WI Dells and Early Christmas Traditions

As our family gets ready to welcome our new addition, we give thanks for all the blessings in our lives. In the month of November, we are counting our blessings daily with a Give Thanks display hung in our kitchen. It is a wonderful reminder that we are truly blessed in so many ways. We are especially grateful for all of our friends and family!
We have had a wonderful Fall. Here are some of the highlights:

*Ryan is able to engage in full conversations and express his wants and emotions through words- it has been amazing to see his vocabulary grow

*He loved putting up the

Christmas tree- he wanted most of his ornaments "up really high"

*He points to the tree and the nativity scene and says "No touch!"

*He took a football ornament and bent down over it, said "Hut, hut", picked it up, ran forward and then chucked it- it was hilarious

*As he looked through the Pottery Barn Kids catalogue, he found "My chair!", "My stocking!" and "Baby's stocking!"

*He continues to look through toy catalogues and lets Gramma, Grampa, Nana, Ali and Steve and Dona know what he wants. He has also started pointing out toys in stores- "I want that!".

I tell him to let Santa or Gramma know

*If you ask him what he is going to tell Santa he wants for Christmas, he will answer "Trains!". We'll see if hetalks to Santa this year!*He uses a stethoscope to listen to our hearts- he's says "Play doctor. I listen to your heart"

*Ryan loves to pretend. He found a small cloth bag, put

his hand in it and said "I pick up poop" He then bent down, and said "ick"

I asked "What are you doing?

He said "I pick up Maddy's poop" (just like

Daddy does). Then he went to the kitchen and put it in the trash.

*He also loves to cook things for us in pots and pans. His speciality is spaghetti. Yum!

*When we drove by Gramma and Grampa's church at 8:30 at night, he shouted and pointed "Church" When he realized we weren't stopping, he erupted into tears and open mouthed, noise-less screams. Poor guy loves to go to church!

*He carries his stepstool around the house to turn on lights, wash his hands and brush his teeth

*Shows everyone his Clay Matthews poster in his

room "Cay Mafews"

*Responds "I love you too", "I miss you too"

*For a week prior to leaving for the Kalahari, Ryan

would tell everyone he was going to swim at the Dells. One day he asked "Mo

mma come to the Dells?, Maddy come?, Christmas tree come?"

He absolutely loved the hotel and water park. He is our little dare devil, going down all thew slides fearlessly. He even went down winding slides by himself. Joe walked him up while I waited at the bottom. There he came...not sitting up like all the other 4-10 year olds. No...there came Ryan, laying on his back, head first.

As I helped him out, he had a big smile on his face and said "Go on the green slide again."

Happy Halloween

Our little Elmo loved dressing up and going trick-or-treating in our living room and at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Although the outfit was a little small on him, once he tried it on, he insisted Elmo was the costume for him (despite momma offering to get a giraffe costume).

We went to Boo at the Zoo and rode the spooky train.

Fall 2010

Our fabulously fun and busy summer came to end, school started and now Fall is here. How quickly time flies! Ryan is busy chatting, becoming more independent and talking about his "baby sister" (only 2 months until she arrives!). Ryan has started including baby in his conversations- like when I told him we were going to the pumpkin patch to buy a pumpkin, his response was "Baby too?". Whenever we talked about the pumpkin patch after that, he always made sure we were getting one for "baby too! Here are some other small moments from the past two months:

*Ryan LOVES trains- he requests to play right when he gets up in the morning and points them out anywhere and everywhere he sees them. We ask what are you going to do at Dona's? "Play trains", What are you going to play at the Y? "Trains", What should we do? "Play trains" He especially loves to watch trains on YouTube

* A close second to trains is football. Ry loves to watch football on TV, watch practices on our walk past Milwaukee Lutheran HS and go to football games- he loves say "Touchdown" and "Hut, Hut" and help Daddy put helmets out for the games. He will even request football on the radio. He's daddy's boy!

*Ryan recognizes Taio Cruz's Dynamite on the radio- he instantly says "Hands Up" and dances with his hands in the air.

*I say "Ryan we're going to go get apples at the store" His response: "Ice cream too?" He learned that shopping with Gramma

*When asked questions, he usually responds "Yea...sure"

*He has started to pretend- eating food, playing trains, scanning items at the store

*Requests to go to the store- even right before bed

*We went to a Zoo Train class and Badger Family Fun Day at Camp Randell

*Ryan was reading a book about family- he said "sister"- I had him show me the page, sure enough it was the sister page

*When Joe washed his face in the bathtub without giving him a warning, Ryan turned to Joe and, in a very sassy voice, said "HEY!" It was hilarious- we tried so hard not to laugh

*Ryan doesn't like people talking around him without including him in the conversation so he'll talk very loudly or even scream over our words

*Sometimes tells Maddy, daddy, me...anybody "MINE!" if he thinks someone gets close to his food or toys...we're working on using nice words

*Our most recent favorite memory is getting the Farm and Fleet toy catalogue in the mail. I gave it to Ryan in the car. He loves to read magazines so he was very excited. He opened to the first page and said "I want that"- I've never heard him say that. When we got in the house, he showed me about 6 things he wanted...I $90 Big Foot (I have no idea why), a train, tractors, a bouncy house... When Joe got home, he showed Joe the exact same toys. I guess he knows what he wants! It will be a fun Christmas season this year!

Ryan Dancing in the Car

2 Years Old!

The 2's have officially begun! Ryan's age is no longer counted by months- whoa, this is going to be a big step for me! My baby is growing up! Ryan continues to talk more and more everyday. His happy demeanor, mannerisms and desire to be independent keep us smiling and laughing all the time. 's His favorite thing to say is "what's that?"- at the grocery store, on a walk, at the zoo...anywhere "what's that?". I think it the precursor to the repeating preschool age question "Why?".He is definitely very curious about the world around him. He still absolutely loves all forms of transportation. He loves to point out airplanes, big trucks, tractors, fire trucks and, the Ryan favorite...trains. He has become a train enthusiast- "ding, ding, choo, choo". He knows the difference between a highway overpass vs. a train bridge. He also knows all the books that have trains and will turn to the page(s) and just stare at them. He shouts "train, train" whenever he sees one while we're driving, on tv, or if he hears the train whistle at the zoo (this happens about every 5 minutes at the zoo). Needless to say, riding the train at the zoo is a must. When we visited our friends Anne and Pete in Rhinelander, they took us to the Lumber and Railroad Museum. It was a big hit- however, the restaurant where we ate lunch with the overhead train and tracks was just as exciting!

Here are some highlights this month:

• He says "bless you" after we sneeze- he even fake sneezes so we can say "bless you" to him
• After having chip and salsa at Chili's, he opened his mouth wide and screamed- the salsa apparently was a little too spicy for him
• Sets his 3 books up in the bed slats like mama does every night
• At Michael's, he chose to take off his shoes and put them in the cart. After moving them to check out, I guess I never book them back in the bag. When we got home, I asked him where his shoes were. He matter of factly replied "In the cart."
• He was playing with our video camera bag one afternoon. Then it went missing. We were asking him if it was in the den. He said "yes" After looking for a while, Ali and I started looking in his room. He came in and said "No, no, no". We asked if it was in the den closet, he said "Yea". Sure enough, it was in a basket under a baby quilt. He knew!
• At Ali and Steve's wedding, after the first formal picture, he loudly stated "All done!"
• At Maggiano's, the waiter asked which dessert I wanted for him: cookies, ice cream or sorbet. I chose cookies, then he said "Ice cream too!"
• When our friends, Jill and Brett, and their 15 month old son Caden came to visit, Ryan did a pretty good job sharing his toys. One time Caden was playing with his popper that Aunt Jenny gave him. He started to take it away- he said 'Mine". I told him yes it was his, but that he shares his toys. He looked at me, then walked back to Caden, took the popper from him and said 'Thank you" and smiled! I guess he has good manners!