Who needs a new snowsuit?

Last winter, my Aunt Carrie got Ryan an amazing snowsuit. At the time, it was huge on Ryan and I was thrilled that it would last through 2 winters. We have not gotten much snow this year and Ryan has only worn the snowsuit once, back in the first week of January. The city got its first real accumulation of the year on Friday and Ryan finally got to go out and play in the snow. Grandma was over and usually on Friday mornings when Grandma is there, we all go downstairs, meet Uncle Michael and walk up to the bus stop together. We decided that even though it was snowing, Grandma and Ryan would still come down to see Uncle Mike so we could all see if Ryan liked the snow. Well, the snowsuit is too small now and it is up Ryan's butt, but he LOVES the snow and the snowsuit didn't seem to make him uncomfortable. Here he is waiting to go out and walking up the street with Uncle Michael.


















Saturday, I bundled Ryan up again thinking this may be our last chance to play in the snow this winter (and the last day I would be able to zip the snowsuit over his belly), and we went out to play. I don't remember the last time I laughed so hard. Ryan kept throwing himself in the snow and laughing.













Two little boys tried to teach Ryan how to make snow angels. Some other boys let Ryan "help" them make a snowman. A little girl was nice enough to let us borrow her sled. I only pulled Ryan around in it and he laughed so hard he almost fell out of the sled. There are not many hills in the city, but Stuy Town has a few and they were packed with kids. The bottoms of the hills were equally packed with parents, eagerly waiting to stop their kids from sledding in to the road at the bottom of the hill.














"Someone" keeps asking me when I will put more video on the blog. The best video I have of Ryan in the snow is on my video camera and I will have to figure out how to upload that, but in the meantime, hopefully this will do.

Daddy's Day

Jay usually has off one weekday and one day on the weekend. While we were dating, I hated this because I wanted more time together. While I still want more time together, I have come to appreciate some things about this schedule. It gives me one day a week of "alone time" with Ryan and it gives Jay one day. I think that it is rare that kids at this age get a lot of alone time to bond with their Dad and Ryan is lucky that he and Jay get that chance. When Jay calls me on his day to say "Guess what Ryan just did?" I love it and while I am glad they are enjoying their day, I of course wish I was there. So I don't feel like I'm missing out, Jay always sends me pictures via camera phone of Ryan while I am at work and I do the same for him on my day. I love getting the pictures while I am sitting at my desk, and they always make me laugh. While he is really good about taking camera phone pictures, Jay rarely takes pictures with the real camera. He did bring the camera out with him today, simply because he knew it would make me happy. It did make me happy and this is my favorite from the day, but what really made me happy is knowing how much fun Ryan has on "Daddy's Day"

Playdoh

Did you know that Reebok and Playdoh have teamed up to create their own line of sneakers for kids? I didn't but Grandma found a pair of Reeboks for Ryan and they came with Playdoh (mom, seriously, where do you find these things?). We played with the Playdoh for the first time today and I was surprised how much Ryan liked it and how long he played with it. He did pretty good not trying to eat it and was also very good at ripping the playdoh in to the smallest pieces imaginable.

Stop and smell the roses

Ryan has two scratch-and-sniff books that he loves. As much as he loves them, he really doesn't get the "sniff" part. Rather than sniffing, he puts his face to the book and does a little snort-type thing while simultaneously licking/kissing the page. He is getting better though. Jay recently got me flowers and we were trying to teach Ryan that like the books, the flowers had a scent. As Ryan was smelling the flowers, I thought "What a great idea for a Valentine's Day picture!".














I said he was getting better, I didn't say he could do it right yet :-)

Kiss Me!!!

Happy Valentine's Day!! Ryan wants to give you a big hug and kiss and he hopes you will be his Valentine.

Rhino in the Museum

There are many times that I wish we lived in a house. I can't wait for the day that we have a backyard, that we don't have to go to the laundry room to do the wash, that we can have a home-grilled steak anytime we want.... the list goes on. At the same time, there are things that I love about living in New York City, and one of them is the experiences Ryan has as a result of living here. While Ryan is still too young to understand, he has already done more in his life than a lot of adults will ever have the chance to do. I feel fortunate that we can give Ryan the opportunity to do so much and even though he won't remember any of it, you better believe that I will have enough pictures to document everything!

Ryan took his first trip to a museum this weekend. Jay, Ryan and I went to the American Museum of Natural History with Grandma and Grandpa, Michael and Jasmine. I thought that the most interesting exhibit for Ryan would be Fossil Hall, which is where they keep all of the dinosaur bones and other fossils.

I would like to tell you that Ryan studied the bones behind him in the picture before moving on to the next display case, but really he was playing hide and go seek with Grandma and just saw where she was hiding. I am sure there are other people who play hide and go seek in a museum, right??

Being the picture freak I am, before we even got to the museum, I was really looking forward to getting a picture of Ryan in front of the rhinoceros, figuring that could be the new banner for this blog. Here is the best picture I got:

Oh well. I still have to download more pictures from the day. I think that we will wait a while before we go to the next museum since Ryan spent more time eating and sleeping than he did looking around.

What should we do today?

Ryan was sick for the past week and finally is starting to feel better, thank goodness. It is horrible to watch your child be sick and not be able to make it better. Because Ryan has been so sick, he spent the whole week in the house just lying around and sleeping. He seemed to be feeling much more like himself on Saturday, but we stayed in just to give him some extra time to recuperate. I did want to try and make the day fun for him though and get him moving around again. I let Ryan pick our first activity for the day: He chose to cut his nails. I have been looking for the nail clipper so I could trim Ryan's nails for about 2 weeks - nice to know that when I can not find something, Ryan will always be there to help out.












Next, we tried to do another finger painting project. That was a disaster, so much so that I don't even have pictures of it. I then decided we should bake something. I am sure that I got the idea from my dad, who the day before said that he was going to make bread, and lucky for me, we had a box of Monkey Bread mix in the cabinet (from Williams-Sonoma). I didn't have high hopes for Ryan's first baking experience, but to my surprise, I really had fun making the bread with Ryan and he loved it too.












He was very patient waiting for the bread to bake and kept blowing on the oven to let me know it was hot.









While the bread was baking, Ryan helped me get some laundry done. Grandma recently got Ryan a shopping cart, which he loves pushing around the apartment, and he insisted on bringing it with us to the laundry room. Once in the laundry room though, Ryan really wanted to help me.


I really brought the camera down to take pictures of Ryan pushing the wagon, but these pictures were cuter.





Finally, our bread was done and time to taste it. Review of WilliamSonoma Monkey Bread: It is disgusting. You are supposed to bake it not as a loaf, but in pieces - it would have been better as a loaf. Also, you are supposed to cover each piece in a sugar mix, but halfway through the dough, we ran out of the sugar. The pieces with no sugar were too boring and the pieces with the sugar were too crunchy. My recommendations if you plan to make this bread: Make it as a loaf of bread and use the sugar mix on top of the loaf. Either that or make something else.