Videos

My mom bought us a video camera when Ryan was born, and it's been sitting and gathering dust on our mantle. Last night Justin connected it to our computer and found that we had taken various videos here and there, just never downloaded them. So for your viewing pleasure (Nani and GiGi, this is mostly for you), here are links to several of the videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FKSRdgnMhM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia9DAex6YS4

We've just downloaded these, more to come from earlier in the year.

Random Musings: Mommies on One Side, Daddies on the Other

This post isn't really about Ryan, but more about the effects of parenthood. In the last couple of weeks, Justin and I have both gone out for dinner with friends while leaving Ryan with the other parent. I went with the "girls" and Justin went with the "guys". Now this is great, I love getting together with my girlfriends, and I generally organize these outings, but it's not how it used to be. I was always one of those girls that got along with guys better. I spent much more time at KDR than I did at Zeta back in college, and to this day some of my best friends are guys. It's interesting to me how becoming parents has segregated us into gender groups. Suddenly I find myself talking to other moms about breastfeeding or other baby stuff while the guys all go out to a cigar bar. In the past I would have been at that cigar bar with them (other girls too), but now I don't go. And although I miss my guy friends, I think a "Saru + the dads" dinner out would be kinda strange even though it never used to be. And in some cases, I spend more time with the wives of my old college friends than I do my old college friends. It's not bad, they've become my friends too, it's just different.

So this holiday season, Justin and I are going to throw an adult party (get your mind out of the gutter) where the girls and guys can mingle once again without the babies running all over the place. If you live in the Boston area, stay tuned...

A Big Tumble

I don't particularly want to relive this, but as this blog is also a diary, I feel the need to document what I'm sure is the first of many times where Ryan causes my heart to stop. Ryan fell down the stairs on Saturday morning. He's fine, we called the doctor and he's not exhibiting any worrisome symptoms. This is how it happened:

Ryan has been doing the stairs by himself for a couple of weeks now. As he was learning, we would go down a couple of steps in front of him so to catch him if he fell. He's never fallen or slipped, so little by little we gave him more breathing room. Over the past several weeks he's been doing them all by himself much to his delight. On Saturday morning, we were getting ready to go to Target to pick up a couple of bins for his puzzles. Justin went downstairs first and then Ryan followed. I was getting ready in my room when I heard a thump and then Justin yelling "OH MY GOD!" Now seeing as Justin is the calm one, and I'm the one who panics, this terrified me. From what Justin could see, Ryan fell from the top of the stairs, did a couple of cartwheels in the air, and landed against the wall at the bottom sideways. Luckily his head didn't take the brunt of the impact, it was pretty evenly distributed across his body.

Ryan cried for a minute and then asked to go outside. We checked his head, limbs, everything and he didn't have a bump or scratch on him. Once it was clear that he was fine, I burst into tears and couldn't stop. Ryan came over to me, gave me a big hug and asked if Mommy was sad. I explained to him I wasn't sad, I was very happy that he was ok, just a little scared.

We're back to standing a couple of stairs below him again much to his dismay. It's going to take me a while to be able to back off again, I just hope I'm not hovering over him when he's 18 trying to go down the stairs by himself. Hehe. He didn't seem to learn from his fall either, 2 hours later he was jumping up and down at the top of the stairs. The good news is that he doesn't seem traumatized by it, the bad news is that he doesn't seem to have developed a healthy respect for gravity yet.

Buses and Bedtime

Ryan loves buses. He loves trains, cars, and excavators too (don't ask) but he LOVES buses. Everyday on the way home from daycare, he points out every bus he sees and yells "bus! bus! bus!" until I acknowledge the bus he saw. Then as soon as the bus is out of sight, he wants more buses and yells "bus! bus! bus!" until he sees a new one. He gets pretty frustrated with me for not finding the buses too. I think next weekend we should skip the apple picking and fairs and just head to the local bus depot. The kid would be in heaven.

The other subject of this post is bedtime. Now, Ryan has always been a great sleeper. He's such a great sleeper that when people with kids ask me how he sleeps, I answer tentatively for fear of being hit with something. Part of what has worked for us is establishing a routine. It's not long or too elaborate, but it's very consistent and Justin and I each play a specific role. Here's our basic routine:

One of us dresses Ryan in his pajamas and overnight diaper. We brush Ryan's teeth. We read 3 board books or 1 full length Dr. Seuss book. We do "family hugs" and then we all kiss his little stuffed Elmo goodnight. Justin takes Ryan to shut off the lights, first the hall light, then the room light. Then Ryan gives Justin a hug and kiss and comes to me. He gives me a hug and kiss and I put him in his crib while I sing a song (the same one since he was born). I say "night night" and "I love you" and he does the same. I close the door and we're done.

Tonight, I learned the downside of this consistency. It totally freaks Ryan out when one of us is missing. Although I have to say, he whines when I'm not there, but totally throws a fit when Justin's gone. Luckily this is very rare. Tonight Justin went out and I put Ryan to bed alone. All was fine until we finished the book. Then he started screaming for Justin. I tried to do the Elmo voice and make him laugh, which distracted him for about 30 seconds on the way to the light switch, but when it was me and not Justin helping him shut off the light, he lost it. Screamed for the next 30 minutes for Daddy. Mind you, he didn't ask for him once in the 2 hours between getting home from daycare and finishing the book. But when Justin's specific part of the routine came, and he wasn't there, it was very upsetting to him. Since I'm headed out of town next week for a business trip, I find myself wondering if we should just deal with this anomaly as it comes, or try to switch up the routine every once in a while so it's not SO super consistent and hope it doesn't screw up his ability to go to bed the other 95% of the time. The weird part is that when we put him to sleep at someone else's house and transfer him, he doesn't really care about the routine. It's only when it's in his room.

Ryan's Latest Bag of Tricks

It is absolutely amazing watching Ryan learn new words and concepts these days. Every day he has a new skill or trick and his sentences get longer and longer. Here are some of his newest tricks:

Counting: He can count to 10 in both English and Spanish although this is mostly memorization. Realistically he can count to 3 - he can count and recognize 1, 2, or 3 of something, after that he just keeps going till 10.

Alphabet: He can sing the alphabet song, but can't yet recognize all of the letters. Video of his singing to come soon (I've only captured him singing until V, then he gets distracted by the iPhone... I'd post this version, but really the best part of the song is the "double doos").

Communication: Longest sentence to date I think was "I want to see Uncle Josh". He also goes around these days saying he likes everything, i.e. "I like applesauce. I like Daddy."

Manners: He's more polite than I am. He says "please", "thank you", and "excuse me" ALL THE TIME. Over and over again. It's getting a little absurd frankly.

Personality: He's kinda a neat freak (perhaps mild OCD tendencies?) He likes things to be in their place and insists that his empty sippy cup goes into the sink (not that I mind!) He's also really good about sharing his toys and taking turns if you ask him. I'm not sure what they're doing at his daycare, but it works.

All in all, he's doing great (although I wouldn't mind if he put on a little weight - sometimes he resembles one of those starving children ads. He eats, I swear!)

Labor Day Weekend

On Sunday of Labor Day weekend, we roamed downtown Boston with the Summerses. Rachel took some great pictures that can be found here:

http://jsummers.sugarsync.com/albums/thumb/262108_311621

Ryan and Zach LOVED the new carousel. You can't necessarily tell from the pictures, as they seem to be holding on for dear life, but they both screamed when the ride ended and we took them down.

Thanks once again to Rachel for being the photographer!

Best. Day. Ever.

About a month ago we took a trip to West Chester, PA to visit our friends Randy and Bethany and their 2 adorable girls, Kylie (5) and Sophie (2). The trip down was uneventful. We drove for a couple of hours, stopped for dinner, and then Ryan fell asleep precisely at his bedtime.

The theme for the weekend seemed to be: do what you will and Mother Nature will follow. Each day the forecast threatened to ruin all of our plans. Each day we decided to risk it and do it anyway. And each day was perfect! On Saturday we went to Longwood Gardens, a beautiful 1000+ acre mecca of gardens, fountains, and meadows. Ryan and Kylie walked hand in hand throughout the Gardens taking in all of the beautiful plant life.

Afterwards, we had a nice swim in the Hechingers' pool and followed it up with a yummy dinner and blizzards at Dairy Queen.

Despite the fun time we had on Saturday, it was nothing compared to Sunday which Justin and I think is the best day of Ryan's life to date. It started off with a bowl of Cheerios, any toddler's favorite breakfast. We then hopped in the car and went to Sesame Place. Now for those of you like me who had never heard of Sesame Place, it's like a Disneyworld with Sesame Street characters, geared for little children, and not as big. It's also probably 75% water rides/fountain areas. The first thing we did is ride the Lazy River. Then we went to Ernie's Waterworks where there were tons of cascading fountains and spraying water. Ryan was in heaven: running through the fountains, getting big buckets of water dumped on his head (why is this a problem in the bath, but not here?) and chasing his daddy around. He was disappointed to leave this area, but the promise of what was to come next made him leave peacefully.

(We had so much fun we forgot to take a single picture. Sigh.)

After lunch, we went to a showing of Elmo's World Live. It's basically a "live taping" of an Elmo's World segment on Sesame Street. Dorothy the fish is there, Mr. Noodle, and a life-size Elmo running around and doing his show. Ryan was sitting on my lap when Elmo came out, and the pure, unadulterated joy on his face almost brought me to tears. He was so ecstatic he couldn't sit still. He kept jumping back and forth between me and Justin, hugging us over and over, and pointing at Elmo with wonder in eyes. It was awesome. After Sesame Place, we went back to the Hechingers for another swim. The day was then capped off with Ryan's favorite dinner, pasta and meatballs, and some singing, dancing, and general silliness around the living room. A perfect day for Ryan.

For the ride home, we decided to casually make our way back to Boston. We stopped for lunch for about an hour, stopped at the Ikea in New Haven to check out some storage units and let Ryan run around, and stopped for an hour at Rein's Deli in Ct, one of our favorite road trip restaurants. We got stuck in about an hour of traffic on the way to Ikea which Ryan did NOT appreciate, and the whole trip took about 9.5 hours, but all in all it went fine.

Thanks to the Hechingers for a great weekend! We forgot our camera, so credit Bethany for all the photos. Click here for additional ones.