Operation "No Baby" (aka pacifier) under way!

Jay and I have been talking for a long time about taking Ryan's "baby" away and the time never seemed right. Ryan always called his pacifier "baby" because we used to say "you don't need that, you are a big boy, not a baby" and he would insist "baby, baby" and the name just took.

Anyway, last night, Ryan went in to his room and about 10 seconds later, Jay and I both heard a crash. When we went in, one of Ryan's piggy banks was sitting on the floor, smashed to smithereens. I loved this piggy bank, one of the items the Jets sent Ryan, but it had suffered a few breaks before, and was in pretty sad shape anyway. Since we wanted to teach Ryan a lesson about "if you aren't careful with your toys, they can break and we have to throw them away",I asked Jay if we should also say that Baby was broken. We decided to give it a try and based on how the night went, we would decide if Ryan/we were ready to give up the baby once and for all. I know that we did the right thing by getting rid of baby, but I still feel bad for what we told him - we sat Ryan down and showed him the broken piggy and said that when piggy fell, he fell right on top of baby and baby broke ( I cut up baby so it looked broken). We showed Ryan the baby and he put it in his mouth and took it right out so I said "See, it is broken and we have to throw it away with piggy". And, like such a big boy, Ryan walked over to the garbage can, opened the lid, tossed baby in and said "Bye Baby" and walked in to the other room.


I was sure that last night would be a disaster with Ryan screaming all night that he wanted the Baby and to my amazement, he only asked for it once and dropped it when I reminded him that he threw it away. He asked for it once today, but so far, this has been much easier than I thought it would be. I hope that I didn't jinx myself by writing it, but I am really proud of Ryan that he has been such a big boy about this. And as an fyi, Jay and I felt guilty enough about lying about baby that we bought Ryan some new cars today to make up for it.

For Uncle Michael: "He's so fat.....

he bumps in to trees, hey la li la li lo." (**update: "He's so fat...." is a song we made up as kids with my mom and has nothing to do with anyone's **cough, Michael** weight) In honor of Uncle Michael's comments in the "5 Funnies" post, I thought you all (all 4 of you that read this blog) might like to see another great trick Mike taught Ryan.

I wish I could have gotten a better video but you get the point. If more that 4 of you are reading this, I would love if you wrote comments sometimes because I always get excited when I see them.

Mike, we love you and miss you!!!

Knock Knock

I still am laughing about this morning - I really wished I could stay home today and play with Ryan because he was being so cute and so funny. Ryan woke up around 4 ish and I brought him in to our bed because he would not stop crying. He went back to sleep and when he woke up again, he immediately started talking a mile a minute about a painting I have on the wall in the bedroom (he painted it in his Messy Play class). I know that he was talking about the painting because he was looking directly at it and pointing. He kept saying something about Daddy and then I couldn't understand the rest (maybe that he made it for Jay?). I was staring at him trying to figure out what he was talking about and also marveling at how long his story was when all of a sudden he looked at me, banged on my head and said "mommy, knock knock". I have no idea where he would have learned that: he knows knock, knock as in on the door but not as in "hello, McFly, anybody home?". It was obvious to me that he was trying to get me to look at the painting so I did and he again told me a story about the painting. When I looked back at him he again hit me on the head and said "mommy, knock knock" with a more frustrated tone than the first time. I was laughing so hard that I couln't even turn to look at the picture and Ryan took his two fat hands and twisted my head until I was looking at it, told me the story for the third time and finished it with an "Ok?". Ok, Ryan, I got it.

I really love this kid and while I don't think the written story is as funny as it was when it happened, he still made my day. And here is a picture just because I hate posting without one:

5 Funnies

Just because he makes me laugh everyday, here are some recent Ryan funnies (at least I think they are):

1. Sometimes on Friday's, grandma takes Ryan to Westchester and I take the train up there after work. Grandpa calls when he is almost home and the 3 of us go outside and wait for him so Ryan can drive. While we were waiting for him last week, Ryan bit me and I told him unless he said sorry, he could not drive. He immediately started crying and saying "papa car, papa car" and I told him again that we do not bite and if he said sorry, he could drive. I asked "Are you sorry?" and he said no. Of course, Grandma laughed and said, he is just excited, let him drive. I gave in - later, I tried to talk to him again about biting but all he wanted to talk about was "papa car, beep beep".

2. Ryan is still as wild as ever. His new daring feat: jump from on top of the coffee table to the couch. He thinks it is hilarious and while I am petrified he will get hurt, I can't get him to stop doing it.


3. The other morning, I gave Ryan a cup of milk, got myself a cup of water, and we both sat down on the couch. After a minute, Ryan saw my cup and said "Lala" (water) and I told him "Ryan, you have milk in your cup. If you drink your milk, you can have some water". He looked at me and as serious as can be said "Mommy, share". This from the kid that never shares. I was laughing too hard to say no, so I let him have some. He insisted on holding the cup himself and as soon as I let go, he walked away with it. When I told him "that is mommy's, you have to share it since mommy shared it with you" he said no and laughed. Nice.

4. Ryan and I made oatmeal raisin cookies (using a mix) on Monday because (1) I wanted some and (2) Ryan loves "raishins" and I thought he would have fun helping mix. He did have fun mixing, if mixing means bashing the metal bowl with the wooden spoon as hard as possible. He was beating the bowl so hard that the veins were popping out in his neck and the knuckles on his fingers were white.

I am sorry that the picture is not centered better but you can see the bowl flying in the bottom corner. I decided Ryan needed an easier job so he got to put the raisins in the mix - I think there are about 3 raisins total in the cookies we made because my "helper" decided it would be more fun to eat them instead.

5. For a while, Ryan has been waking up sometime between 5:30 and 6 am. As I have previously mentioned, I always held out hope that he would go back to sleep if I brought him in to bed with me. I have given up on that and instead turn on Lilo and Stitch and hope that Ryan will watch that in the bed and let me go back to sleep. Instead, he likes to pet my head like I am some sort of dog and says "nice, nice" and when he gets bored with that yells "Wak up" (don't know why he says wak instead of wake) the starts yanking my hand saying "mommy, come". Yeah, Ryan is pretty bossy and he definitely knows what he wants. Problem is, I let him boss me around most of the time because I just can't say no to this face - could you?

How I spent my birthday

How did I spend my 32nd Birthday? At Sesame Place of course -isn't that how everyone spends their birthday?? Jay and I decided to take Ryan to Sesame Place for the day and it was so much fun. We took Ryan once last summer and he had a good time but really didn't understand what was going on. He also couldn't walk yet so that really limited the activities we could do. Even though I thought Ryan would enjoy himself more this year, I was surprised how much Ryan loved everything. From the moment we got there, he could not contain his excitement.

He kept running ahead of us, and running back yelling "Mommy, Daddy" and pointing all over trying to tell us about everything he saw. We had decided to spend the extra money so we could go to the "Breakfast with Cookie Monster and friends" and I think it was worth every penny. When you arrive at the breakfast, Cookie is there to greet each child and Ryan ran right up to him and gave him a huge hug. (later on, he even tried to pry cookie's mouth open to see if cookies were in there).

Also at the breakfast was Ernie, Bert, Big Bird and the Count.

Ryan was not afraid of any of them and went up to each one, gave them a hug and a high five. The nice thing about the breakfast was it was not too crowded and the characters walk around for about an hour so Ryan was able to go up to them a number of times and really spend as much time with them as he wanted to. While Ryan loved all of the characters, he seemed most interested on Bert and on multiple occasions, went up to Bert and told him a story - when I say he told him a story, Ryan was blabbing for about 3 minutes non-stop and was talking with his hands the whole time. At one point, Bert looked over at me and I am pretty sure he was thinking "Lady, what is your kid talking about?" Well, finally, Ryan let Bert know what he was saying - he took Bert by the hand, looked at Jay and I and said "Bye" and led Bert out of the restaurant.

After the breakfast, we went on a few water rides before heading over to one of the many kiddie pools. Ryan had a blast just splashing around and Jay and I had the best time just watching him. He was laughing so hard that it was not impossible not to laugh with him.

After the pool, we spent the rest of the day going on other rides, watching some of the shows and the parade later in the afternoon. If you want to see more pictures from the day (there are a lot more), you can click here

The Lake

We took Ryan to a lake for the first time today, a private lake in Pinehurst. Ryan loves swimming in the pool, but has never been to the beach so I was not sure how he would do. He loved it!! As soon as we got there, Ryan walked right over to the edge of the water and started playing in the sand.



It was not long before he just started walking in, all by himself. Jay and I followed right behind him, thinking that he would stop as the water got deeper, but he kept venturing farther out until the water was just hitting his chin and I could see under the water that he was standing on his tippytoes. Jay picked him up and brought him closer to shore and Ryan started crying and kicking so Jay said that it was too deep there. After going through this routine about 20 times, Ryan started saying "deep deep".

We eventually let him walk deep enough so it went over his face, then quickly picked him up thinking it would help him understand he was not tall enough to go out that far. Nope. He thought it was the funniest thing and then kept practicing keeping his mouth closed so the water would not go in his mouth. I still don't know why he would not do this in the pool (insisted we hold him, even though he could stand), but I think if we go to the beach/lake again this summer, we are going to have to bring a life vest. What a great day at the lake!!

Polar Bear Polar Bear, What do you hear?

Do you hear Ryan screaming in your ear?

Omi, Jay and I went with Ryan to the North Carolina Zoo today in Asheboro and had a great time. Ryan loves the Eric Carle book Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you hear? so it did not surprise me that he ran right over to the glass at the NC Zoo to get a better look at the polar bear. It was about 90 degrees out and clearly, the polar bear was too hot to move so we told Ryan that we would come back later and see the bear because he was sleeping now. Ryan started screaming for about 5 minutes straight "Wake up, wake up" and was banging on the glass. Soon enough, all of the other kids were yelling too, not that it did any good.

Ryan did get plenty of attention from the sea lions though.

Of course, the Rhino curse wears on and Ryan was asleep by the time we got to the Rhinos, so count that as strike 100 in my attempt to get an updated blog header of Rhino with a rhino. We did get a lot of great pictures at the zoo though and here are some of my favorites.