7 Months

Luke is moving all around and likes to get himself under things.  Chairs, tables, desks.  Silly kid.

We think it is a miracle Luke has survived 7 months with Ryan  "loving" him so much.  Luckily, Ryan is getting much better about not throwing him or picking Luke up by the neck... really.

The pose.  Luke's new thing is to crawl around, and then strike "the pose" to check everyone out.

My blue-eyed ray of sunshine on earth.

 7 of 7:

1. Luke continues to draw countless strangers in with his quick and gigantic grin.

2. He loves scoot-crawling all over the place.

3. He has down-dog ( yoga pose) mastered.

4. Loves, loves food.  Not baby food. Real food.

5. Has one cute tooth on the bottom.

6. Does not sleep through the night - my fault.  He is SO happy it is extra super hard for me to hear him cry!

7.  Loves to blow raspberries and say "ba-ba".

I L-O-V-E my Lukie boy

Our First Pet

  I really don't like pets.  But this past Saturday, I took Ryan to the pet store look at the animals. 

 After we watched the dogs haircuts and looked at some cats, I started thinking about how excited Ryan would be if he got a pet.  

So I let him pick out his own fish.  Kinda. 

 The sales lady told me the beta fish are the easiest to take care of and they were on sale.  

So I let him pick out his own beta fish. 

It stared out as Dory, but now we call him Blue.

Ryan was so excited. I was happy that he was excited!

Beta fish are supposed to last a year.  Lets hope he lasts a month! 

Peek-a-Boo Luke

Today Luke decided that he is big enough to play peek-a-boo.  So fun!

Family Pictures

I love my little family! I could just stare at pictures of my kids for hours.  They are so stinking cute.  And so is my hubby!

O Christmas Tree

As Brett and I were discussing our Christmas tree this year he said, " Maybe we should get a fake tree."   I agreed, but felt a huge pit in my stomach.  " Wait... It just feels wrong, " I said.  I love the idea of no mess and saving money - eventually - but then we will be robbing our children of the EXPERIENCE.  My dad was big on trees.  Real ones.  He trained us well about the value of a real Christmas tree.  We drove to Home Depot where we were going to look at the fake trees.  We stopped at the tree lot out front first where we spotted the perfect tree.  And it was real.  It just felt right. 

I remind myself of that as I vacuum up the needles every day!

I like to call our tree a "memory tree".  When I was young, my dad started giving us ornaments that represented something about the past year for each of us.  When I got married, he gave all of the ornaments to us and passed the baton to Brett who has carried on the tradition wonderfully.

 The ballerina is from my ballerina days.  Some of you may be scratching your head as to how I had ballerina days.  Trust me - they didn't last long!  The plane was given to me in college with the note " home is never far away".

In about 3rd grade I went through a major " save the earth phase". This ornament helps me remember that!

Brett gave this to me the year we moved back to CA with a note that said " Welcome Home!"

Our tree is a reminder or life and love.  I can't wait to give these same gifts to our two boys!

 Merry Christmas!



Ryans Birthday Breakfast

Presents + Family + Buzz Lightyear+ Food = A great morning!

We ate: quiche, turkey sausage, pan-fried sweet potatoes and DELISH( and not too bad for you)chocolate muffins that can be found on this great blog... it is vegan - I just de-veganize it!  Sorry Morgan!

November in Denver

The boys and I literally spent half of November in Denver.  I babysat my cute nieces and nephew for a week then we came home for a week and turned right back around to celebrate Thanksgiving with them.  It was a blast.  Ryan starting thinking that Denver was our home and we were in fact living with our cousins.  He even joined their family photo as you can see.  He smiled way better in theirs than he did in ours! 

 We celebrated Rys birthday with the cousins.  He wanted strawberry cake... strawberry.  Let me tell you, I asked and asked " are SURE you don't want CHOCOLATE cake?"  Every time he said he wanted strawberry.  Crazy kid. 

 A little birthday freeze dance in his almost his birthday suit. Very appropriate.

 Cute Luke was loved by all and did great on the trips!

three today

my baby is three.  can I have some Kleenex please? 

Ryan puts a smile on my face everyday. He is sweet, thoughtful, determined and funny.  I love this kid more than words can say.

We are in the middle of a birth-week.  More pictures to come!

Ryan Says

Ryan is hilarious.  Here are a few things he has said to make us laugh lately:

I asked Ryan if he wanted to get a shirt on when daddy was reading to him.

Ryan : No, I OK.  Daddy is hot for me.

Interpretation:  Daddy is keeping me warm.

Ryan went on a bike ride with Brett.  When they come home, Ryan told me that his bike ride was fun, but he fell "with style".

When he wears his favorite buzz pjs he likes to push the button on his shirt and say "come in star command.  Do you copy?"

Is it possible to freeze time?  I would like to do that.  Except for when he throw tantrums. I'll just fast forward those.

PLAYdough

Ryan had a friend over the other day.  It was rainy, so I had them play with some new playdough I had just bought.  10 colors.  Brand new. 

They started with two colors.  I gave them instructions to just put the colors together softly so they won't stick together. 

But for some reason both of the couldn't handle it and sqashed the playdough together. 

I was freaking out inside my head. 

 If you squash them, then they won't be their own color... we won't have 10 colors, we will have one. 

But then I saw how much fun they were having. 

So I just let go and let them go at it.

I was the one making things hard.

It was a good lesson.

 A colorful Playdough pancake

Just FYI - a fun inside idea that I got from " 101 things to do with your kids" is to roll up foil into balls and throw it into something.  I had the boys roll the foil, too.  It kept them entertained for 30 minutes! 

 That is a long time for a little boy!