Thanksgiving

I did not take one picture on Thanksgiving - not one, which is so unlike me. We celebrated with my family on Thanksgiving day and with Jay's family on Saturday, where Ryan put on quite a show. He would not eat any of his dinner except the corn and I kept telling him that he could not get out of his chair until he ate some of his sweet potatoes. About 100 "out, please"s later, Ryan noticed the candles (unlit) on the table. Not being above bribery, we lit the candles and told him he could blow them out if he ate some potato first. At first, he didn't go for it until I pretended I was going to blow out the candle and then Ryan couldn't shove them in his mouth fast enough - so fast, he ended up gagging himself. After blowing out 10 candles and eating 10 huge bites of potato, Ryan had enough - I think he was more tired from his blowing efforts though since he really put a lot of energy in to it, as you can see by his facial expressions.

Where did he learn to make faces like that??

Washington, DC

Jay and I both took off from work on Friday and took a long weekend trip with Ryan to Washington, DC. We just wanted to get away for a few days and do something fun and luckily, we were able to stay at one of the Hyatt hotels in DC on short notice. The hotel was in a great location, right by the Capitol and Union Station so right after we got settled in, we headed over to the Station and took the Metro to the DC zoo. The weather was not great, but we had a good time walking around and especially seeing the pandas.

Well, in reality, Ryan was only interested in this panda statue. When we got to the living pandas, Ryan was more interested in showing the boy next to him that his sneakers lit up, yelling "Boy, look. Wait, look".

The highlight of our trip was having the surprise chance to meet up with Jay's Grandpa Ken. Saturday morning, Omi called us to let us know that Grandpa Ken was in DC with the Columbia, SC chapter of WWII Veterans Association, so we decided to head to the WWII Memorial to see if we could surprise him. After stopping by the Washington Monument and walking along the Mall while Ryan napped, we got to the memorial just as 3 tour buses were arriving. Just our luck that they were the South Carolina Chapter buses so we waited for Grandpa Ken and even saw Bob Dole who was there greeting all of the veterans. Eventually, we found Grandpa Ken and he was so happy and surprised to see us. The last time we saw him was the summer of 2007 so we were happy that he got to see how big Ryan got.

We all walked around together for about an hour, explored the memorial and caught up on how everyone was doing and what we have been up to recently. When Ryan woke up from the nap, we stopped and fed the ducks for a while - who knew that ducks liked pretzels so much?

When it was time for Grandpa to go, the boys had a few laughs together before we headed out to visit some other monuments.

After visiting the Korean War Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial, we headed over to the Lincoln Memorial. As soon as Ryan saw the steps, he took off running and did not stop until he got to the top. He was so fast climbing up there (I figured he would slow down eventually), that we had to run to catch him.

He did turn around at one point in his ascent and I was able to snap this picture

(see his head, right by the man with the orange shirt?) I didn't think anything of this picture until I zoomed in to see my son mocking us as we ate his dust!

There must have been sound effects included with his face by the way the lady next to him is laughing. After a failed attempt to get a nice family picture in the Memorial, partially due to both Jay and me sweating after running up the steps, and partially due to Ryan refusing to take his finger out of his ear, we were able to get this one as we left.

Guess I will just have to deal with the finger in the ear. As soon as I put Ryan down, he stayed still long enough for one more picure, and then was off running again. I wish I had half of his energy .

I didn't take too many pictures on the trip, and neither of the next 2 came out clearly, but I love them anyway. Our hotel room had a huge bathroom (sidetrack -the toilet was in it's own separate room, which Ryan managed to sneak in to and clog the toilet before we found him saying "Peepee potty mommy. Paper. Flush" - Yes, thanks Ryan, good job. Now, if you only did go in the potty, that would be great.) complete with a plasma tv and huge bathtub. Ryan loved the tub and went "swimming" in it everyday we were there. I wish we had a tub like this in our house

Ryan was having so much fun swimming in the tub that Jay said he would take him swimming in the hotel pool. While we were at the pool, I discovered that something was wrong with my camera, hence the blurry picture. I wish I had just put the camera away instead of trying to fix it because when I finally gave up, I realized how much fun Ryan was having and that I was missing out on watching him play.

He had the best time holding on to the side and going from one side of the pool to the other with Jay there as only the spotter. I continue to be amazed by Ryan's strength and I am sure his arm workout was a key factor in the great sleep he got that night.

We had a great weekend away and I can't wait for our next one - hopefully soon!

Go Jets, Round 2

Ryan got to go to his second Jets game today. The Jets played the Rams and I was glad we had a chance to bring Ryan to one more game this year so Jay could see Ryan cheering and before it got too cold.


For the first half of the game, we sat in our seats so that we could be closer to the field and then at halftime, walked over and sat with Grandma and Grandpa.

By the time halftime began, with the score already at 40-0 Jets, Ryan had lost all interest in the game and just wanted to walk around. Luckily for Jay and I, Grandma was about as interested as Ryan was so they went to go play who knows where, but Ryan came back yelling "Spin the wheel", haha.

Once again, Ryan helped lead the team to victory as the Jets won easily by the score of 47-3. As we left, it was hard not to wonder, could this be the year that the Jets finally do it? Next up is New England and if we can win that one, it would be huge. Go JETS!!!

Halloween

On Halloween, we took Ryan to the annual Halloween Party in the Stuy Town Oval behind our building. We were disappointed that they didn't have the corn maze this year since Ryan loved it so much last year but we still had a great time. We arrived right as the party was starting so the line for the hayride was not long and Grandma and Aunt Carrie went on with Ryan.

He loved the ride and did not sit the whole time. While going around the oval though, he spotted tractors, I guess which were meant to replace the maze, and as soon as he got off the hayride, started running to one of the tractors. Of course, the line was very long, Ryan was not at all patient, and spent most of his turn inside making sure no other kids were near the door or trying to get in. Ryan was very disappointed when his turn was over and the only way we could get him to stop crying was to take him to the candy - that is what Halloween is all about anyway, right? Even though you were supposed to wait for the vendor to put the candy in your basket, Ryan had his own ideas.

Since he hadn't eaten dinner yet, we really didn't want him to eat too much candy so we told him he could pick one out and we would save the rest for later. What did he choose? A Blue Air Head Taffy Bar, which in my eyes was the grossest thing he got. He loved it though and while I ate all of his sour patch kids, he drooled blue taffy all over his costume and ran around screaming.


After Halloween, Ryan wanted to eat candy every day, all day long so we told him that he could only have one if he finished all of his lunch and dinner. He quickly learned, much to my dismay, that Reese's peanut butter cups and kit kats are much better than taffy and when he finally lost interest in his pumpkin basket, the only candy left was the taffy. Smart kid. I think that this was the last year that I will be able to choose Ryan's costume and I can't wait to see what he will want to be next year!