Favorite Things

It has been a while since my last favorite things post.

We will start with Ryan's favorite things ---

1. Public Restrooms - who knew that public potties could be so fascinating?!

2. Toy Story although lately he has been asking for Cars (even more than Toy Story).

3. His blanket and paci - luckily they stay in the bed.

4. Waffles and fries and chick-nuggs (if you ask him what he wants to eat he will say one of these two items every single time. If you say no to the waffles he immediately asks for fries)

5. Talking - he does not stop.

6. The van - he gets so excited to ride in the van. It is one of the first things he asks to do each day.

7. "Teet" which is actually Iced Tea, he just adds in an extra t to the end and it makes me laugh. You could put just a splash of tea into his water cup and he is the happiest camper in the world talking about his delicious, refreshing teet. (yes, he says delicious and refreshing) :)

Owen's favorite things

1. Avent paci - The child refused a pacifier for the first 6 or 7 months of his life. He was a thumb and finger sucker though. I was trying to find something as an alternative because a paci is a little easier to take away than a thumb. We tried every paci out there with no luck. Then a friend recommended the Avent. The thing rarely leaves Owen's mouth. He is addicted.

2. Food - anything he can feed himself or anything that resembles something he could possibly eat. Everything goes straight into the mouth.

3. Standing up - he cries when he sits down or loses his balance, he likes being vertical.

4. Water bottles, paper, plastic grocery bags, pretty much anything that makes noise and is not a traditional "toy". Don't even know why exactly we have any baby toys in this house.

5. Anything that Ryan has (food, toothbrush, train, block, toy).

6. Cheerios - he pounds them down by the fist-full. I think he could devour an entire big box in one day if I allowed him to.

7. Rocking to sleep - I started a bad habit about a month or so ago that we are now trying to break.

9 Months Old

Owen Andrew is 9 months old! My baby is growing so fast and this month he really changed a whole lot! We went for Owen's 9 month checkup yesterday and found out that he weighs 20lbs 8oz (Ryan was 21lbs 7oz at 9 mo) and he is almost 29inches (Ryan was 28.5). Owen has consistently been measuring longer and lighter than Ryan was at the same age.

Owen't personality has really started to shine. He is such a laid-back baby. He squeals with excitement anytime he sees me walk into the room. He babbles all the time, mostly dadaddada sounds but he does say other stuff too. He has started crawling and pulls up on everything around. He has even started holding onto the furniture and walking around it. A few times I have caught him totally letting go of whatever he has used to pull up on and standing on his own for a few seconds! He loves food and prefers anything that he can feed himself. He will crawl as fast as he can across the room if he even thinks there might be food on the other side of the room. :)

In other huge news, Owen has started sleeping through the night! For one week solid we have been getting a full night of sleep!!!! WOOHOO!

At 9 months, Owen still wears a size 3 diaper and pretty much 12 month size clothing, although a few 9 month things still fit him. His hair keeps getting lighter and lighter every single day it seems. There are no teeth in sight yet, but I am not really expecting them for a while since I got teeth really late and so did Ryan.

So cute --- who do you think Owen favors???

Always on the move

Checking things out outside

Stand up

Sit down

Focused on that food! Getting it from the high chair tray to his mouth requires a lot of concentration!

Because everyone runs around in Crocs and Undies only

Ryan has been running around naked the past couple of weeks while potty training. This week we decided it was time to at least put on undies, especially when he ventures out on the deck. Ryan is my little helper and loves to water my plants --- which it looks like we are about to have some tomatoes ready to pick!

"Gotta water plants, mmmm potatoes"

Funny - when Ryan forgets to hold down the sprayer and the water stops he tells me that he needs to fix it. He says "uh-oh fix it, gotta get batteries" LOL. Anything that doesn't work the way it is supposed to around here needs batteries in Ryan's mind. :)

Rub-a-dub-dub

Two boys in a tub! The other day during bath time I realized that I never take pictures of the boys together in their bath. They have a good time playing and splashing together in the tub. Most of the time while they are in the tub they don't even notice one another though.

Notice how there is something in Owen's mouth in both pictures. The child has something in his mouth all the time.

More, More as Ryan would say

First teething cookie...no sign of teeth yet though - and not expecting them for a while as Ryan didn't get his first tooth til he was over 1 year!

I thought this one was too cute! Ryan and his friend Libby have lots of cute pictures together over the past two years. She is a couple of weeks younger than him and we have decided that we have plenty of photos to embarrass them with as they get older. Here is one example. The funny part is that Libby has a camera in her hands. She was sitting there taking pictures of Ryan on his potty telling Ryan to say cheese -- it was very funny.

Pictures

Well it's official, I am a bad blogger. Suffice it to say that we have been really busy. One of the first things to go is keeping up with the blog. I have a bunch of photos that I just haven't gotten around to uploading --- some are older some are newer...and we have lots of new things going on around here.

Owen is a crawling machine. He is pulling up on anything and everything in sight. He was even "cruising" around the table this morning.

Ryan is potty trained! YEAH!! Although yesterday he had a really weird day and had several accidents. Not sure what was going on there but that was our first bad day out of the 2 weeks! :)

Now on to the pics -- not sure if anyone reads the words anyway.

ok more coming in another post...

Adventures in Potty Training...

So I hesitate to post this on here because I am afraid that it will jinx everything but potty training is in full swing around here.

For the past few weeks Ryan has been asking us to change his diaper all the time. Probably the minute he made a pee pee in the diaper he would start asking us to change it. Last week Ryan started taking off his pants and diaper and Friday morning he did so and then ran into the bathroom and went potty all on his own. So I decided that maybe he was ready. We ran to Target, bought big boy underpants (Ryan picked them out) some pull-ups to use at naptime and some special stickers for rewards.

Saturday we started potty training. I had read nothing about potty training so I hopped on the computer to look up a few helpful tips. We decided to go with a naked method. Ryan runs around the house naked and we just wear training pants when we go out. Actually - he prefers the underwear with Mickey or Buzz Lightyear so we usually wear those.

He has only asked to wear a diaper once, and that was on day 2. We let him wear it because I am NOT pushing the potty at all. I want it to be on his terms and quite frankly, I wasn't actually planning to train him until after our big trip to Disney. The whole time he was wearing the diaper he was asking to get it changed. He has not asked for one since.

So far our outings have been accident free! YAY!!! Ryan had a great day 3 of potty training with only 1 accident all day and so far day 4 is going fantastic!

He loves his privacy and will shut the door to do his business. Funny, he has more privacy than I do around here.

New Toys!

Last week we got a new neighbor. He has a little boy who is a few years older than Ryan and they had put a few toys into storage several years ago. Anyway - one day while Ryan was napping the neighbor brought the toys over for the boys. Ryan was so excited when he woke up about the "new toys". He has been running around playing with these 3 toys non-stop ever since and refers to them as his new toys all day long. I would say the new neighbor scored some major points in Ryan's book!

Toy Story 3!

Last week Jeff took Ryan to see his first movie on the big screen! Ryan got to see his favorite characters --- Woody, Buzz and the gang! I was a little disappointed that I wasn't able to go with them to see the movie and to be with Ryan at his first big movie, but I was happy that they had a fun father-son activity!

Jeff said that Ryan did a great job sitting still in his seat throughout the movie. He didn't get scared but did let out a few "oh No!" and "wow!"s.

I took Ryan to another movie last week with his friends. They do free movies here on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. The movie was Horton Hears a Who and Ryan had zero interest in it. He was disappointed that Buzz and Woody weren't on the big screen and kept asking me where they were. :)

Jeff and Ryan went to a theatre and found out that TS3 was sold out. I quickly got on the computer, found another theatre and bought tickets in advance for the guys so they could make it to see the show. Thank goodness for technology!

July 4th!

Warming up with a little pre-fireworks show at home

Sweet Boys...

How to keep a 2 year old up way past bed time....sugar. Ryan's first taste of cotton candy - he didn't like the texture.

My one firework shot of the evening -- didn't bring my tripod. :( This picture is really quite pitiful because the show that night was FANTASTIC!!! I think it was one of the best I have seen in a very long time. Too bad the photo doesn't reflect that.

There is a similar pic of me & Ryan right on the right side of the blog ---->