19 Months!!

Well, we’re getting closer and closer to having a 2 year old, and we sure are feeling the affects!  Our sweet, well-behaved, logical little boy has decided over the weekend to start throwing temper tantrums.  If this is a glimpse of what age 2 has in store for us…I’m trying really hard to hit the breaks and stay where we’re at for now!  This little guy is so busy and so full of life, he is such a joy to have around (the other 99% of the time when he’s not rolling on the floor crying for NO reason!).  Here’s what he’s up to these days:

• He still weighs 20 pounds and wears 12 month clothes.  I bought his whole fall/winter wardrobe in 18 months and am trying to move him up, some fit and others just fall right off of him.
• Even though he doesn’t gain an ounce, he eats great!!  I’ve never had an issue getting him to eat, and I can’t think of any food that he refuses to eat.  When he’s with Yaya he eats really interesting foods like cauliflower, spinach, and zucchini!
• He loves to play trucks and dirt bikes and make them do wheely’s, he loves playing in his fort, and will drop anything to go on a Golf Cart ride.  Now that it is getting colder, Daddy will tell him “if you want to go for a ride you need to get pants, shoes, and a jacket” and he will go running to his room yelling “PANT! SHOES! JACK!”  It amazes me that he can remember all three instructions!
• On that note, he has got an amazing memory!  He will hear something one time and repeat it for weeks, or bring something up this week that happened two weeks ago that we all forgot about.  Watching him learn his animals and sounds is a perfect example, you tell him today what an animal says and he will tell you tomorrow the name and sound it makes without even being reminded!
• He has moved on from just saying one word at a time.  Now he is putting 3 and sometimes 4 words together!  He’s usually bossing us around “sit down mama!” “dada come play!” “let dogs out!” and he even tells himself what to do “Ryder sit” “Ryder do it” “Ryder night-night”.
• He’s understanding a little bit about his situation now too.  The other day I heard him say to himself “two hands…good boy!!”  Which of course made me so proud!  He said that while he was sweeping, because he still has an obsession with the broom! 

The main difference that I see in Ryder this month is how much he loves being able to walk around…and with that comes the fact that he is ALL OVER THE PLACE now!  People said that would happen, and they were absolutely right.  Once he figured out how to walk, he is non-stop now.  I can’t even keep his room clean because faster than I can put things away, he is at each little station tearing things down and throwing them around, and it isn’t just contained to his room.  He is…all…over…the…place!  I love his energy and his mind and his silliness and his smile and I even love his fake cry when he has thrown himself on the floor being dramatic over nothing. 

Here’s a video of his business…this is how it is from the time he opens his eyes in the morning until the time he shuts them at night! 

Orthotics

We got to visit Jelena & Dr. Hotchkiss (or Doc Hotchick as Ryder pronounces it) again last week when we went to pick up Ryder’s orthotics!  He didn’t want to have anything to do with going back in the room, so we had his appointment in the waiting room!  LOL, I love people who are flexible and understanding when it comes to children.  None of the patients coming or going seemed to mind that there was a pantless little boy walking around with a bunch of adults staring at how he walked!  This is what his Orthotics look like:

They slip right inside of his shoe and help to position his feet correctly.  Surprisingly, when we slipped these little tiny inserts into his shoes, his legs straightened up quite a bit!  I was pretty impressed!  I was also surprised at how well he has adjusted to having them.  It definitely slowed him down for a few days as he figured out this new position of his feet, but he didn’t seem to mind one bit.  We’re going to try these for a few months and see if we need to take them up a little higher next time.  In case you’re wondering why exactly he needs Orthotics, I took a little video of his feet as he walks and stands, you can see in the video how his feet pronate, or turn in to where it seems like he’s standing on his ankles, of course it’s worse on the left side than the right.

And here two videos from therapy of Ryder’s first time learning how to go up and down steps on 2 feet.  This is especially hard for him because each side of the body has a different job.  One side has to balance while the other climbs and vice versa.  His PT Erin does such a good job assisting him and motivating him…love her!  One video is him trying this barefoot and the other with his boots & orthotics on. 

Just Ryder!

I promise, this post will be just Ryder, lots and lots of him!

And all of his cuteness.  With all of his cute new fall clothes!

Running around everywhere…

And talking up a storm!

And wearing more cute fall clothes!

And sometimes not wearing any clothes, like at the Doctor:

Where he can always find fun things to keep him occupied, like kissing Mommy’s picture on her drivers license, or wearing his glasses around to be silly.

He has been helping Daddy get his truck ready to sell:

And he has been eating ice cream with Uncle G:

And spending lots of time with ALL of his animals (the number is getting a little excessive):

Did you get enough of him?  NO?!  Alright, how about some videos!

His favorite thing to talk about these days are animals and the noises they make:

And he’s doing really great with learning his colors too! 

Okay, that’s all I’ve got, hopefully you’ve gotten your fix now :-P

The Box: Part III

…continued

Unfortunately, right after we purchased our land was about the time that the market crashed.  The thought of a young couple, as first time homebuyers, with hopes of building a unique structure like a log cabin, was kind of like a joke to the mortgage companies.  There was just no way it was going to happen. 

The walls on The Box were beginning to close in on us.  Time was flying by, wedding plans were in full force, and our temporary home started to seem a little too permanent.  We were stressed!

We exhausted every possible option to build our log cabin and nothing was working out.  It was time to move on to a new plan…fast…because the wedding was approaching!  We spoke to a family friend who is a Builder and he told us about some smaller lots that he had in a neighborhood that he could build a house on for us and then we could get a normal loan when it was finished.  SOLD!  Where do we sign?!

Construction on the new house got started, we got to do all the fun stuff like pick cabinets, flooring, and colors.  Our only hang up was that we had to sell the land before we could get financed for a new house.  We made flyers, posted ads, got the word out that our little gem was for sale…every taker we got fell through for one reason or another.  Financing a piece of land or getting a construction loan was no longer an easy task for anyone.  We tried to use the selling point of being able to live in The Box, but that must not have sounded as appealing to others.  We were at a loss.  The new house was almost complete, the land was still not sold, the loan was ready to be closed as soon as proof of sale was provided, and the wedding was just over 3 weeks away.  I knew that Alan did not want to marry me and carry me over the threshold of The Box, I had to respect that wish, something had to give.

I remember coming home from work one day, we sat on our bed (again, the only place to sit) feeling claustrophobic and helpless and Alan said to me “something is missing!  There is a missing piece that we are just not seeing that is making this not work out for us.”  I held onto those words for the rest of the night and I prayed HARD!  Alan was right, we were missing something, but what was it?  The next day, driving in my car, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  The words of our Pastor during our pre-marital counseling we had a year prior.  He talked to us about living together before marriage and we told him that we knew we were living in sin and were trying to make it right by getting married, but had no plans of changing the current situation.  He said to us “I’m not asking you to change it right now, and I can’t tell you what to do, but I will ask you to consider abstinence sometime before you marry so that you can see just how special God meant for things to be.”  I kept hearing his words loud and clear, so I called my Step-Dad who has been a huge influence in my Spiritual life.  I had to run this by someone.  I told him about Alan’s comment and about this revelation that I felt like I was having.  He was speechless and finally got out that it had been weighing really heavy on his heart to talk to me about our living arrangements.  He had never approved of them, but tried not to lecture us or preach to us about it over the years.  But something was telling him to talk to me about making this right with God.  My next phone call was to Alan to tell him that I was moving out.  I was nervous, and thought for sure he would think I was crazy (we had lived together for 6 years!), but he didn’t at all.  I told him that I felt so strongly that this was the missing piece, that if I moved out until our wedding that things would fall into place.  His response was one of desperation “I’m willing to try anything at this point.” 

I wasted no time in packing my bags and driving to my Mom’s where I would be staying for the next few weeks.  On the way there, I got a phone call from the Lawyer who I had contacted to do the settlement on the land with one of the potential buyers who fell through.  She was also the Lawyer who did the settlement when we purchased the land.  She asked me what was going on with the buyer and I told her they backed out and how devastated we were.  She told me she wanted to make a phone call and would call me right back.  I pulled into my Mom’s driveway, walked inside, and my phone rang.  It was the Lawyer, who proceeded to tell me that she still has a relationship with the older couple who we purchased the land from, she had called them and asked them if they would be interested in purchasing the land back, they said ABSOLUTELY!  My jaw hit the floor (not a bad deal for them, considering it has been a rental property ever since!). 

Of course my sinful nature told me “okay it worked, you can go home now”…but I shoved that thought out of my head!  I had to hold up my end of the deal, and I did, and it was so worth it.  Alan & I spent the next few weeks before our wedding spending the night apart.  Within that time, we closed on the sale of our land, finished up last minute wedding plans, and went to settlement on our new home on March 5th, 2008, 3 days before our wedding!

  

And guess what…Alan married me and did not have to bring me back to The Box!

Although we are so very very very happy to be out of that tight space, The Box will forever hold a special place in our hearts.  It brought us so close together, I mean you have to really like someone to be able to live in a box with them for a year and a half!  We made so many memories there.  And it truly made us appreciate things like space, hot water, closets, chairs and cabinets!

So that’s the story of The Box.  I promise I’ll buy some camera batteries now!

The Box: Part II

…continued

So there we lived, crammed into the teeniest tiniest place, and surprisingly we were content.  We would stand up on the hill, talk about where the log cabin would go and how beautiful the views would be and how much we couldn’t wait to sit on our porch with a cup of coffee to take it all in.

Then we would walk back down to The Box, sit on our bed (the only place to sit) and just be together.  We played hundreds of games of War, and Spades, watched movies, told stories, and laughed.  We had bonfires, taught Beasley how to swing from a rope that was hanging on a tree in the yard, and even had a flood one morning when the sink fell out of the wall while Alan was brushing his teeth. 

One very special night…3 days before Christmas, we came home from having dinner with friends and on our counter was a huge BOX.  My mind was going in a million different directions, What is that?  How did it get here?  Someone must have been in our house!  What is going on?  Alan acted equally as confused.  We walked over to the box, it was wrapped in brown packing paper and decorated in crayons.  “To Mommy & Daddy ~ Love Beasley”.  At that point I just started laughing, I knew that one of our parents must have brought us an early Christmas present from the dog.  We sat on the ground and opened the box and in it were 3 separate packages.  One for Daddy who opened his and found a card with a gift certificate inside that read “Daddy, this is for you to take Mommy out to dinner”.  The next one was for Beasley…some treats wrapped up for herself, I guess she felt she deserved it after so much work pulling this present off.  And the final box was for Mommy.  It was a card that read:

  

I peaked up from reading the card, not exactly sure what was happening, and there was Alan, on one knee with a beautiful ring asking me to marry him with the sweetest grin on his face that I can still picture to this day.  I started sobbing crying, I laid flat on the kitchen floor and sobbed, I couldn’t believe this was really happening, I cried so hard that I was hyperventilating.  This is the perfect picture of our relationship, there I laid being as dramatic as possible, and there he knelt by my side, as patient as possible, just waiting for me to snap back to and say yes.  And I did!  Who knew how much joy a little box, inside of a bigger box, inside of The Box could bring that night.

I immediately started planning our wedding (who am I kidding, I already had the whole thing planned out in my head!) but there was one stipulation.  Alan told me the night that he proposed that he would not marry me and bring me back to The Box.  Therefore, if a wedding was going to take place, we had just over a year to figure out our living situation.

More to come…

The Box: Part I

Well, the batteries in my camera are dead, so I have no new pictures to share.  Instead, I thought I’d share a story that goes WAY back to before Ryder was even conceived.  I want to tell this story on here because it’s one of those memories that we will carry with us forever, and that we want to make sure Ryder hears about one day.  It’s a story about…The Box!  If you’ve known us for a good length of time then you most likely know about The Box.  You know where it is, what it looks like, you might have visited it, and you probably laughed when you read the title.

Alan and I started dating my senior year of high school, I was 17, he was 20, and we were on the fast track to falling in love <3  Fast forward a few years, we were ready to move out on our own, so we crossed a bridge, over a River, and into another state to settle into our 2 bedroom apartment.  Except we never really settle.  So we lived there for a year, with big plans to buy a piece of land in this new state we lived in and eventually build a log cabin on the land to make our forever home.

Driving around one day, we saw the tiniest little “for sale by owner” sign pinned onto a humungous tree, that sat on the most perfect piece of land that we had driven by hundreds of times and had never taken notice.  But this time, it caught both of our eyes at the same time, so we pulled over and called the phone number.  The sweetest older couple owned the land and wanted to help make our dreams come true, almost as badly as we wanted them to come true.  Within three weeks, we stood on that piece of land, so proud, and took the tiny sign off of the tree, because we were now the owners, and we couldn’t have been more excited.

The first thing we did was call Alan’s Dad to come take a look.  This is always Alan’s first instinct when something big (or bad) happens, so Big Greg headed to the property to check out our find.  They walked the property, talked about the perfect place to put a house, and the perfect place to put a deer stand, of course!  But the interesting conversation started about the time they made their way back to the front of the property.  It must have gone a little something like “Son, what are your plans for this beautiful cinder block building that sits on the property?  You know this used to be a crab shack in the 70’s that people would just drive through, pick up crabs, and head on their way!”…”Oh, that run down, dirty old building, we’re just going to knock that down Dad.”…”But Son, look at all of the potential, why pay rent AND a land payment, when we could fix this place up and you could live here!”  That’s probably when I started listening.  Wait…what???

And so the work began…about 10 family members, a lot of hard work (which we are SO thankful for), a few trips to Lowe’s and 3 weekends later, that run down crab shack was turned into our new home.  A home that we would forever refer to as “The Box”.  Because that’s what it was, a 15x15 box.  It had a kitchen big enough to hold a sink, refrigerator, and small countertop, a bathroom just big enough to hold a toilet, sink, and stand up shower, and a living area that held, Alan, Me, Beasley (and eventually Bentley!) our bed, tv, dresser, and clothes.

More to come…

Allergic to Cats!!

Poor baby just can’t catch a break sometimes!  It might be hard to see in the picture because I took these on my cell phone, but Ryder woke up this morning with a horrible rash on his face & neck, and his left eye swollen shut!  I immediately knew that he was allergic to cats because Me & Alan both are and we were at a house yesterday where there was a cat.  One time we were at Nick & Lindsay’s who have a cat (sorry Shelby!) and Ryder had an allergic reaction the next day…but I wasn’t convinced that it was from the cat since the symptoms were delayed.  Now that it has happened again, I am positive that he’s allergic to cats and his Doctor agreed.  We’ve been giving him Benadryl all day which has helped with the swelling but not so much the rash which is all over his face, neck, and chest.  Hopefully it will clear up soon!