On the Move....

I walked into the living room from the kitchen yesterday and found Casey doing this. I'm pretty sure this is the first time he has tried it. We have a walker toy that I have tried to get him to push recently but he won't have anything to do with it, he just sits down. Maybe this one gives him more support and flexibility. Enjoy!

Isn't that the cutest thing!! I love the talking, my baby is growing up so fast. I'm giving it another month before he ventures off on his own. Casey's been letting go of the furniture or toys and sitting down very slowly lately. He's also been doing laps around his learning table, while holding on of course. It's so cute to watch him go around and around, over and over, and he's so proud of himself too. I'll try to get a video of that next.

Little Shopper...

We recently received the new Fisher Price Easter Catalog in the mail. Ryan quickly found it and made it his new favorite "book."

"Mommy, toy book? Where'd it go?"

On every page he asked, "Who's that?" Apparently all toys need to have a name.

He was very excited about the Geo Trax page, especially since he received the Grand Central Station for Christmas. "Ryan has that, it's right there." He would point to the picture and then to his train box.

This is Ryan saying "Mommy, want it, PLLLEEEAAASSSEEE." I say "No," and he says, "but I want it." Too bad Grandma wasn't around at the time, she's the one that bought him a shirt that says "Saw it, wanted it, asked Grandma, GOT IT."

Together at last...

We finally did it! We bought Ryan a big boy bed (hooray for tax refunds)! So, now Ryan and Casey are officially roommates! I realize that Casey is 10 months old and we could have made the change a while ago, but this is just the way things worked out.

Ryan has made the transition quite well, and has enjoyed having Casey in his, wait, their room. On Sunday Tyler came home from church early with our sick boys and put them both down to nap in their room. He says that Casey was sleeping before Ryan went down. About 10 minutes after putting Ryan down, Tyler hears giggling over the monitor. He peeks in the room and Casey is running his bink over the bars and then throwing it out of the crib. Ryan giggles and gets the bink, gives it back to Casey (who giggles) and starts the process over again. Tyler watched this for a few minutes before deciding to grab the camera. As he started to record, the boys heard the beep and the magic was gone. Maybe we can catch them on camera next time.

We actually had the bed for a week before letting him sleep in it because we didn't have his bed rails yet. I would lay him on the bed and say it wasn't ready because he could fall off, then I'd roll him off the bed and catch him before he hit the floor (he thought that was pretty fun). So, every night at bedtime he would say "big boy bed not ready, Ryan fall off."
Funny Story: He was very excited about his trains, trucks, and airplane sheets and pillows. When he picked them out at the store and wouldn't let go of them. On the way home he was holding them while sitting in his car seat. When we were stopped at a red light, a very long red light, Ryan started saying "big boy bed, trains, airplane, trucks, yeah, look it." He does stuff like this a lot so I didn't think anything of it. Then I looked over at the car next to us, on the driver's side where Ryan's car seat is, and these two women, a mother and daughter, were laughing hysterically and keep looking in our back seat. It turns out that Ryan was showing these women his new sheets and telling them all about his big boy bed. He was holding them up to the window and pointing to all of the vehicles. Ryan waved goodbye when the light turned green and continued to tell us about his new train sheets.

I let Casey play in the crib a couple of times before actually letting him sleep there so the novelty wore off and he wouldn't be inclined/tempted to play instead of sleep. Our only problem is he likes to throw his bink out of the crib before he falls asleep, but he won't fall asleep without it. So, I have to sneak in and throw it back in. I tried putting in more than one, but that just means there are more on the floor in the end. It has definitely been nice for Tyler and I to have our room back, and actually turn a light on and talk in a normal voice before we go to bed.

Bath time fun and more...

Casey has grown to really LOVE bath time, as you can tell. He gets really excited when he is standing by the tub waiting to get in. He is almost impatient. :) There are quite a few pics here mainly because I like all of the different expressions on the boys faces.

Oh, so happy.

So much for trying to get both boys to smile at the same time.

Casey enjoys carrying things around in his mouth these days without the use of his hands. He recently discovered that this frog fit in there quite nicely. I also like Ryan's face in the background.

Monkey see monkey do. It didn't take very much coaxing for Ryan to join in on the fun.

I think Ryan is growling or Rarrrring (as he calls it).

Another cute expression of Casey's, during this time Ryan kept trying to grab the frog and put it back in Casey's mouth.

This is typically what I get when I ask Ryan to sit by Casey trying to quickly catch a cute moment. Ryan is in position and then Casey sees the camera and makes a mad dash for it.

Now I think he's just trying to get away from Ryan, such a loving brother-most of the time. A few days ago Casey was playing with one of DVD cases that Ryan was playing with, Ryan likes to line them up and then pick them up and do it all over again, Ryan apparently wasn't too keen on sharing and proceeded to walk up, pull Casey's hair and say "No Casey, don't touch." :)

This is Casey's new favorite location. Since he likes to spend quite a bit of time here, he has discovered all of the buttons. Just in case you don't recognize the picture on the screen it's "The Incredibles," A current favorite of Ryans.

Singing Time

Ryan LOVES letters. He loves his ABCs and goes through all of the letters and all of their sounds at LEAST 3-4 times a day. If your child needs to learn the ABCs I highly recommend the video "The Letter Factory" by Leap Frog. Ryan has been able to recognize all of his letters, upper and lower case, since his 2nd birthday and it's all because of the TV. :)
So now he has added singing the ABCs to his list. And he can never sing them just once, it usually comes in sets of 3. When he first started singing this song it sounded like he was singing "Ryan know my ABCs" instead of "Now I know my...". He has also recently omitted the letter K. I try to correct him, but he gives me the "No, No, No," that you'll see in the video. Enjoy!

Goin' to the Temple.....

Meet the newest member of our Family, Jamie Lee . Not to be confused with the Jamie Leigh that my cousin Jason married last year on my birthday. As previously mentioned we flew out to the east coast for the occasion and had a great time. Although J.D. and Jamie make a very cute couple and both looked beautiful (and handsome) on their day, there just might have been another little pair that occasionally stole the spotlight.

All together now.....AHHHHHH!! They were so good at the reception. One activity that they did for at least an hour was walk around holding hands. We would tell them to go find the Christmas Trees, or Grandma, or Daddy and off they went hand in hand. They could have cared less if we were following them, they were in their own little world. Their little activity of holding hands worked out just fine as long as they were equal partners. If Ryan would start to pull Payton to go this way or that way Payton wouldn't have anything to do with it and would start to resist. We tried to get a video of Payton and Ryan (the mini bride and groom) walking down the hallway in front of J.D. and Jamie but by that time the novelty had worn off.

And who could forget about Casey. The tuxedo shop didn't carry Casey's size, but he's still as adorable as ever.

Here's our little stud. It's the exact tuxedo that everyone else was wearing, cuff links and all. I think he enjoyed wearing it. The shoulder pads in his jacket were huge. When we buttoned Ryan's jacket it was quite tight around his waist, it actually brought his jacket to a triangle around his back.

We were so proud that Payton kept the flowers in her hair. We didn't have any expectations and she blew us away. Either she forgot that they were there, or she saw Jamie's nieces wearing them and decided to keep hers on to.

The greatest babysitter of the night was the dance floor. The girls were walking around and twirling in their pretty dresses and then there was Ryan pushing his cars around . At first I wasn't too happy about him crawling around on the floor in his tuxedo, so my cousin Tyler (groom's man), showed him how to kick Mater across the floor. :) And yes, my son is wearing blue socks with a black tuxedo, the one thing that I forgot to get.

I think he's up to something.

I guess he thought he could climb the wall because of the decorative "steps."

Me and my Casey.

I think the staff at the reception hall enjoyed having our group there for the reception. No alcohol was served (enough said), there were kids present (that were very entertaining), and we let them go home early. The reception was from 6-10pm but we could have stayed until 11pm. So, in true LDS fashion the place was a ghost town just after 9:30pm.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow....

Yesterday Jennifer and Payton drove out here to visit for the day. It has been very wet and rainy down here on and off for the last few weeks. With this last storm the snow level dropped down to 4000 feet, so Jennifer and I took the kids to the snow. We drove up to the local mountains which are just about 1/2 hour from here. We would have preferred to have their Dads with us in hindsight so that we could have forced them to have a little more fun with the snow. When we first got there and got them all bundled up they (especially Payton) kept giving us looks like we had snowballs for heads. Jennifer made the snowman that is in the pictures, I was holding Casey so I wasn't much help and neither were the kids. I think they would have had more fun sitting in the car watching their Moms have fun in the snow. The video definitely shows how much our kids LOVED walking in the snow. ;



I really wish I would have ignored Jennifer's wishes for me to turn off the camera. Let's just say that the sledding experience didn't exactly turn out as planned, but she could have done it on purpose (right, Aunt Jenn?) to make Ryan smile again after his mean Mom made him walk in the snow. I found it hilarious that he lost his balance on the very first step he took, talk about negative reinforcement.

So adorable!

This is one of the only smiles we got out of Payton while we were there.

We couldn't find anything for the facial features for the snowman, so Casey donated his Binky for the picture. Thank goodness he didn't need it after that, it was a little cold.

Sometimes I don't know what is going through my sons head. Prior to this picture we were trying to get him to eat snow, Aunt Jenn and I were eating it but he wanted nothing to do with it. Then when we were leaving I told him to say Bye Bye to Frosty and he did, then I said give Frosty a kiss and he did. I was surprised. He doesn't want to walk in it, doesn't want to eat it, but he'll kiss it. Go figure.

Hopefully next time we'll be able to do snow angels with the kids. It has always taken a couple of exposures to get the kids, especially Ryan, used to new things. Hopefully next time he'll feel like he can venture out a little more. Maybe next time Tyler will come to, although he feels that playing in the snow with Ryan doesn't sound fun at all, well, maybe a little fun. (He wanted me to add that last part after reading what I had posted.