Mommy’s Birthday & Some Ryder funnies

Today was my Birthday…and in my true birthday week fashion, I’ve been celebrating for a week!  Friday night Alan took me out to dinner (PF Changs, my fave!) and gave me a charm necklace from him & the kids (love it!).  Tuesday Nana brought dinner over.  Today my Mom came over and cooked dinner and even cleaned my kitchen afterwards.  Love all the spoiling, I’ll take it once a year!  No matter how cheesy it sounds, the best present I feel like I shouldn’t even be lucky enough to have are my two children.  One sweet baby girl who melts my heart at the very thought of her…and one special boy who keeps me smiling and makes my heart happy.  Ryder sang Happy Birthday to me about 10 times today.  He would say “is it still your birthday?”  and then start singing “Happy Birthday dear my best friend Momma”…sweet boy.

Here are some of his latest and greatest, for your entertainment!

Mommy: Ryder what do you want for your Birthday?

Ryder: A pocket knife

Mommy (actually contemplating this request): What in the world do you need a pocket knife for??

Ryder: ummm to cut Maisy!

Mommy (feeling ridiculous for actually contemplating that kind of request from a 2 yr old): well now I know what NOT to get you for your birthday!

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The last time Ryder was at the Doctor, I mentioned the fact that sometimes he complains about his butt itching (sorry if this is TMI).   She checked him out, all was well, and he has never really mentioned it again.  Until the other day after I picked him up and told him Daddy wouldn’t be home for a while because he had a doctors appointment.  Daddy called after his appointment, of course Ryder wanted to talk to him.

“Hey daddy, what did you go to the doctor for?  Does your butt itch or something??”

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Ryder’s hanging out in our room the other day, looking for something to get into on Alan’s nightstand.  He finds a shotgun shell.

Ryder: “hey Daddy, what’s this for?”

Daddy: “oh that’s for Mommy’s boyfriend”

Ryder runs into the kitchen holding his shotgun shell, I’m doing the dishes oblivious to this conversation.

Ryder: “Mommy, Daddy said this is for your boyfriend!

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Ryder asked me to turn a song on in the truck (he knows all the songs on Daddy’s ipod and requests them by name!).  I didn’t realize the music was up so loud so when it first came on it was blaring.  Ryder said “Oh, that just scared my ears!”

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I love hearing stories from other people about things Ryder says when I’m not around.  The other day Ryder asked Pap-Pap “Why are you all wrinkled?”  Pap-pap laughed and said “well that’s just what happens when you get older”.  Ryder said “no that’s what happens when you stay in the bath too long, but you didn’t take a bath!”  Hours later I got there to pick him up and the first thing he said to me was “Mom, Pap’s all wrinkled, but he didn’t take a bath, how can his wrinkles ever go away?”  I again explained to him that Pap’s wrinkles aren’t from the bath.  Two days later he gets home from Nana & Pap’s and says “Daddy, I need your razor so I can take it to Pap and shave all his wrinkles off!”  Poor Pap…Ryder is just not going to drop this wrinkle thing.

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Mommy (talking to myself, something I need to stop doing out loud): Man, I dont know about this bath seat Maisy, it kind of looks uncomfortable on your……..hoo-ha.

Ryder: What did you just say Mom?

Mommy: Ohhhh nothing, just trying to figure out if Maisy is okay in this seat.

Ryder: No but what did you say about a hoo-ha?

Mommy: Nothing buddy, I was just talking to myself.

Ryder: No but you said hoo-ha.  Why did you say hoo-ha?  What is a hoo-ha.

Mommy: Oh Ryder, I was just saying hoo-ha about Maisy’s private parts, like you have a monster, she has a hoo-ha.

Ryder: Do you have a hoo-ha?

Mommy: yes.

Ryder: Does Mikayla have a hoo-ha?

Mommy: yesss.

Ryder: Does Callie have a hoo-ha?

Mommy: YES Ryder all girls have hoo-ha’s and I don’t think their Daddy’s would appreciate us sitting here talking about them…SO can we please change the subject?!

(sorry girls).

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The other morning Ryder brought his cash cow to Nana’s.  He was so excited when he got there to show Nana & Pap what he brought.  He sat it down and just as he was getting ready to show it off, here comes Maisy on her mission to ruin big brother’s morning.  She grabbed it.  He yelled “DON’T TOUCH MY CASH COW, IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU MAISY!!!”

This child is 2 going on 15!

7 Months!

How in the world is my baby girl already over half way to a year old?!  This month I’ve probably seen the most change in her of any because she’s mobile and so very playful now.  Here’s what she’s up to at 7 months:

• She eats 6 ounce bottles about every 4 hours with Stage 3 baby food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
• She wears mostly size 6-9 month clothes, and she’s in a size 3 diaper.
• She goes to bed at 7pm and usually wakes up between 5-6am.  When she wakes up she crawls around her crib talking to all her crib friends, which I love to listen to over the monitor.  When I go into get her I’m greeted with the sweetest sleepy face grin and a little "dada” whisper.  She’ll get it one day!
• She says DA-DA all day long!  Everything is da-da-da-da.  The cutest thing now is that when I say “Maisy where’s Dada??” she’ll start whispering “Dada dada” and looking around for him.  Once she spots him she smiles so big and reaches out for him like she really gets now that he’s Dada.
• She has been quite the explorer now that she’s army crawling everywhere.  She’ll spot something from across the room and head straight for it.  She’ll even venture down the hall into rooms just to check everything out.
• In the past few days she has started to pull up onto her knees when she crawls over to something.  She has shown to be very fearless this month, not letting anything stop her or hold her back (scary for Mommy, this is not something I’m used to at ALL!).
• I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this before but she loves to watch TV!!  Ryder didn’t care for TV until he was 2 years old, so this is another thing I’m not used to.  I started playing the Praise Baby dvd’s that I used to play for Ryder and she really loves them.
• Her female dramatic side has come out this month!  So has the sibling rivalry!  I think these two things go hand in hand.  She is on a constant mission to touch her big brothers stuff, which of course he pulls away from her, which causes her to scan the room first to make sure someone just saw that, okay good Mommy was watching, cue baby sister scream now!!  
• As if the word “NO” didn’t come out of my mouth enough already with just big brother, it has now multiplied.  She is always trying to get into something.  Changing her diaper is a constant NO fest because she wants to grab everything around her.  It’s so funny when you tell her No, the face she gives you is like…oh NO you did not just tell me NO.
• As bold and outgoing and spunky as she is at home, when we go out in public she is very bashful.  Again something that makes her so opposite of her brother.  When people say hi to her, she smiles so big but buries her head into my shoulder, then peeks back to make sure they’re still giving her attention.  Because even though she’s acting bashful, she LOVES attention. 
• She’s such a happy baby, her smile and laugh are so contagious.  She brings great joy to our family and each month as she grows into her personality we all fall more and more in love.
  

Here’s a little video of her crawling and pulling herself up:

A Week Later…

I can’t believe it has been a whole week since I’ve blogged, shame on me.  I really have no excuse, it’s not like we’ve been super busy or had a million things going on.  In fact, we’ve had so little going on that Mommy & Daddy have managed to watch the entire first season of Sons of Anarchy and are half way through season 2!  It has been a nice break from the hustle and bustle of always having things to do. 

Here are some pictures of what’s been going on at home the past week:

Maisy is officially sitting up all by herself (without falling over, that is!)

Potty Training is a work in progress with Ryder…but I had to snap atleast one picture of him on his little potty to remember this phase by (I cropped out the potty, gotta give the guy a little privacy).

I love getting this little girl dressed for Church.

 

We are having so much fun doing bath time together!

Ryder always comes up with new nicknames for his baby sister, his most recent one is “Maisy Dog” which is pretty fitting because she follows him around everywhere he goes, as if he had her on a leash.  And when he sits down at his tray to eat something, she is right there, begging like a sad little puppy!  She’ll even growl, yelp, and bark if she gets anxious enough!

Ryder isn’t the only one she begs at…the only difference is that Ryder knows not to give her anything!  Daddy on the other hand…well he’s the Daddy so I can’t say anything.  It was peach cobbler, can’t be that bad! 

I’ll have to get used to the fact that he’s going to give her whatever she wants.  Can you blame him?!

That would be Ryder taking his chair on a magic blanket ride.  Because those are the kinds of things he comes up with!

No matter how much of “nothing” we’re doing, as you can see we’re really always doing something! 

A Man & His Motorcycle

There’s something that men around here take very seriously.  That would be their motorcycles.

They’re always wiping them down…

 

Tweaking things…

and adding customizations.

After a few riding lessons…

Ryder was off on his very first REAL motorcycle ride!

Well it’s as real as it gets for a kid!  We’ve gotten some pretty useful hand-me-downs before, but when we got the phone call that Ryder’s cousin Cameron wanted to give Ryder his motorcycle, we couldn’t get there fast enough!  To say he was excited is an understatement!  He really can’t believe that he has his own motorcycle.  This child lives so true to his name, he is a natural on anything he can ride.  He has a hard time getting on and off of things in general because it requires two hands, two legs, and a lot of balancing…but in just 1 day he has learned how to hop on and off of this thing like a PRO! 

We got it lastnight, but he couldn’t ride it since it hadn’t been charged.  He spent the whole night just admiring it.  Today though, when Daddy got home from work it was on!  He was a little hesitant at first, but in no time he was turning the “strottle” to make it go.  We’re going to have to get a new battery for it so he can do some long cross-country riding, hence the blanket and saddle bags (I knew those old black purses would come in handy for something!) and we should probably invest in a real motorcycle helmet, but the construction hat will do for now. 

 

 

Maisy’s on the Go!

There’s no stopping her now!

She’s not up on hands and knees yet, but it sure isn’t preventing her from getting around.  She is army crawling all over the house, coming to find us if we leave her in a room by herself, and having crawling races with big brother…in their Church clothes…oh well.

After just a week of crawling around and she already has the guys chasing after her!  We should have known this was coming.  We got a very special visit this weekend from our friends James & Erica and their 4 kids.  The only pictures I took were of Little James being glued to Maisy, he’s going to be a very sweet, attentive boyfriend someday! 

And now the fun begins, chasing two little ones around! 

Bigger (and Badder) and Better!

That would be big brother I’m talking about!  Ryder has gotten so big, when I look at him I can’t even believe what a little boy he has turned into.  Watching Maisy go through all the little baby stages makes me constantly reminisce on when Ryder was a baby and learned the same things.  To think that he will turn 3 years old this year is so unbelievable.  He has gotten so…big!  He can even reach all of the light switches in our house now (that’s what he’ll tell you if you comment on what a big boy he is now).  He’s still small for his age, just now growing into a size 2T, but big to us because he’s not our little baby boy anymore.

His personality is SO big!  He makes us laugh a hundred times a day.  We have such in depth conversations with him about any and every subject, he understands things and asks questions that you wouldn’t think a 2 year old would even know to care about!  He never misses a detail either.  If something in the living room is moved, if I switch to a different purse, put a new case on my phone, add a new app on his tablet…anything different and he points it out immediately.  He has great phone conversations, he talks to Daddy every morning in the car on the way from our house to Nana’s and it is a real back and forth conversation.  I love to hear him talk about what he plans to do for the day and what he can’t wait to do when we all get home.  His memory is amazing, if you tell him you’re going to do something, he will not forget.  He memorizes songs so fast, you can name any show he watches and he’ll sing the theme song.

Aside from getting bigger physically and having that big personality, he has also gotten much BADDER!   Once he turned about 2 and a half he started becoming very challenging for me.  He realized that he got a lot of attention for being good, but he could get even more attention by not listening and doing the opposite of everything we asked.  Our mornings went from smooth sailing to knock down drag out fights trying to get out the door.  Our evenings were a constant battle of Ryder don’t do this, and Ryder don’t do that, and Ryder why aren’t you listening to us telling you not to do this or that??!!  Plenty of spankings and talking to’s later things are finally leveling out.  He’s back to his sweet self but he can turn that bad switch on at any given second.  He gets this look in his eye and does this evil little laugh and I brace myself.  (caught on camera!)

Therapy was another area that hit a rough patch.  We used to be able to pass everything off as just playing, but now that he is older and can do real work they need to ask him to do things…which he has a major problem with.  Our therapy sessions started becoming about 50% work and 50% negotiating with Ryder to do some work.  For his past few sessions I haven’t been going in with him and he is doing much better (sad, but true!).  As much as I want to be with him every second, especially when it has to do with his rehabilitation, I never want to hinder his progress, so if Mommy not being there to baby him or for him to show his true colors around is the solution, then I’ll take a step back and give him that independence.

I did get to sneak in therapy yesterday though and get pictures of him learning to ride his brand new bike!  Even with the behavioral problems he is constantly overcoming previous challenges he faced and continues to get better and better with therapy.

This is what he can usually be found doing at home:

Riding, Riding, and more Riding!  When he’s not riding he’s doing things like this…”Hey Momma, come look at all my vehicles, I lined ‘em up!”

Or playing his tablet and keeping baby sister company!

A post all about Ryder wouldn’t be complete without a few laughs.

One day I asked Ryder what he learned in Church that Sunday and he told me he learned about Jesus in a boat and the waves got big and scary but Jesus was sleeping so they woked him up and the waves stopped.  Wow, I thought, he really retained that story well!  I said “so do you know that means that if you’re ever scared or sad or mad or frustrated, you can do the same thing, you can ask Jesus to help you with that situation.”  He said “Yeah like when my block tower falls over and I get so frustrated I can just ask Jesus to pick it back up” I started saying “yeah that’s right, you can pray to Jesus and…” he interrupts me “actually I could just ask Santa to bring me something better that will help it not ever fall over again, he could probably get it there faster on his sled!” Mannn I knew this Santa thing was a bad idea!

Alan called on the way home from work the other day and asked to talk to Ryder.  Here is how their conversation went:

Daddy: Hey buddy, Daddy’s going to stop at the store, do you want me to pick you up anything?

Ryder: Uhhh yeah I want a hotdog and a slurpee.

Daddy:  Oh okay, looks like I’m going to 7-11.

Ryder: Roger that agent Daddy!

Mommy: Did you just say Roger that agent Daddy??

Ryder: Sure thing co-pilot Mommy!

The other day he came in the bathroom while I was getting ready.  He said “momma can I help you put your make-up on?” I said “sure buddy, here put this powder on Mommy’s face”.  He brushed it on very carefully, nice and even, no lines.  When he was done I said “thanks!  Am I beautiful??” He said “ummm no, I think you need something else!”

Don’t Mess With Them!

Don’t Mess With Me…

  

 

I’ve got an Uncle G!

Maisy’s Posing

Because, well, that’s just what she does!