figure it's time to find out if it's true! We can only vote once, so we need as many people as we can get. The tickets would obviously be amazing (front row for one of my favorite groups ever!!), but can you imagine how awesome it would be to say my daughter's the cutest baby girl in Atlanta?!

Vote for Abby by clicking here. Thanks!!!

hat trick

Today's post is gonna be short ... neither kid is sleeping and I don't know how long they'll stay calm! But at least they are in their rooms pretending. Alright, they aren't even pretending. Ryan is talking to himself and has already rearranged his closet. Yesterday he took out his suitcase and packed it up with all his blankets, pillows, animals, etc. Abby is thinking about crying ...

Yesterday was a big day for little miss Abby. If you haven't heard yet, she rolled over! I brought her downstairs and laid her on her mat for tummy time. And she said I don't think so and immediately rolled over to her back. There's a video of her rolling on youtube. And of course one of Ryan as well, he wanted to take turns rolling and asked for his pictures too. Silly kid!

Another highlight, my house was professionally cleaned this morning as a slightly belated birthday present. It was wonderful!!! I had no idea my house was so dirty until I came home to a clean one. Love it!! Thanks Mom & Dad!!

two-for-two

Had a good morning today, Abby slept until 6:30! She nursed and then went back to bed, so I got some me-time early today. Did a mile on the gazelle and then enjoyed a nice long shower, washing my hair & shaving my legs, with no kids running around causing trouble :) Ryan didn't wake up until 9:15 and Abby slept until after 10!! We spent the morning (what was left of it!) at the park with Nana. Ryan had such a good time running around and I was happy to have him expend some energy. All of a sudden he's realized he's a 2.75 year old boy and he is becoming quite rambunctious. We all enjoyed getting outside for a while!

hot and sweaty fun

 smiles while watching Big Brother play

 

a fresh start (maybe)

So it's been forever since I've blogged! It's not intentional, I just can't seem to find the time or energy! Life just keeps getting in the way :) I love having two kids, but it sure is an adjustment (especially when you visit scottish rite as often as we do!). As one friend put it: it's "good chaos." I'm so blessed and so grateful for the two amazing children we have and I love my family more than anything, but some days I'm just plain tired. That and Ryan has given up his naps, so I lose my "me time." Yes, I still have him lay down every afternoon, but it's hard to relax when you hear him walking around & you are afraid of what trouble he might be causing! And his new favorite trick: "mommy, pee-pee." (I hate potty training, if you haven't done it yet, don't start, keep them in diapers as long as you can!). Another favorite: "Mommy, wake up!" He doesn't seem to understand that you can't wake up if you haven't slept... All that to say, blogging is not at the top of my to-do list these days!

Abby is three months old and doing wonderfully. She is such a happy, laid back baby. She loves to smile & coo and she rolls halfway over - she likes to get up on her right side. She sleeps 8p - 8a, getting up once in the night to eat, somewhere between 3-6. Compared to Ryan at this age, we're just amazed! As you may recall, he didn't sleep through the night until 6months and he cried every evening for a couple of hours.

With the exception of the potty training struggles, Ryan is doing well too. His favorite activity right now is playing cars (I am thinking he's borderline obsessive about it, he'll play for hours if we'd let him). He also loves to go to the swimming pool, esp with Grandpa. He jumps in, blows bubbles, climbs out, goes under, kicks with a tube on - basically everything except actual swimming. He loves to be in the water! His speech is really coming along, he talks all the time and will say the most random things. His memory is amazing too, he'll say something out of the blue that we haven't talked about in a week.

So we'll see if now that I have taken this first step, I can continue to blog. Please don't hold your breath or anything, but I'll try :) And ps, even if I don't update this, I still keep my picasa pictures updated, so check those out occasionally to see what we're up to! Happy Summer everyone!

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??

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!

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

 

Happy Easter

Easter egghunt at preschool!

 

Neighborhood egghunt at Nana and Pop-Pop's

 

Hunting eggs at Grandma and Grandpa's

 

"Candy!!"