Life With 2 (+ 1) Redheads

Yesterday was a fun day for Tyler!  Back in the fall, I bought Josh helicopter lessons for his birthday.  The lessons expired May 1, and by the time he called to schedule his session they didn’t have any helicopters available until the fall.  He could have waited, but the company offered to take Josh and Tyler up in a small plane! 

But he didn’t just get to fly IN the plane….

He got to FLY it! You must check this video out!

Perhaps we have a future pilot on our hands?  Tyler has been wanting to ride on an airplane for a few years now.  Lucky for him that his first experience on a plane was flying it!

That evening we watched Aladdin, which was on Disney this week.  I DVR’d it so that we could watch it last night!  Tyler loved the genie and the magic carpet the best.  Before bed I asked him if he could have three wishes like Aladdin did, what would he wish for. 

Tyler responded with the following wishes:

1. To be a daddy (he always says this!)
2. To be in a Toy Story movie
3. To visit Mickey’s clubhouse

Sweet kid!  From flying in a plane to watching Aladdin on a flying carpet, we had a great Friday!

Last but certainly not least, here is the video for Ryan's first birthday!  Let me just say that if I could make videos and take pictures the rest of my life and make it a career, I would be a happy happy woman!  It's so nice to get feedback on the videos I've done the past five years.  I love having them in our house and being able to pull them out and stick them into the DVD player any time we want to see what one of them did during a certain year!

You can click below to view.  Enjoy!

Ryan's Turns One

Last Friday morning, Ryan woke up like this

and came into the living room to see this

His big brother tried it out first.  Are we surprised?

But then Ryan finally decided to test it out.

He had birthday cake.

Ever try to give a baby a nap after eating sugar? 

We journeyed to my parent’s house that evening to spend the weekend.  The next morning we headed out to Stride Rite to get him his first pair of shoes!  Well not his first pair, but the first pair that he’ll keep on!  We had to get the flexible soles so that he could walk easier.  So far, he doesn’t fuss with them on!

We were able to spend the afternoon outdoors, and Ryan chose to walk with his bus walker for quite a while!

The next day was Easter but also a family celebration of Ryan’s birthday.  He received a few presents including a water table, baby pool, Little People Farm set, spring/summer clothes, and a First Words book. 

It’s funny to think how large Tyler’s first birthday celebration was in comparison to Ryan’s.  With Tyler’s we had around 50 people at our small little house and cooked out.  It was 80+ degrees in March, and I’m pretty sure he had no clue what was going on.  I like to say in reflection that his party was OUR party.

We kept things simple for Ryan, and I think it worked just fine.  I still can’t believe he is one!  Look at this little guy!

Raise your hand if you're one!

Ryan turned one last Friday which seems so strange to me.  Wasn't I just pregnant with him not long ago?  I surely remember the throwing up part!

I kid.  I kid....

Anyway, we had his one year check up today, and he came out with a great bill of health!  I switched to a different doctor within the practice back when he turned 9 months.  I love Tyler's pediatrician for Tyler's age, but frankly I wanted a woman doctor for Ryan right now who can sympathize a little more with me!  Anyway, she is probably a little more conservative than I'm used to, but I still like her.

Ryan weighed in at 22 lbs and 10 ounces!  Loving those baby rolls!!!  But believe it or not, that still barely keeps him at the 50th percentile on the chart! 

He measured 31 1/2 inches which put him in the 90th percentile for height!

He got three shots and a finger prick for iron levels.  Poor little guy!  Daddy didn't bring his paci, but he still was consoled pretty quickly with some mommy loving!

Ryan is "talking" quite a bit.  He says "mamma," "dadda," "baba" (for bye bye and bottle), and he will say the "Ta" sound for Tyler!  Because of the speech issues we've had with Tyler, I've really focused on saying the words of items such as "cup" when handing it to him. 

Speaking of the cup, Ryan takes the sippy cup like a true pro!  The transition from bottle to cup is currently ongoing.  I plan to start replacing his formula with milk in the next days and see how he does.  He has had milk a few times and really loves it!  Again, I really lucked out because it was more of a transition for Tyler!

Ryan is being offered pretty much any kind of food, but I'm excited to be able to introduce some new "one year old friendly" foods such as peanut butter, strawberries, etc.  He is still enjoying stage 3 baby food, and we'll probably continue that for convenience reasons until he denies it.  He loves little saltine crackers, cut up bananas, and oatmeal.   I have to admit though that with our schedule he doesn't really eat dinner with us much because he is usually in bed.  We eat as late as 8pm some nights!  So, it's hard to find things to feed him for dinner unless it's already made.

He is cruising along walls, furniture, and pushing his walker or anything that moves along the floor.  Yesterday he took a few steps to me on his own--you know, before crumbling into my arms.  But it counts!  He is standing by himself if you place him like that and let go.  He will stand, or he will choose to crumble to his knees.  He never sits still!  Always on the go!  It makes taking pictures of him all the more challenging!

We have an outdoor baby for sure!  He will literally scream if I walk near the door and then walk back away.  He wants to be outside all of the time!  I see a lot of time spent outdoors this spring and summer!

He LOVES his big brother!  It's really the cutest thing to watch.  He just giggles at him and loves to play hide and seek. 

I sure do love him, and I'm a tad sad that he's not a "baby" anymore.  But, I have loved watching Tyler develop a personality through the years, so I look forward to learning Ryan's personality as well!

Tomorrow I will post how we spent Ryan's birthday!

If you are waiting for a post on Ryan's first birthday, it will come tomorrow!  :)  Until then, we also celebrated Easter this past weekend!

Josh worked all weekend (as he seems to work almost every holiday and birthday lately!!).  So, we headed home late afternoon on Friday to spend time with my side of the family.  The Easter Bunny made his appearance, and Sunday morning I had one excited little redhead and one redhead who didn't really know what was going on!

These pictures are dark because it was early, and my settings on my camera were not exactly correct.  :)




We had a few Easter egg hunts, as Tyler wanted to do them over and over again!  And I managed to get a few cute pictures of the boys and the cousins!






I hope you had a great Easter! 

And now I will resume Weight Watchers after a weekend of eating sugar!!

Dear Ryan,

I remember that night a year ago very vividly, when you came knocking at the door in the middle of the night and three weeks early. I guess you were ready to step into this world and move ahead, as you do so powerfully since that day.

The kind of love you awakened in me took me by surprise. It’s not more or better than other love, only different.  Different from the way I love your daddy. Different from the way I love your grandparents. It has enriched my life even more than it was before.

Know that I’ll be here for you on your path through life. You can count on me for being there when you need support in all its subtle appearances. I’ll be a hand to help you when you attempt your first steps and a hand to catch you in case you might fall.

You will fall at times.

Keep on filling the pages of your book in your unique way. I’ll be reading along and helping you along the way.

Happy very first birthday! You have helped complete our family. 

I love you,
Mommy

Can you guess...sniff, sniff....what's coming up?

...with three phrases:   chasing tornadoes,  snoring 5 yr old kicked out of the room, and Air Show!

Are you curious yet?  We'll start from the beginning.

Saturday we planned to drive to Josh's mom's house and to celebrate Tyler's belated fifth birthday and Ryan's upcoming first birthday.  We wanted to leave after Ryan's afternoon nap which put us on the road around 3:15 pm.  We knew that bad storms were possible, but really...if the TV is on in our house, it's on Nick Jr!  So, we weren't really paying attention to the weather.  It got really dark as we piled into the car, and all I was really thinking was that we needed to get going before it down poured on us trying to get our luggage in.

About 15 minutes into our drive, my best friend texted me saying that a tornado was coming our way.  I responded "well, that's OK because we are driving away from it!"  However, we were actually driving into one of the 62 (yes, you read that right) tornadoes reported in North Carolina.  Looking back, I can simply say we are lunatics.  I mean, really.  The radio was blasting sirens and saying that this was an emergency, to take cover, and save your lives.  The LeConeys kept driving.

My friend gave me the locations of all of the tornadoes so that we could try and bypass them.  We did pull over once when we were driving under a bridge with several other lunatics who were also driving.  By the way if you are wondering, our kids were laughing and playing happily in the back seat completely oblivious.  We made it fine to our destination but realized later after watching the news and seeing pictures that ...yeah, we probably shouldn't have been driving.  It could have been much worse.  We really only drove through really bad storms, but it could have turned at any moment.  After my play-by-play texting to my friend about what we were seeing (i.e. fire, debris, power outages), I completed my journey with the text "Tornado chasers signing out!" 

On a less eventful note, when we arrived safely to our destination we celebrated Tyler's and Ryan's birthdays with a cookout, presents, and cupcakes!  Ryan had his first taste of sweets and was a little confused!  But he rallied towards the end!


Since we were getting up early the next morning to drive to an Air Show at the Air Force Base, we spent the night at Josh's mom's house.  After a movie, it was almost 9:45 before Tyler was getting into bed.  I was pretty tired so he climbed in bed with me in the guest room since Josh was not in bed yet.  We moved him to his sleeping bag at the foot of the bed later.

3:00 am. snoring.....from Tyler
3:15 am. mommy moves to the sofa
3:20 am  cat jumps on the couch and scares mommy
3:25 am  mommy moves back to the bed
3:30 am  mommy thinks of a great idea
3:45 am  mommy recruits daddy to pick up Tyler and take him to the living room
4:00 am  zzzzzzzzzzzz

Yes, that's right folks.  I kicked my five year old son out of the room at 3:45 in the morning.  You can send that mother-of-the-year award to my home address. 

That morning, Tyler woke up clueless and happy nonetheless.  :)  We arrived at the Air Force Base around 9am and spent the day just the three of us (minus Ryan) until around 1pm.  The weather was beautiful!

This was Tyler face watching the first jet take off!

Can you spot Tyler?  Top right.

I think I did pretty good doing a "boy" type activity!  I guess I should get used to it!

There you have it.  I hope my crazy weekend was entertaining to my blogging friends.  :)