March: Part One

Well hello again!  I am still here - life is nuts and days are just flying by!  How on earth is Ryan 10 months old?!  And how on EARTH is Katie about to turn SIX!??! Sheesh.  Slow down, time.  Seriously.

 

Anyway, here are some of the highlights of the first half of March!

March 1

I think this is so funny - Katie picked her own outfit out this day!  Can you tell? :)  Hopefully she does better with her coordination.  I have actually thought about letting her pick my outfits out for 3 or 4 days in a row and see what she comes up with.  Seeing this makes me question doing that though!

March 2

Katie's school had a book fair - and I ran by to go with Katie and her class!  It also happened to be class picture day (she doesn't usually wear necklaces to school)!

I took the boys to the park while Katie was at gymnastics and Ryan was so smiley!  And good grief, looking at him in this picture versus now - he has changed so much!

And here was Jack at the park!  He loves playing with sticks now!

And goodness.  This was the outfit she had on for gymnastics ... and it also happened to be picture day (I forgot)!  Oops!

Jack is looking so grown up these days.  Cute boy!

March 3

Speaking of grown up...here is a "quick pic" of Katie before school that day.

March 4

A selfie to start the day!  I had somewhere to go that morning, so I actually had real clothes and makeup on!

And this happy dude.  I still can't believe how much he's changed in a month!  Wow.

I love when all three kiddos play with the same toy.  And that's just what happened after school that day!

March 5

And we got more snow.  I had hoped the weather guys were wrong, but they were right again....lots of snow.  Which meant no school, of course.

We did end up having a great snow day full of playing inside AND outside.  And yes...Katie wanted to watch Rudolph while having some quiet time.  HA!

March 6

Yet another snow day.  Luckily I planned ahead and got a dozen donuts before all the snow - I was pretty proud of my quick thinking!  We did some coloring and worksheets and puzzles!  And we managed a meal out at Local Taco (one of current faves).

March 7

We started the day with a bed full of crazies! All three kids and the dog and both of us.  Whew!  Good thing we have a king size bed!

And I went to help my friend out who is a photographer and was doing bunny mini sessions...I think she posed just right for me!  I had taken the kids a few days earlier for her to practice and get some pictures with the bunnies.  They were so cute!

And then Katie had soccer practice!  It ended up being a beautiful day!

March 8

We met Tanja and Nick at the park and got some playing in and even walked a little!  Love this.

And another good one!  They were so excited to play with Tanja and Nick at the park!

And then that evening, we had a date night!  Woohoo! We ended up eating at Sperry's and going to Target (because, honestly, what date night is complete without a trip to Target?!).

March 9

It is so fun to watch these boys interact!  Ryan thinks Jack is absolutely the funniest thing there ever was - regardless of what he is doing!  And Jack has started to really get into imaginative play - so he was taking Ryan's picture here :)

March 10

And Brad went to eat lunch with Katie!  He sent me this picture of them - I know she is so excited when I come to lunch, but I do believe she is extra, super excited when Brad comes!

Jill and her kiddos came over for dinner that night - I cooked!  And neither of the daddies would be home, so we all got together.  And what dinner is complete without some dress up!? The girls had a great time dressing up!

And at bedtime I made a discovery.  And 3 hours later Katie finally went to bed without creepy crawlies in her hair.  Yep, that's right. Lice.  Absolutely ew.  I saw them crawling around and immediately used some of my essential oils and it killed them on contact.  And my neighbor Jenn brought me the nit comb and lice shampoo and black garbage bags and a drink - ha!  And I went through her hair and did all the necessary treatments and got them all out! She watched Mary Poppins. :)  And I think we did laundry for 3 days straight making sure we got rid of them! (thankfully none of us got them!)

March 11

It is so fun watching Katie interact with Ryan.  Since she is at school so much of the time, they don't get a lot of time together.  But he sure does love her.  And she loves to play with him!

March 12

Ryan is such a happy guy!  I can just hear that giggling when I look at this picture!

That evening, we ate at Chick Fil A -- and Katie finally asked what we were doing for Spring Break (which was just a matter of days away).  We hadn't told the kids what we were doing, but we had actually thought about telling them that night.  Do you think she was excited to learn that we were headed to the beach?? I love this series of pictures!

March 13

I got to eat lunch with my sweet girl, who happened to be Elsa for the day!  They had their Character Parade where they dressed up like their favorite book character and then carried the book with them.  I was glad she picked Elsa so she could just wear her Halloween costume!

We also had her class Spring Party that afternoon...and then it was spring break!  I had a lot of packing to do in order for us to head out the next day!  Priorities though...I also made time to get my nails done :) I was beach-ready!

Check back soon for a post all about our Spring Break!  It will be a major picture overload :)  But that's the fun part, anyway!

 

Ryan: 10 Months

Sleep

I think this should be broken down into two separate categories for Ryan: naptime and nighttime. :)  So, here we go.  1: Naptime.  Awful!  Unless we are in the car.  Or I have time to sit and let him sleep in my arms.  It is so frustrating!  He won't nap in his crib (as in - will cry for 2 hours if I leave him in there...will not cry it out and give in and nap!).  Well, that may be a bit dramatic - maybe it is a rare occurrence that he naps in his crib -- that is more like it.  Which means I can't get much done!  With Katie and Jack I knew I could bank on naptime to be productive, but not so much with Ryan!  I am hoping that maybe this summer he will get on a good routine around the time he would naturally switch to one nap a day.  And 2: nighttime.  We seem to be doing pretty well here.  Since we have started laying him down earlier, he isn't waking up (knock on wood).  So we try to get him down at around 7 and he will sleep a good 11-12 hours.  When he does finally get on some semblance of a routine (it is bound to happen sometime, right?!), I am curious to see how that affects his bedtime!  A recent challenge here is that he is such a mommy's boy that he won't eat for other people or won't stay asleep for them.  That's frustrating for everyone involved!

Eating

This has been a little bit of a challenge this month - though I think we finally have a new routine down! He has 3 bottles a day - 8 ounces each - and 3 meals a day.  He wakes up to an 8 ounce bottle and about an hour later, he will have breakfast.  A lot of time lately he won't drink the whole bottle (there was one day last week he would literally only drink one ounce), so I will mix it with cereal if there is any left.  He has also had some stage 3 baby food that has fruit and oatmeal.  And he loves pancakes!  He eats lunch - loves ham, yogurt, applesauce, bread, cheese.  He will have another 8 ounce bottle around 3pm.  And then dinner around 5:30 and another 8 ounce bottle at bedtime.  The only food he has had that he flat out refused to eat was avocados.  I am going to keep trying them and see if he will learn to like it!  He also loves the baby snacky things - puffs, yogurt melts, and things like that!

Weight

Nothing official here - but according to the scale at home, he weighs 22.6 pounds!

Length

Nothing official here!

Size Clothes

Ryan is in 12 months and it all fits perfectly!  The footed jammies are perfect and the outfits work just right too!

Size Diapers

Size 3 is working perfectly right now, though I wouldn't be surprised if we try size 4 sometime soon!

Hair color

He seems to be getting more hair!  And in the back it actually looks brown, but on top it looks blonde!  So odd. 

Eye color

He's got those sweet baby blues...so sweet!

Looking Like

He is his Daddy's son for sure!  And Brad and his mom both say that he looks a lot like Brad's dad as well.  Though in regards to siblings, he and Jack favor each other a bunch!

Nicknames

I'm not sure if there are any new ones or not....Little Bud for sure.  I think that's it!

Favorite toy

He loves anything on the floor!  He isn't as impressed with the walker or the exersaucer anymore - he wants to be down on the ground and moving around!  He likes the oversized bead-looking toys that snap together.  And he still likes his car keys.  And he really likes his Sophie - he squeaks it a LOT!  He also loves to pull up on the little white rocking chair...he would do that for as long as we would let him I think!  He likes to play with the weeble toys.  And he loves a block toy that has a ball inside - he loves to spin the ball around! He loves crawling to the stairs and pulling up - he is so proud!  He does like the entertainment table - it just needs new batteries so it will actually make noise!  He also likes to play with kind of ball - and he likes to chase it across the room if it rolls away from him.  He also loves to swing - thank goodness!  We have been spending more time outside since the weather has been nice, so he spends a lot of time in the swing when we are out there!

Firsts

Ryan had his first sledding adventure this month!

And he had his first vacation this month - of course he wanted to eat the sand at the beach... 

...and he got to swim for the first time...

 ...and go to Disney World for the first time!

 And then he had his first Easter as well!

Milestones

We have a crawler! Like crazy quick crawling!  I love watching him - he gets this really determined look on his face and then takes off after something!  And he is pulling up on things - and starting to cruise around.  Oh goodness. 

Talking/Words/Sounds

I have not done a good job with paying attention to his various noises! AH! He does the "dadada" and "mamama" of course.  And he does a "t" sound...and "g" and "n" and "b".  He also has started saying "da" when Sadie is around - maybe he is attempting to say "dog"!  And he loves to make a monkey noise - who knows if it is intentional, but he certainly cracks himself up doing it!

Anything else?

I know one thing we need to work on is the sippy cup...he only has 2 more months of bottles and formula (you're welcome, bank account), so we better get cracking on getting him more used to sippy cups!  We do give them to him at meals with water in them, but all he really does is chew on them.  He is a great eater - now that he is into solid foods, he definitely prefers that!  Maybe at meal time he just wants to eat and not worry about drinking - that's gotta change over the next couple of months!  Ryan loves watching Katie and Jack....Jack especially!  They laugh at each other and just have a big time.  Ryan also loves Sadie - he thinks her tail is hilarious when she wags it!  Ryan also loves to dance!  He will jive around to the beat of a song - and actually to the beat!  It is so funny...and he loves it!  He is also definitely a momma's boy...whenever I get home from running errands or whatever, he will crawl across the house and attempt to climb me like a tree!  Silly guy.  And he loves to "snorty grin" - and if you snort at him, he will snort back!  And he will do it as long as you are willing to keep snorting :)  Here is a prime example of the snorty grin...

And here are some more pictures from the last month!  It is amazing how much his look changed from the first picture to the last (at least to me)!...

 

 

 

 

 

 

...how are we two months away from the big first birthday?! Wow.  That is just amazing to me!  Slow down time!