Ryan 18 months old

A couple of weeks ago Ryan hit that all important milestone: he turned 18 months old. Woohoo, nursery! He actually just went for the first time today because last week right during the sacrament prayer he threw up all over himself and me as I hurried out of the chapel in the vain attempt to get somewhere more appropriate to throw up. I didn't think anyone would appreciate me taking him home to change his shirt and bringing him back for his first nursery adventure. Instead of nursery last week he came home and did this:

The little boy LOVES the computer a little too much. If it's open he types and clicks on it, changing all sorts of settings with keyboard shortcuts I never knew existed. If it's closed he climbs up(notice he's sitting on the table), opens it, and gets to work. Perhaps he's destined to follow in his father's computer nerding footsteps. :) There are a lot worse jobs he could aspire to.

Today at nursery he went without any fuss. Once he saw the puzzles on the table he was sold. I've been a little concerned about how the whole snack thing would play out at nursery, keeping him from grabbing the other kids' gluten snacks, and such, but today snack time seemed to go fine. We'll see over the next few weeks if there are any ill effects from the gluten fingers after snack time playing with toys that Ryan then touches. He's gotten a bit better about not putting his hands in his mouth, so I'm hoping that as long as we always wash his hands when we get home from church he'll be fine. It's a little nerve-wracking putting a little guy with serious food issues in other peoples' hands for a couple of hours, but I've got to get used to it sometime. And the nursery leader seems familiar with Celiac Disease, and is a self-proclaimed wiping fanatic that likes to wipe up everything the kids touch, so that makes me feel more comfortable letting him go.

Recently we decided to take down the baby gate at the bottom of the stairs. Ryan is really good on the stairs most of the time, even when he's trying to go down standing up like his sisters do. He usually goes down on his tummy until he gets to where the railing begins, then he stands up and walks down the stairs holding on. It makes me nervous, but not as much as it used to. He's really pretty good about it. And hasn't fallen down the steps at all in the last few months. Most of the time I was leaving the gate open at the bottom of the stairs anyway so Annie could go up when she wanted, and Ryan would mostly go close the gate behind him and sit between the bottom stair and the gate. 

It was one of his favorite places in the house to be. And I took it away. Now he likes to just sit on the bottom couple of stairs. We left the gate up at the top so I can still corral him when I want to keep him from wandering the whole house freely. 

But he actually likes being caged up, I guess. As I was folding up/dismantling the gate all he wanted to do was sit in the cage. Freedom is overrated sometimes, I guess.

As for his 18 month appointment, we finally saw the results I've been hoping for. The boy is growing! 

 That's a 23 percentile jump in his height growth in the last 3 months, where before he was dropping in the percentages every visit.

And he's up to where he's actually touching the bottom line on the weight chart. Still in the "less than 3rd percentile," but he will be a real percentile by next visit, I'm sure. This is after being gluten-free for 3 months and dairy-free for 2 months. It feels good to know he's finally growing like he should be. This week we have an appointment with a pediatric gastroenterologist just to establish care. I'm guessing he'll recommend that we test the girls, too, since having a first degree relative who has Celiac Disease ups the chances of having it yourself from 1 in 133 in the general population to 1 in 22 (or as one study showed, maybe as high as 1 in 8) chance of having Celiac Disease. We did test Rachel last year, but the blood tests aren't very accurate for young children. If we test the girls we'll probably do the enterolab.com testing that we did with Ryan, which they claim is more sensitive and accurate for kids older than 1.

Anyway, we're happy to have Ryan around. And happy to have him not around for 2 hours every Sunday when he goes to nursery. :) He's been pretty whiny this last week, though he was sick for a couple of days and is getting one last tooth poking through. I sure hope he returns to his mostly happy self soon. He loves his sisters, especially playing monster with them, either chasing them as the monster, or being chased by them. He also knows really well how to torment Annie. And she torments him really well, too. But sometimes she really likes him and is nice to him and can make him laugh like crazy. Rachel is usually very nice and helpful to him and likes to make him laugh (and is really good at it). Ryan is talking like a champ, now. Those of us in his family can usually understand him. He occasionally puts a couple of words together, even, to make a semi-sentence. And he copies any word we tell him to say. My favorite to hear him say is pop-kick-cull (popsicle).

Sunday fun

A few Sundays ago Jacob got out the camera and snapped some pictures of us having some peek-a-boo fun.

Ryan can hold his ground against any 2-year-old in a tantrum-throwing contest.

Then he's happy again.

We wrapped up the fun with a little group project of making no-bake cookies.

Rachel is very proud of her cross-eyed ability. She thinks she's hilarious. And always makes Annie laugh, so I guess she is hilarious.

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy

Rachel had her last ever Ballet Belles performance on Friday. Her teacher's kids are getting older and busier, so she's doesn't have time to keep her ballet classes going like they have been. She'll be teaching at a ballet company nearby and we may take Rachel and Annie there if they want to dance in the future. Or we may just try out gymnastics since Rachel has been so into that lately. 

For her dance performance Friday Rachel's class danced to Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. She did a great job.

 

 

Annie and Ryan enjoyed the dances for the most part. 

Rachel was front and center to start the dance, then switched to the back row and I was at the exactly wrong angle to get her on video for the last half. But she did pretty well.

Annie got a little bored during the awarding of certificates at the end.

Instead of bringing a bouquet of flowers for Rachel like a lot of other families did for their dancers, we made her a flower that she appreciated a bit more, since it was growing in a pot of Skittles.

That's our little dancer!

The rest of the pictures

Here are a few random pictures left before we can be caught up on the pics we have. 

Ryan is a regular blabber mouth these days. He calls his binky a mimi and was calling his blanket mimi, too until the last couple of days he's actually calling his blanket "bank-y." He gets glasses on or does something he thinks is awesome he says "coo!" (cool). And my favorite thing that he says right now: wha-ooo (where are you?). If someone is hiding or he can't find his blanky he'll say "Annie, whaa-ooooo?" or "banky, whaaa-ooo?" I should really try to capture that one on video. It's hilarious.

A small selection of other words Ryan says: gilk (milk), soos (shoes), dock (socks), urt (shirt), ose (store), car, gook (book), Annie, -achel (Rachel), water, Mommy! (for daddy, too, sometimes, especially when he first gets home), Daddy, bye-bye, ate-uh (later, like "bye, see you later"), cat, kikky (kitty), goggy (doggy), pickle, izzuh (lizard), hiding, toes, up, ep (help-with sign), eep baa (sheep-baa), dah duh (all done), guck (duck). And more. I love one-year-old talkers. They're so cute. And this Wednesday this one-year-old turns 18 months, so next week: NURSERY!!

A picture of everyone enjoying a good rainstorm last week. 

 

Ryan loves eggs. And pans. Whenever I'm cooking he gets in the cupboard that has the pans and unloads them all onto the ground. And his favorite pan is the one we use to cook eggs in. This particular day we'd had scrambled eggs for breakfast and the pan was still out, so he decided to "cook" for himself.

 

 

Last week I convinced the girls to try some hair curlers Saturday night for an easy Sunday morning hairdo. Annie's didn't stay in more than 10 minutes after she laid down for bed, but Rachel's did okay. She had a bit of a frizz fro the next day, but she loved it and it was still pretty cute. We'll try with a scarf wrapped around Annie's head next time. Or wait a year and try again. :)

 

Backyard fun

We've been enjoying our back yard, though the grass has me a little worried right now. It looks like it's got a fungal disease, or at least had one. Hopefully the monsoons are over now and the humidity will die down and the grass will come back thick where it's gotten a little sickly looking. And there are definitely some parts we'll have to reseed when it's a little cooler weather. But here are some pictures of the kids enjoying the grass before the brown spots began to make the lawn less pretty.

An almost brand new box of the kids' favorite Saturday breakfast, Trix, dumped out for the birdies to enjoy. Thank you, Ryan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Annie has become a high flier on her favorite swing, pumping about as high as it will go. By some miracle Ryan has not yet had to be rushed to the ER from getting conked on the head by her swinging like a maniac.

Ryan also LOVES to swing and will spend a half hour in there happily. He doesn't even seem to mind sitting stationary when I'm inside working on something, but whenever I poke my head out to check on him he immediately says and signs "More!" So I give him another push or two and he's content for another 10 minutes. Rachel enjoys the swing well enough, but lately she prefers doing tricks on the bars on the side and top of the swingset. It may be time to sign that girl up for gymnastics again. 

Labor Day

Labor day was my first vacation day since our summer trip to Idaho and Utah.  We managed to pack in a full day of activities as a family, but only took pictures at two of them.  Oops.
The past couple of weeks, the weather has alternated between overcast/rainy and clear/sunny. When the sun isn't shining the temperature is in the 80s - which is quite pleasant when you consider that on a clear day the temperature is in the 100s.

We took advantage of the overcast weather to take a family bike ride on a paved trail not far from our house.  The trail is called the Julian Wash Trail.  Colette, Rachel and I rode our own bikes, and Annie and Ryan rode in the bike trailer behind me.  It was lots of fun.  We took the camera with us but forgot to use it.

Colette told Rachel that when we returned to the house that we would take the training wheels off her bike and teach her how to ride without them.  We took everyone over to the church parking lot and let Ryan and Annie ride their "bikes" while Colette and I took turns with Rachel.  She picked up on balancing quickly.

Here's a shot of Ryan riding his "bike".

You can see that Annie is having a blast riding her bike while Colette helps Rachel to learn to balance.

Here are some shots of Rachel riding all by herself!  Go Rachel!

After bike riding, we hurried over to Justin and Marie's apartment to go for a quick swim.  It was fun and short: Ryan was starting to shiver after about 15 minutes and not long after we left the pool, it began to rain.  Once again no pictures.

After lunch and naps and some Sean the Sheep, we went shopping for some some hot dogs and refill of our propane so that we could barbecue to end the day.

Here are some shots of the kids prior to our shopping trip.  Annie's new-found talent is being able to swing on the see-saw swing all by herself.  She really gets into it, swing as high as she can and pulling the feet of the swing set out of the ground.

All three kiddos swinging at the same time.  Annie has recently learned to swing all by herself on the see-saw swing where she is in this picture.

Ryan loves to swing in the red swing in the center.  He's all smiles until the swing comes to a stop.  That's when he makes the sign for "more" and says "mo! mo!" (more, more) so that you'll get him swinging again.

Ryan loves to swing.  He'll sit here, content, for long stretches of time.

Backyard revealed

We got a back yard! We got a back yard! We got a back yard! Hey, hey, hey, hey!

After over a month of tearing down our shed, building up new raised garden beds, removing some of our patio, extending the brick edging, trenching, putting in a sprinkler and drip system, and prepping the ground, planting grass seed, and not walking on it for a couple of weeks while it began to grow, we finally can be outside whenever we want to enjoy our new back yard. Here's the finished product:

The grass is a little thin in some places, but I am told it takes a couple seasons for it to come in nice and thick. But the best part of the grass is that it stays green year-round. We don't have to overseed with winter grass like a lot of people here in Tucson do. Or like we did at our old house, just let the grass be brown for the winter, when we are outside enjoying the weather more than we do in the hot hot summer. We get to enjoy green all year. It's a special grass designed and adapted for Southern California weather, and only sold there. But my friend here in Tucson ordered some seed a few years back and their lawn is awesome. Our weather is similar enough to So. Cal., not getting too cold in the winter, that the grass works great here. Hopefully it works out as well in our back yard as it has for them. So far, so good. :)