Grandparents, Drumming and Boats

Ryan has had several different viruses on again and off again since starting school a couple months ago but fortunately, many of the days he can't go to school he gets to stay with Mimi and Papa who take wonderful care of him. Unfortunately he got Mimi sick:( but she's finally on the mend.

A couple weekends ago, he got to see all of my family at cousin Olivia's birthday. As always, Ryan had fun with his cousins and loved playing on cousin Jack's new bunk bed and with his new drumset. Popo and Grandma were in town watching the Horton cousins so he got to spend some quality time with them, including a snow day.

Later that weekend we attended the Boat and Sport Show downtown and Ryan had fun crawling around on all the boats, in the RVs and Club Cars. It was a good time but we were reminded of how much our lives have changed from the days when just Todd and I would go and stay for 3-4 hours and see every boat and RV at the show.

Ryan hadn't ever attempted to watch a full-length movie until recently when we had a movie exchange at Christmas and received several. He has fallen in love with the movie Cars and asks to, "watch Cars show" multiple times a day. We don't say yes every time but thank goodness he chose to like a good movie that adults don't mind watching either. He immediately found the Cars toys at the Horton's house, and Papa put a huge Lightening McQueen decal on the wall above his bed at Mimi and Papa's house which he was absolutely in love with.

He is finally healthy again this week and has been such a joy. He's talking up a storm and repeats everything we say. He changes everyday and has definitely transitioned from baby to boy.

First Trip Bowling

After being on the road for the holidays and not visiting the lake in entirely too long, we had a wonderfully relaxing and slow New Year's at the lake and made it down the following weekend, too. We did lots of Wii bowling on New Year's and Ryan had a ball watching us, yelling, "crash" each time the pins were knocked down and "nice" like the announcer after someone got a strike. We weren't about to let him touch the Wii remote, but since he found it so entertaining, we decided to let him try it for real the following weekend. We went to the local bowling alley at the lake and they even had shoes his size, they were so stinking cute. Once he understood you roll the ball, not throw it, he did really well and lasted a full seven frames before he started losing interest. Luckily, there was an arcade attached and he happily pretended to play the games while Todd won him a frog from the claw machine.


His new school has been great for him. Being around other children talking constantly has made him much more talkative. Since he started after Thanksgiving he's gone from saying several single words to stringing together short sentences and using words like "microwave" that we had no idea he knew. They're able to do art projects everyday which he loves, and while he's become very proficient at saying, "mine" he also just asked me this morning "my turn?" which is a good sign I suppose. On the down side, he's been sick a lot which is challenging for us and uncomfortable for him, but that's to be expected with a new school and it's good for his immune system in the long run.

Seriously, check out those little shoes. Does it get any cuter?

Just doing some painting on my new passed-down
kid's table from Jack and Olivia.

He quickly discovered he could paint on his
opposite hand then finger paint with that hand.