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.

Haircut Pictures

A couple of people have asked to see the evidence of the bad haircuts. I present to you Exhibit A and Exhibit B.

Bad Haircut

I took Ryan for his 4th or 5th haircut this weekend (kid has a lot of hair). I was going to take him to this cute little barber shop Josh and Rachel recommended, but since I needed to go grocery shopping too and do a whole bunch of other errands, I decided to go the convenient route and take him back to the Hair Cuttery. We've been there a couple of times before and his haircut is always "a'ight". It's not as good as his first haircut from Snip-Its, but not bad for $10. Well this time I was so focused on entertaining Ryan, that I forgot to tell the lady to keep it long on top. So she cut it REALLY short. And it's all uneven in the front and back, and well it's just a horrible haircut. The good news is that I know it will grow out and we can do it all over again in a couple of months. The bad news is that we're headed to Philadelphia this weekend and Ryan has some ladies to impress! Oh well, I think we'll be stocking up on hats for the next few weeks.

Wade Reunion in Vermont

We just got back on Saturday from a weeklong vacation in Vermont with Justin's family. Surprisingly, we've already downloaded the pictures and are ready to post!

Ryan had a great time visiting with his cousins (Jack 8, Alicia 7, Allie 6, Sarah 5, and Erica 3). They all played on the swing, sang Ring Around the Rosie and made smores. We went swimming and fishing, and had bonfires and played games - everything you could ask for on a lakehouse vacation.

Ryan learned a lot from his cousins over the week and he returned the favor by teaching them some phrases in Spanish. It was so fun watching the kids run up to their parents and say "Mom, 'mas' means 'more' in Spanish!" Ryan loved hanging out with the family and constantly hugged everyone and "pounded fists". It was clear when we got home that Ryan missed everyone terribly asking for his cousins by name.

In non-Ryan news, Justin and I had a great time hanging out with Wades from around the country, making fires and even beer bowling. Can't wait to do it again!

Click here for pictures from the trip.

Random Musings

My easy-going baby is back! Looks like the loss of appetite was due to his incisors coming in. Now he's using them to tear into all kinds of stuff. Thanks to everyone for the advice, we are now making only one dinner and not worrying about whether he eats it or not. (He usually does.)

I think we're in that really fun stage where Ryan learns a new word or sentence every day. Today he said butterflies when he saw them in his book, and I had no idea he knew that word. But the absolute best thing was a couple of days ago when unprompted he said "I love you Mommy". I pretty much melted into a puddle of goo right there at the kitchen table.

Ryan is a big fan of duets these days. He sings certain letters during the alphabet song and various parts of "Old MacDonald". One day soon we'll post a video of the duets...

Off to Bed with No Dinner

We've had an interesting couple of weeks with Ryan and I think it's due to a combination of teething, separation anxiety, and plain old unpredictable toddler behavior. Our daycare is closed for vacation for the next 2 weeks, and this week Ryan is hanging out with my mom. The first day, Ryan screamed bloody murder for an hour after we left. This was pretty tough on my poor mom who was trying to change his diaper and spent the morning running after him. He eventually calmed down and they had a nice time together. The 2nd day was actually worse than the first. Luckily on day 3, he started to adjust and only cried for 5 minutes. So while we thought we had a really easy-going, laid back kid (see Daddy as example), it turns out Ryan does not like to be left with new people. Hopefully this will change as he gets older, but for now babysitters are forewarned!

The other thing is lately Ryan is getting weird with food. He has always been a fantastic eater - loves fruits and vegetables, eats pretty much whatever we put in front of him... He's the only kid I know who picks steamed zucchini over french fries. But lately, he's getting picky, not willing to eat things he used to love. And we're talking rice and beans, not the steamed zucchini (he'll eat that any time, any day). And he outright refuses to eat dinner. He has a great breakfast, great lunch, and great snack. I don't know if he's just full by the time dinner arrives, but he won't eat it. He just wants milk. One day I tried to deny him his milk so he eats, but he didn't really care. So now I give him the milk back so at least he gets some calories. Anyone else deal with anything like this? Are breakfast, lunch, and snack just enough and he doesn't need dinner? And what happened to my easy-going baby!??

What was that?

Ryan is talking up a storm these days, learning how to put words together, coming up with new phrases, etc. Most of the time we can understand him, but sometimes it's completely beyond us. Here's a recent conversation:

Ryan: appa-doo-doo, appa-doo-doo

Mommy: Ryan, what is "appa-doo-doo"?

Ryan: iono (complete with hands up in the air and shrug)

Luckily Theresa at daycare cracked the code for us. Turns out "appa-doo-doo" means "Happy birthday to you". Apparently there have been a bunch of birthday celebrations at daycare lately, so when Ryan saw the Father's Day card on the table, he thought we were doing birthdays. They pick up so much more than we think!