Friday, August 21, 2009

What about Ryan?

Ok, so I did a post all about Reid... so what about Ryan? Wow... where to start. Ryan is his own man! He is totally different than Reid in many ways. I don't mean to compare the two but sometimes it's the easiest way to notice the differences.

For example:

Reid is a lover, he hugs and kisses us all the time. Ryan - good luck getting either. He usually tells me that they are in Alyssa's car.

Reid typically likes to follow the rules and be good. Ryan - not so much. He wants to do things his way and though he doesn't "like" time out - it just doesn't phase him as much... he's not nearly as sensitive.

He is what he is... and we love him. He's definitely been a challenge but he is just so stinking cute :) And we hear that a lot! Born with a full head of long dark hair, he's now our blonde boy with the darkest brown eyes. Ryan has actually matured a lot in the last couple of months. He does better when he is one on one with mom or dad (or quite frankly - away from mom). I guess I can admit it, although it's hard... he behaves a lot better when I am not around. I certainly get on him and make him follow the rules but he just acts better when he's with dad. He's also turned into quite a daddy's boy in the last month. He asks about dad almost every morning when he wakes up, he likes to be with dad when he's not tired or needy... then he chooses mom. He would much rather be in dad's truck than mom's van (even if I do have the dvd player). Ryan has never really been into tv much. Over the summer he has developed a fondness of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse which he will watch every now and then but he doesn't zone out like Reid does. Ryan will still play when the tv is on and any other shows - he's not usually interested AT ALL!

Oh yes... AT ALL. Ryan started saying that about a month ago too - and it hasn't stopped. I don't like that AT ALL. I'm not tired AT ALL. We hear it about 100 times a day :) He likes to tell me in the mornings that he doesn't like Beth's house AT ALL (which we know isn't true - cause he's been having a great time being one of the big boys there). He just doesn't worry about hurting people's feelings much.

The last two nights Ryan has been really into doing his "homework" as Reid has been working on his. He knows a couple of his letters - R, M, J, A, B at least. Last night the sheet asked him to circle the smallest or largest of certain items and he was able to do all of it - proud mama :) He also really wanted to cut pictures out of a magazine because that is what Reid had to do the night before. I had to take pictures (below). Ryan is not a fan of having his picture taken (below) but he did let me take pictures of his scissors that he was using to practice cutting with - hee hee - I'm tricky!

Ryan's homework pages (hard to see but if you click on the picture you'll see that he got them all right):

Pictures from Ryan doing his "homework" and practicing cutting with scissors:
This is what I usually get when I try and take Ryan's picture - these are from Reid's first day of kindergarten - wasn't about to get a picture of them together :(

Monday, August 17, 2009

All about our Reid-man

















WOW... hard to believe our little "peanut" is almost six years old, a kindergartner and just getting so BIG! Reid started kindergarten last Friday. I don't know if him having went to preschool for two years caused us to be relaxed or what but neither Reid nor Russ and I had any jitters about him going off to kindergarten. He is at a new elementary school from where he attended pre-school but he was ready and we knew he would be fine. His teacher's name is Mrs Drescher and in his class are 13 boys and 9 girls. Caden and Ella, both neighbors, are in his class as well. First day drop off went just fine besides the fact that parents stuck around until 11:00 and mom was just not in the mood. It was hot, long, and ridiculous... but we won't harp on that too long ;) When I picked Reid up from school he said it was a good day but he wasn't super talkative about anything.

Today (Monday) his second day of school was a completely different story. He attended before and after school care for the first time today and he loved it. Honestly, I felt more guilty and nervous about this program than kindergarten because I know a lot of kids just get to go home after school, etc. This program and the convenience of it being in the school just works out better for our schedules. Well, it was a HIT! In the morning he ate breakfast and drank his juice with a kid from his class and after school he had a snack, played tag games, and then did a puzzle. He was super talkative about how much he liked it and wanted to do it every day. It also drew out more stories from his school day. It helped that it was raining and they watched a Clifford video for recess (you know Reid and his tv). He then told us about school, centers, lunch, etc.

His lunch story both cracked us up and made us proud. He had taken a big lunchable box for lunch. It had meat, cheese, crackers, apple sauce, vanilla wafers, and a bottle of kool-aid. The night before he had not eaten his dinner well and did not get a brownie like the rest of us so I put one in a ziploc bag and sent it in his lunch pail. Russ had joked around the night before and said, "You know he is going to eat that first." I said "I know, that's okay." Anyway, when I picked him up tonight he said that he liked his lunch but he got full and couldn't eat all the meat so he "punished himself" and didn't eat his brownie. Sure enough - it was still in his lunch pail!!! WOW, he certainly didn't get that from me - I would have eaten it!

In other proud parent moments of the week... Reid ran his first mile on Saturday in the 'Trot for Scott' fun run in Holton, KS. It was a benefit run for a local family that has been dealing with cancer for eight years now. Russ ran the mile run with him and said they only stopped to walk two times and for very short distances. They finished the run in 10:23... pretty darn good for a 5 year old! We were so proud of him!

Tonight Russ had night class and I was outside playing with the boys. Reid has been pretty hesitant to ride his bike since he learned without training wheels because he really struggles getting his balance and pushing off to start... but then does fine. Tonight he went out focused that he was going to ride his bike. He spent an hour practicing, riding, and working on starting himself. I didn't help him one time and he got really good at it by the end of the night. It's amazing what he can accomplish when he decides he's going to do something.

Reid has just been a ton of fun and also such a big boy lately. The stories would be too long to explain and would make no one laugh besides Russ and my family so just for their sake I'll make a brief mention of two other funny occurrences from the weekend in Holton this weekend:

* "None of these"... *Air Quotes*
* Judge my climbing... here's the signs :)
Trust me - he's a nut sometimes!

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

When is your due date?

I get this question a lot... my typical response is around Halloween because it's just easier to spit out. My ACTUAL due date according to Dr Peck is 11/2/09. I've had 10/22 in my mind for several weeks now, mostly because I'm a control freak :) Reid will be off school for parent teacher conferences so it would make it easy to plan a trip up to my mom's and give Russ and I a couple of days alone at the hospital with the baby without coordinating schedules, etc. Ryan was induced at 39 weeks and was 9 lbs, 9 oz so I thought I had a pretty good argument. I mentioned it to Dr Peck today and he said 10/22 would be 38 weeks and he would not do that. I told him I wasn't giving up yet, that I had good influence skills but he didn't seem like he was budging. He was open to inducing on 10/27 but no earlier. So, I'm hoping by now the baby owes me one and he'll just come on his own between 10/22 and 10/25. BUT... in case he doesn't cooperate, I'm working on my backup plans for Reid and Ryan coordinating so Reid does not have to miss school. Most likely we'll look for friends and neighbors to help with some evening entertainment for Reid, send Ryan to my mom's, and Russ will sleep nights at home with Reid and get him off to school. I guess it will work... darn it ;) Ultimately I just want to be home by 10/31 so I can watch the boys get ready to trick or treat, etc.

I also mentioned to Dr Peck that I need to go to Monroe, LA for work the week after next. He wasn't too thrilled with that idea. He's as conservative as doctors come and he does not like travel further than 2 hours from home in the third trimester. I assured him that it was a short trip, I'd be very careful, stay hydrated, and relax. He said if I made it home safely he wouldn't be mad at me. If I didn't, he would let everyone know that he advised against it. I really have to go for work so I'm just going to call it early evenings and take advantage of some quiet, restful time in my hotel room for two nights.

That's the update on my appt today. We also had Sneak a Peek for Reid's school tonight, TONS of kids but pretty exciting. Reid is very excited for school and doesn't seem to be nervous at all. The teacher commented that she was excited to have "at least one kid that isn't shy."... Boy is she going to learn - getting Reid to TALK is not going to be the problem :) I'll update on how the first day went sometime this weekend.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Signs of improvement

Not that we've been really worried about #3 (yes, he is still without a real name), but we did get some good news today. As we go for our weekly sonogram they are measuring the blood flow in his cerebral artery to watch for anemia. His measurements went something like 0.81, 1.14, 1.17 and then today it was back lower. I don't remember what the measurement was but it was lower than 1.17. We had the woman dr in the office (whom we weren't previously impressed with) but she showed us the measurements and the trend and said that is a good sign. She said that the increase in numbers was probably while he had the virus and was getting closer to anemic and now he is showing signs of improvement. Russ asked if this would have any affect on him when he is born and she said that it would not. We have 6 more weeks of sonograms but expect that things will continue on this positive path.

We had full measurements two weeks ago and the report from the dr is now calling the kidneys in the "upper limits of normal." We will have those measurements again next Friday but continue to expect that all is well there as well.

So, it's been a bumpy road but we feel like it's smoothing out. We're in the third trimester now. The type A, planning side of me is starting to look at October 22nd for the date that we convince Dr Peck to induce on. We'll see how good my influence skills are :) I've got my to do list made of everything to get done in the next 10 weeks and we're starting to knock things off of it one by one. No last minute items at our house!

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

How my boys shop

So one of the many benefits of being blessed with boys is that they will usually wear whatever you give them to wear (at least mine always have). Sure, we have days where they want a football jersey or this or that... but more often than not I get out their clothes and they put them on. I have heard from several of my friends with girls that this is definitely not the case for them.

I'm quickly learning that boys shop a bit different than girls do too. We took Reid to buy new shoes for school last night. He was very excited to find some skechers that were extremely similar to a pair he used to have that he loved. Anyway, I grabbed the 12.5's and 13's not knowing exactly which size he would need. The 13 happened to be the display shoe so I grabbed it and the box that went with it. I put the 13 on one of his feet and the 12.5 on the other foot. When I opened the box for the 12.5 he quickly noticed that there was a comic book that came with the shoes.
He walked around and I asked him which felt more comfortable. His response... "the one that comes with the comic book." Of course! I explained to him that I didn't care which size he got, he could take the comic book home.