Oh, Casey...

Oh, Casey... what can I say? He is my little dare devil. Ryan, this may surprise some of you, is a rather timid child, he's quite cautious when it comes to trying new things. Casey, on the other hand, is constantly surprising me. He loves to climb and stand on anything he can and has even started pushing boxes, toys, and rocking puppies around to use as stepping stools. The picture below was taken June 6th, now he no longer feels the need to hold onto the handles. Man, they grow up too fast.

I love the baseball hat and diaper look on Casey. This kid is built tough, quite strong and that belly is not squishy. Can you tell that he's a good eater? Ryan is a little on the picky side and we've done our best to avoid that with Casey, so far so good. Although, he does have his moments, but what kid doesn't.

He is quite the little talker these days. He's 15 1/2 months old and has been saying some words for almost 3 months now. Sadly enough :) his first word was "watch," as in watch TV (or more specifically Disney's Sing-Along Songs). That was shortly followed by "Heigh-Ho," his favorite song from the show. I'd ask Casey what he wanted to do and he'd run to the T.V. and say "Yatch," then I'd ask him what he wanted to watch and he'd say "Ho, Ho" while bouncing up and down (dancing). He now says: baba, bath, cheese, out, where'd it go, kisses, car, bye bye, waffle, juice, more, all done and ball. He is following in the footsteps of his older brother by being a really good parrot, he repeats a lot of what we say, but the above words are the ones he can do without being prompted.

Casey is so cute when it comes to hats. He carries himself differently when he has a had on, it's a riot. I'm just thrilled that he actually keeps them on.

Casey always has the funniest facial expressions, and here is an excellent example of one.

Casey loves to play with any and all controllers/remotes we have in this house. When this picture was taken he didn't notice that we had given him ones that didn't work, now he knows the difference.

Tunnels anyone...

For those of you who don't know, Ryan is obsessed with trains. To take it a step further, he is obsess with trains going through tunnels. He likes to make tunnels out of anything we have available. In the picture below he has used 2 chairs, 2 stools, 1 leap frog learning table, one Little Tikes Tool Bench, and Grand Central Station of course. That's 7 tunnels, this time I think I put my foot down after he wanted it to go under the couch too.



For a long time, Casey was a great source of stress for Ryan when it came to trains. Ryan liked to build the train track while Casey liked to destroy it. I'm sure that Ryan is relieved that Casey has taken a liking to pushing trains instead of destroying track, although Casey does like to push anything that has wheels on the track even if it doesn't quite fit which does frustrate Ryan and says "Casey, it doesn't fit."

Ryan's favorite thing is to get both of our battery operated trains and have them run on the track at the same time, basically until the batteries run out. Now he only gets one with batteries at a time, which sometimes causes contention, but that's the way it goes.

Both of the remotes still make noise which is great because Casey thinks that he's controlling the train when it's really Ryan, everyone wins, especially Mom!

I guess this is only the beginning...

OK, so I know that I'm in trouble with many of you for taking a 3 month hiatus from blogging. My original excuse was that we didn't have anymore hard drive space on our computer, I guess that's what happens when you have a 2 GB card for your camera. So, now we have an external hard drive with plenty of space and my excuses are gone. I'm hoping that there will be a LOT of posts in the next few days so that my brother Daniel, who hasn't seen the boys since January will be all caught up before we see him on Monday.

I LOVE this video. Casey had been walking about 3-4 weeks when it happened (May 21st). He had tackled Ryan one time about 10 minutes prior to this video and so I had my camera in hand ready to go just in case it would happen again, I wasn't quite ready for what came next. Usually these matches don't last this long because Ryan becomes too intense very quickly, but in this instance he was "just trying to watch Caillou." It's a 3 minute video, but well worth the time and the wait, I hope (considering this happened 3 months ago).



I find it interesting that I never mention Casey's name during the course of the video. So, as you can see, Casey is my little instigator but he's a cutie. I can no longer assume that Ryan is the one causing trouble when I hear cries coming from the other room. It seems to be a pretty even split between my two little trouble makers. It will be interesting to see how/if the tables turn when Casey can hold his own.

Are you happy?....... Not Yet

So, I have a rule in my home that I don't deal with cranky children. (This obviously doesn't apply when they are sick or get hurt.) This rule typically comes into effect in the afternoon either on a "no nap" day or if someone wakes up on the wrong side of the bed. The following scene is the last in a series of cranky episodes. I was actually trying to get a video of Casey walking but I got this instead. Watch the door (or the doorknob) in the first part of the video. I told Ryan that he had to go to his room and that he could come out when he was happy.



Now that Casey is 1 year old he is becoming more and more dramatic. You can tell that he wasn't as upset as he sounded by how easily he is snapped out of the crying when Ryan opened the door. He also LOVES to play with doors, which he is doing in the background. But I think my favorite part is when Ryan almost breaks down again. He makes a nice recovery.

Uncharted Territory...

I have never let Casey explore the kitchen until this last week. I didn't want to have to deal with the possibility of him falling over and hitting his head on the tile. Just thinking about that hurts. So, now that he is an AWESOME walker (more about this to come), I feel better about letting him explore. I opened the cupboards that he's allowed in and let him go. At first he kept looking at me like "Is this some kind of trick? Are you just teasing me?" See, he's rather expressionless.

Then after a few minutes, this is the face I get. He was quite excited once he realized that I wasn't going to pull him away, but was still a little hesitant about what to touch.

My one mistake of this new adventure was letting him play in the refrigerator, as you can probably guess he LOVED it, and was quite put out when I made him leave.

It didn't take him long to find one of his favorite things to eat, yogurt!

Now every time he's in the kitchen he goes to the frig and whines, while trying to pull it open. I probably should have known better, but it sure was fun to see how excited he was to be able to explore a little.

Happy Birthday Casey!!!! Part II

Here are the videos from Casey's Birthday Party. I love how well Ryan listens in this first video.

Casey is such a funny little boy. I love the way he eats his cake. I wouldn't have guessed that he would eat his cake in such a way, but I can't say that I was surprised. Uncle Jerry said that his next step will be a Hot Dog eating contest.



I loved how attentive Ryan was while everything was going on with Casey. He was very patient in waiting until Sunday to give Casey his presents. Ryan would have surprised him on Friday night if we would have let him. We actually did the presents first since Casey was getting a little cranky and I was sure Casey would be happy with a cupcake at anytime during the evening. The video proved that.

I'm having trouble loading the last video, maybe it needs to be in a different post. Enjoy these for now.

Happy Birthday Casey!!!!

On Sunday, May 4, my baby boy turned 1 year old. (sniff, sniff) Wow, how time flies. He has been an absolute joy in our lives for this past year and I can't wait to see what he does next. We went into my parent's house for the weekend's festivities. Casey had a pre-party treat enjoying my Mom's famous frosting.

Special thanks to Mom and Jennifer for making, designing, frosting, and decorating Casey's cake. It was a cupcake cake. You put the cupcakes really close together and then frost it like a regular cake, which means more frosting! Yum!

Apparently opening presents is hard work.

Payton was ready and willing to show Casey how to play with the Little People School Bus.

I'm not sure if this face is happy or frustrated, you be the judge, my next post will have the video counterparts.

Again, you be the judge. :)

This is probably the first moment he had to himself since the presents were opened.

Entertaining the kids with fire while waiting for everyone to assemble.

Don't you love his gap-toothed grin!

Checking out his audience, waiting to make his move.

His hands came to his mouth and did not leave until the entire cupcake was consumed.

Apparently it doesn't matter how much dinner and cake you have, there's always room for ice cream. He also mastered using a straw over the weekend.

Stay tuned for the videos!