Goodbye Diapers, Hello Claire

We have finally finished off all the diapers in the house. Of course, now that I write this I will probably find a pack somewhere. That's what happened last week when I thought I was done and then found 20 more in a spare diaper bag in the car. Anyway, we're ready to move Ryan to pull ups so that he can start working on that skill before he has to learn the potty part. He's actually pretty excited about it. But when I asked him today if he wanted to use the potty tomorrow he said 'Noooo', in this long drawn out way of saying it that he's been doing for the last few days. So I'm trying to talk the 'big boy' stuff up now. As far as I'm concerned this is the last major 'big boy' step until school starts. I'm waiting for a time when we don't have anything planned for a few days so we can sit around here and drink water and eat pretzels all day long. Looks like that will be in about 2 weeks as we are full next week.

Ryan and I joined a gym yesterday. I'm pretty excited, but I wish my mind would not think of it in terms of 'what extra food I can eat'. We signed up and worked out yesterday (me not Ryan). Today, we went and Ryan played in the play area while I worked out and then we went swimming together. Ryan had a great time. Later, we went to the park since it's 50 degrees here, and took a long walk. I will be amazed if he doesn't sleep until 10 tomorrow with all the activity. Of course, when I ask him what he liked most about the day he says it was being with Momma! How cute.

On a great note, my friend Sarah had her baby, Claire. She was 6 days late and did a VBAC - so I'm very proud of her as I'm hoping for one this time. Claire was born on 1/7/08 at 6:54. She was 8lb, 7.5 oz and 21 inches long. She joins her brother Max, who is one of Ryan's good friends out here. Here is her picture.

Grow Baby Grow

Ryan and I are getting back to our normal schedule and Kris has left to go to California again. We have a bunch of playdates scheduled for the next few weeks to keep us busy as well as doctors appointments for both of us. I had one today and everything looked fine. I was cleared to travel until April, so it was good news for us. I scheduled a first evaluation for Ryan at his doctor's office for next week to see about his speech. Hopefully, we'll move on after that. Tomorrow, we are going to Silverlake gym to sign up there. So I can get my lazy butt in gear and stop gaining 6 lbs a month.

Ryan has been busy putting good use to all the toys he received for Christmas. On Thursday, Kris put together Ryan's kitchen - with Ryan's help of course. This has been his new favorite toy as we knew it would be since we talked it up for months. He also loves his doctors kit, his Curious George books and video and his bath crayons. If you can't tell - he wrote on his face! And he hasn't even opened all his toys yet!

Christmas is Over.......

Our whirlwind trip has come to a close - thankfully. It's really hard to be gone from home for almost two weeks, sleeping in strange beds - especially for Kris....... I mean Ryan.

We travelled on the 27th to PA to spend some time with Kris's family. We got to visit Kris's mom, Grandmother and Aunt at various times in addition to seeing most of the Harper side at various events. Kris's mom, as always, had way too many gifts for all of us. And both his parents had way too much candy (our cupboard is now full!). We had a great lasagna at his mom's when we celebrated there (7 layers) and had a turkey dinner at the farm. We were able to celebrate Aunt Sharon's 60th birthday while we were there and have a game night at the farm in addition to a New Year's game night at Kelli's house (thank you for hosting).

Overall, we had a great trip, but we are so glad to have made it home. We still had to open the gifts from Santa here. And Ryan is thrilled with his kitchen - now if we could only get it out of the box and put together!! We got way too many wonderful gifts from everyone. Thank You! We had to ship ourselves 6 boxes home, hopefully we'll get them sometime soon!

Now we are trying to get back to normal. Putting things away, doing laundry, grocery shopping. Unfortunately, we had to return some doubles or non fits already and have a few more to do in the next few days. Kris will be travelling again starting next Monday, so it will really be back to normal!

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy New Years!!!

Merry Christmas!!

We hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas.

We are at my parents now. We spent the 21st and 22nd shopping, relaxing and getting ready for the holiday. Kris and Ryan played outside in the snow and built a inappropriate snowwoman. Fortunately, it rained that night and now is a mound of snow with some carrots on the ground.

We spent the 23rd at the Knoll's, where everyone was there except one cousin. Needless to say, my Grandmother needs a bigger house!! We had a great time there playing games and spending time together. At one point, we had all of the cousins in one room! On Christmas Eve, we went to Aunt Dawn's for the Zebrowski side. It was mayhem there with 13 kids under 10. We had a great time. At both places, everyone got some great gifts and were so happy to see everyone else in the family.

Also, my family got let in on our secret that we've been hiding for 21 weeks now. We are expecting again!!! The baby is due on May 3rd. We have had our first ultrasound, but the baby didn't want to cooperate to let us know what sex it is. So we'll have to wait to find out, but we're all thinking girl. Fortunately, the baby looks healthy and is growing at the right pace. So now the world knows! I added the link to the baby website and you can see the ultrasound pictures there.

Today, we got 'suprised' by all the presents left by Santa last night. We opened for almost 2 hours! Too much. Ryan is loving all the new trucks he's got. And Kris and I are excited to get home to start using some of our new stuff. We are so grateful for all the gifts, but are just so happy to be able to spend some time with our families. We have dinner tonight here and then we are celebrating my dad's birthday tomorrow with all the Stones.

On the 27th, we are leaving for our visit to PA until the 1st. So it will all start again!

Getting Ready to Go

We are getting ready to begin our holiday traveling. Kris has been in Toronto, so Ryan and I have been working our way through all the food in the fridge, doing laundry and packing. We are leaving on Thursday to start our trip at the Zebrowski's before we head to the Harper/Beatty's on the 27th. I'm looking forward to the trip, but as always am a little anxious about it. Before we leave though, we have friends of ours from library class coming over for Mexican/clean out our fridge night. I'm cooking - they're taking. I hate for food to go to waste, so someone will be going home with our open jar of applesauce and our orange juice, in addition to any food leftovers. I haven't had to cook all week since I made lots of leftovers last week and then Kris left. Ryan hasn't particulary liked the food, so his dinner has mainly been fresh veggies and veggie dip. He'll eat some chicken if I promise him a chocolate after dinner. Oh well.

Today, I have done 4 loads of laundry, with 2 more to go. I've premade the chicken and veggies for dinner tomorrow. I've packed Ryan. Now, I'm going to bake some cookies and wrap some gifts and hopefully finish the book I've been reading because I don't want to take it with me (I have two other ones here to read also). Tomorrow will be a whirlwind day of cooking, packing and uploading music to the MP3 player. Wish us luck!!! We can't wait to see everyone!

Fun, Fun, Fun

Ryan has been having a lot of fun lately. For the last two days, we've been running from place to place. I can't even remember all the things we've done. Today we had some beautiful weather (70 degrees) - and this is after a school closed snow day last week - so we went outside. We've also played with our friends at various places, picked up our Christmas cards, and shopped for a new office chair (Merry Christmas to us!).

Last Friday, Kris's department had their own work party at Gameworks. We had a lot of fun - even Ryan. He loved the driving and snowmobiling games. They even had a magician come in as well as a face painter and a person to draw your picture. So here is a picture of Ryan with a christmas tree on his face (it's 10pm by then and this is the first picture he isn't crying in!).

Saturday, we started a second round of soccer. No Mason or Shawn Kayley this time. Now we have Max and Gracie with us. So here are some new pictures from the first week. I love the first picture because it looks like everyone is under arrest - but they are really banging the wall to keep the soccer demons away!

Today, we had a breakfast with Santa. I don't think you could really call it breakfast when you get two donut holes per child and nothing for the parents. But since you can bring your own camera, they give you a little book and it only cost $5 I don't think I should complain. Ryan was very frightened by everyone. This is a great picture since he wouldn't sit on Santa's lap and had to be dragged up there to begin with. He was perfectly happy eating his donuts in a chair very far from Santa and all the other people dressed up for them. Maybe next year.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas......

We managed to get our Christmas pictures taken last weekend. We had been warned that JCPenney's was awful, but so far last year was the worst. We waited about 30 minutes after our appointment time to get them done. After they ask you to come back after 30 minutes so they can do some enhancements and delete the bad ones, when we came back after 1.5 hours, they hadn't done any enhancements. But since we don't usually buy those, I didn't care too much. We also randomly asked someone to take our picture at the mall in front of the tree, but they didn't come out all that well. So we took some more in front of the fireplace at home. That one will go on our Christmas card.

We also attended Kris's Toyota Christmas party. Amazingly we knew very few people there. But we are all for an evening out when babysitting is paid for! Ryan got to go to the Toyota daycare and enjoyed himself until he had a bad poop (too much acid in the pizza). We should have warned them that he is a good eater and if they keep giving him pizza he will keep eating it! Because Ryan was up so late, he's been sleeping in since then. It's nice not getting up at 7:30, but I'm sure we'll get back to that before too long. So far it's moved back from 10am to 8:30.

Lately, Ryan and I have been trying to finish our Christmas shopping, we only have my dad left to do. Yesterday, we made 10 dozen cookies for my mom's group Christmas cookie exchange. We made just chocolate chip because everyone likes mine. That took us 3 hours! But they are so good.

Today, we had to go to Target to get boots because - guess what - it snowed!! Yes, we have less than an inch of snow and they closed all the schools!! I couldn't believe it. I took Ryan outside before we left and after we got home so he could play a little. He thought it was pretty cool. He liked watching me throw snowballs and eat the snow, but couldn't figure out why the snow kept sticking to his mittens! Here are some pictures of him.