We're Moving!

Just the blog :-P

http://www.russellandmichelle.net/blog/

We're moving back to our own site and to wordpress (instead of blogger). Come follow us over there, all the old posts, pictures, video are up there too! And a new blog banner with pics of the kids!

If you're getting this update via email make sure you click on the new blog and subscribe via email to the new blog, since this one won't be getting updates anymore.

Check this out!

http://www.lifeinmotionphotography.com/slideshows/ryan6mo/

The photos were taken in May by the AMAZING Lyndsay Stradner of Life in Motion Photography

Slip n Slide = fun for babies & toddlers!

Memorial Day Weekend Fun!

We had a GREAT weekend! Lots of relaxing, pool time, hanging out with neighbors and friends!

Sunday night we hung out and had dinner in the front yard with our neighbors. We had the driveway and front yard filled with toys, baby pool, slip n slide... it was a lot of fun! Here's Ryan and Emma hanging out (Emma wanted to check out what Ryan was up to in his pack n play)


Megan trying on Daddy's shoes


and Ryan standing naked :-)


And because I had so much fun with the last one here are some more comparisons:

Sleeping in the stroller by the pool:


And standing in Ohio State clothes!

Colorado Babies

in case the bow didn't make it clear the first one is Megan :-) They are roughly the same age in the photos and I LOVE how they both have their fingers in their mouth!

Megan singing Barney

what's really funny is that I didn't realize Ryan had the milk until I pointed the camera at him....

Mother's Day Pictures

I was looking through our pictures of Mother's Day and I just had to post this entire sequence! It's just too funny and exactly how pictures seem to go these days!










I had a wonderful Mother's Day :-) Saturday afternoon I got the whole afternoon to myself and I did some much needed shopping :-) Sunday morning Russ and Megan went and got bagels, muffins and cookies from the Bagel place. We went swimming late morning, had lunch at the cafe there and then Russ's parents came over to join us for a cookout. It was Great!

Outside Time!

We've been spending lots of time outdoors and loving it! We pull out the water table, kiddie pool, and trike on almost a daily basis :-) Ryan loves to splash at the water table or baby pool and he also just enjoys playing in the pack n play with toys outdoors! Megan rides her bike around the culdesac, and likes to water the plants by taking cups full of water out of the pool / water table.



Ryan is already 7 months!

• He's starting pulling up and his scooting has turned into a sorta-crawl :-) He sometimes crawls a bit on all fours before dropping back to scooting, or he'll crawl with one knee and walk with the other!
  
• He's sitting and goes from crawling to sit with no problem
• His swing broke a couple weeks ago, at first we thought it was a sign that he needed to nap in the crib but after a week of not napping well we tried to fix the swing. After spending too much time trying fix it (I thought I could just replace the motor... but something else was also broken) we've abandoned it again. Now he just naps in the swing with no swinging... sigh. At least he's napping better :-) And maybe this will help transition him to napping in the crib
• He's making sounds like ba ba ba ba
• He's been swimming in the pool and seems to like it! He loves splashing in the water and sprinklers too!
  

Megan is doing great with her leg. She still has a very slight limp (like her one leg is longer than the other) but you almost can't tell. She's runs, jumps, rides her bike, climbs... We had her follow-up appt on Friday and the Dr. said her leg looks great and cleared us for all activity! Yay! Megan was very excited to jump again! We go back in 6 months to make sure the growth plates weren't effected (very unlikely).

Megan is also quite the talker and singer lately, her current fav is the Barney song. But it goes "We love me, We love me, We're a happy family" haha!

She's counting up to 13/14 sometimes but after 10, numbers go very out of order. She kinda grasps the concept of counting objects but often just keeps counting. Like if there are 3 dogs, she'd count, 1-2-3 -4-5-6-7-8-9 -10 dogs :-)

She's also been playing around with sounding out the first letter of a word, like B-B-Balloon. I'm guessing this is from watching Word World :-)

We're still working on Please but she says Thank you all on her own and it's really cute! It sound like "tank ou"

We took some photos with Lyndsay of Life in Motion Photography last weekend! She posted a sneak peek on her blog of Ryan! Can't wait to see the rest!!!

Trip to Boston

A couple weeks ago we all flew to Boston for my friend Leah and Mike's wedding! My parents picked us up at the airport, and stayed at the same hotel (adjoining rooms) and babysat the kids while enjoyed the wedding weekend festivities! It was a GREAT weekend! Congratulations again to Leah and Mike! And a BIG THANK YOU to my parents for coming out to Boston and making the trip possible!

We got there on Friday afternoon, flights with the two kids went as good as can be expected. I think Russ and I both felt more prepared this time. Also we had bigger planes so we all were able to sit next to each other, which was so much nicer!

Saturday morning Russ and Dad went golfing and Mom, the kids and I went to Davis Farmland. It was AWESOME! They had so many animals, and lots of little baby animals! Megan LOVED it and we loved it. We were there for 3 hrs but easily could have stayed all day!


Megan brushing the baby goat


Ryan hanging out with Grandma at one of the play areas

That afternoon was the wedding. Here's a picture of Russ and I before we left the hotel room, prom pic style ;-)


And here's our table with the bride and groom at the wedding! (ps this photo was taken by their photographer Andrew Kelly)


The wedding was amazing, I cried, laughed, danced and had an amazing time! Afterward we all went to the hotel lounge for karaoke! More fun had. I have pictures of this but seriously no one wants to see pictures of me dancing... or doing spice girls karaoke... it's embarrassing!

Sunday we checked out and headed into Boston. Megan was SOOOO excited to ride on the T. She kept calling it the "really fast train" she loved all the tunnels in Boston too.


on the T

in front of the Children's Museum


This was Megan's second time at the Boston Children's museum; pretty impressive for a Texan!


Ryan loved the baby area!




The exhibit was Curious George, Megan gave George a kiss and hug :-)


It was an awesome but tiring weekend! It was so great seeing everyone!

Ryan - 6 months

I think I might say this every month, but I can't believe he's 6 months already, it's just crazy! He had his 6 month well check on Friday and he's doing great. A little drop in percentiles but nothing to worry about.
Weight: 16lbs 4oz. 25%
Height: 26", 50%
Head: 10%

Ryan has done a lot in the last month:

• Rolls from back to belly, and really he's mostly on his belly.
  
• Scooting! He's got his own personal style, and he's getting pretty fast at it!
• He spends the majority of his waking time playing on the floor, scooting all around to get to stuff. He's always after whatever Megan has and she's saying a lot of "No Ra Ra" these days!

• LOVES being outside, he'll go for long walk in the BOB (stroller) and just chill or chew on the straps. Outside is very calming for him too
• Has 2 teeth, the two bottom front teeth
• He's eating 2 "meals" <---- I use that term very lightly of course! He's had rice cereal, peas, green beans, sweet potatoes (a fav!), bananas and pears. So far sweet potatoes are the winner but pears and bananas are high up too. He likes everything except green beans which is hit or miss

• He finally took a bottle on Thursday (the day he turned 6 months - ha!), he took a couple bottles on Thursday and one Friday morning!
  
• He's finally sleeping in his crib, sort of anyway :-) He's napping in his swing still but nights are in his crib. Although the last three nights I gave in around 2/3am and just brought him to bed to nurse him. He did sleep 8pm - 4am in his crib last Monday night though, so that's something ;-)

He needs to work on his push up form though ;-)

He's getting fast!

Wordless Wednesday

Been a crazy month!

wow... it's been a little nuts over here, hence the lack of blog posts! On top of our normal, toddler + baby madness a week after we got back from our trip to NY Megan fell off a swing and ended up with a broken leg :( It's a buckle fracture on her lower tibia and she was so brave at the ER and the Pediatric Orthopedic. She's started to walk on a it a little bit too.


The day she got her cast, enjoying her new bean bag chair and extra tv time!

The following week was Easter and it was a rough day...


Megan was just getting frustrated about her cast and not being able to walk, Mommy and Daddy we're exhausted and Ryan cut his first tooth (although he looks so happy in the pic below doesn't he???)


But that afternoon we went to Gramby and Granddaddy's and the change of venue, an inside egg hunt and some chocolate pie saved the day :-)


On Monday my Mom came in to help out with the kids and I went back to work. It was GREAT having her here and we had a wonderful week!

Towards the end of the week we noticed that Megan wasn't as active or trying to walk as much and then Friday night she was running a fever at 101, so I gave her some motrin before bed. She woke up Saturday with still a low grade fever and still not that active. After her nap she was burning up, I took her temp and it was 104.8! Yikes! I gave her some more motrin before heading over to the Urgent Care place but minutes later she threw up all over me! Russ took her to Urgent care and Ryan and I followed a bit later. Long story short, they think it's a bacterial infection so Megan's on an antibiotic. She's a TON better, her fever broke Sat night / early Sunday morning, although it got back up to 100.8 late yesterday. No fever so far today, but she still doesn't have any appetite. We have a follow-up with the pedi tomorrow morning.

Oh and Ryan cut his second tooth, and he's scooting all over the place! He can get to anything within a couple feet of him on the floor and all he wants are Megan's toys! (or whatever anyone is eating!).

So hopefully things will start to calm down here! And I'll get some back-logged blog posts out (like the one about our trip to NY that I was working on when Russ called and said Megan had fallen off the swings at the park...).

But in spite of everything Ryan still able to relax :-)

Ryan's first trip to NY

(note - I was working on this blog entry on Sunday 3/28 when Russ called to say Megan fell off the swing and was hurt and I needed to pick them up... as most people reading this probably know she's ok but she has a fractured tibia :( so needless to say, I haven't been able to get back to this post until now...)


Megan LOVES airplanes - this made flying a TON easier and even fun at times. She's been loving airplanes for a long long time and recently she's been interested in the airport since we tell her that's where Grandma and Grandpa go when they leave, and that's how you fly to NY, and that's where the planes go... Before the trip we picked up a couple books for her, her favorite was Airport by Byron Barton

So Megan was super excited about going to the airport! And when we got to our gate she just wanted to stand at the window and look at everything and of course she wanted to know what everything was and what it was doing. She practically ran onto the plane, I literally had to hold her back while they scanned our tickets! She even had no problem staying in her seat on that first flight. She was mostly standing / kneeling to see out the window though :-)

We didn't bring carseats because my parents have them already, so we used something called the CARES harness on the plane. It was ok, I think Megan had trouble getting comfortable with it but it at least kept her in her seat (she could unbuckle the seatbelt easily and did all.the.time). We were in a small plane so it was Megan at the window, Russ next to her, then the aisle, then me with Ryan on my lap. For each flight (2 up and 2 back) I had someone next to me, but luckily on each leg it was someone really nice and understanding.


The flights there went pretty well, before the planes took off was a little stressful with both kids but once the plane starting moving Megan was enthralled and Ryan was usually nursing :-) Ryan mostly nursed and slept and "talked" to the passangers around us. Megan mostly looked out her window or watching Word World on the portable DVD player we brought. On the second leg on our decent into Albany, Megan could see out her window and was talking up a storm "I see New York" "I see little cars" "I see all the cars in New York". And as we hit some turbulance on the decent I looked over and Megan's sitting going "weeeeee" and "up and down" and I went from feeling sick to laughing!



We had a great visit, it was great seeing all my family and introducing everyone to Ryan. He was quite a ham his first visit with Grammy too, he even gave her a great big laugh! He also learned to roll from his back to his tummy the second day we were there and soon was rolling everytime he was on his back.



Amy and Cameron spend Tues - Thurs at Mom and Dad's so we got lots of great time with them. Megan and Cameron still aren't to the playing with each other stage but they definitly seemed more interested in each other and what toys the other one had :-)

Unlce Jay was the star of the trip, we heard lots of "Uncle Jay chase Megan", "Wheels on the bus go round and round, Uncle Jay", Uncle Jay even put Megan to bed the night Russ and went out to a movie!



Megan slept downstairs in the den, Mom and Dad's crib was moved down there. She would wake up early in the morning and when Russ or I came down to try and get her back to bed she would just want to snuggle on the couch in the den. It was the sweetest thing, she would say "Daddy snuggle me" or "Mommy snuggle me", who can resist that? Even at 5am it was still so sweet!

Saturday was Grandpa's memorial service. I was so glad we were all there with everyone. Megan was so sweet in the car on the way to the church she said "I love papa, I love grammy" and "Papa loves Megan". We told her we were going to church to say bye bye to Papa, so during the service she kept talking about Papa, like "I want to see Papa", "Megan love Papa" It was very sweet and brought tears to my eyes.

We got back to Austin late on Sunday night, Megan stayed awake until the plane was taxi-ing to our gate!