Ryan at 3 months

Here's a video of Ryan on his changing pad, smiling and coo-ing. He wasn't as talkative with the camera there but it's still very very sweet!

Megan 23 months, Ryan 3 months

Megan 23 Months

• Megan is definitely on a word explosion, somedays it seems like she says almost a dozen new words! Still mostly just 2 word phrases, but she's making new phrases too and putting words together and picking up on stuff we didn't realize she was. The other day she picked up a cup of milk that had been out a while and said "yucky. New cup"
• Speaking of yucky food... Megan says "yucky" when something isn't the color / shape... she expects it. Like if there is a brown spot on fruit, or a blackened spot on a chicken nugget...
  
• Her beloved Elmo and Nemo stuffed animals have gotten the boot from her crib the last couple days, she says "Out" or "Away" if we try and put them in. It might have to do with the bad dreams about the "guy" in Nemo. Megan calls the scuba diver who captures Nemo "the guy" and several times when she wakes up upset and I ask her what's the matter she said "Guy. Nemo. Boat". We always talk about it and she seems ok. The bad dreams have been going on for weeks but finally this week Nemo and Elmo (who seems innocent, I wonder why he got dragged into this) got the boot.
  
• She loves to run, as in just running down the street, sometimes at night she says she's running for "Lu Lu Car" (Lora, her nanny's car) - how cute!
  
• She can sort of ride her tricycle, if she has a push or is going slightly downhill she can peddle it, but straightaways without any momentum are still too hard
• We bought a potty chair which Megan was excited about, she likes to sit on it with her clothes on, but not naked. And a book "Even Firefighters go to the Potty" just to start introducing the idea of the potty, so far she loves her new book and likes to sit on her potty, or put snuggly, bunny... on the potty.
  
• Can take off her pants by herself and can almost take off her shirts (usually she needs help getting the first arm out)
• Has been doing a lot of dancing lately. She loves Daddy's ipod, she learned how to say ipod pretty quickly and knows which button to press to replay the song, right now she likes Miley Cyrus, the Bee Gees and Jessica Simpson. She requests "Miley" a lot... Russ introduced her to Miley's Party in the USA... We all dance around the kitchen while making dinner, even Ryan seems to like it!
• She loves carousels and rides, here's Megan at Kiddie Acres on the planes, her favorite ride!
  
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Ryan 3 Months

• He has almost mastered head control, he likes to sit up assisted and be held in a sitting position or held up high in Super-Ryan style :) He'll sit in his bebe pod chair too (with one of us next to him for spotting!). Megan likes to sit in the bebe pod chair too, so we take turns and Megan even gets out voluntarily and says "Ra Ra turn"
  
• On the baby carrier front we've moved to the ring sling mostly now, since Ryan can sit up in it. He doesn't fall asleep in it this way (like he almost always used to do in the Moby wrap), but he likes looking at everything.
  
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• We got some new bottles to try and he likes the Breastflow bottle a lot better than the Dr. Brown's bottles we had been using. He tried the new bottle only twice on Friday so we're hopeful that next week he'll do even better with it! Yay for bottle progress!
  
• He's drooling, sucking and gum chomping all.the.time!!! I remember Megan doing the same thing at this age and being convinced it was teething, but then she didn't get a tooth until ~6 months.
  
• His sleep has been a little worse, he still will take a nice long stretch (5-6 hrs) some nights but it seems to be happening less. I'm sure that's just because of me going back to work, so hopefully he'll start getting better again soon!
  
• He enjoys his mobile and play gym now, swings his hands at roughly at toys. His closed fist hand batting is somewhat accurate too and he seems to be pretty focused at it
  
• He's much better in his carseat. It seems the scream fests are of a lesser degree and less frequent too. I'd say about 50% of the time and he'll calm down to a quiet cry / fuss when we move (and start up again when we stop)
  
• Rolls belly to back all the time now and still seems to really like tummy time
  

Singing and bottles

Megan has started to sing more, she loves to sing her ABCs but only to F, and Row Row Row Boat, and today she made up her own song while she was in the car with Russ: "La La, Poopy!" haha! She sang it for me too when she got home, it was pretty hilarious and cute at the same time! She's also adding the 'y' onto words she knows just to be silly, like Milky, cuppy, elmo-y, nemo-y. She gets a kick out of making words into "silly words"! She's also getting clever with her understanding of words, like this morning she asked for a milkshake and I told her we didn't have any. Then 5 minutes later when she was at the table with her breakfast she started shaking her milk up fast and smiled big and said milkshake! Wow, that impressed Russ and I, and she totally knew it wasn't an actual milkshake because of the way she was smiling about it. And then last night at dinner Megan kept tipping up her straw cup to drink so I asked her if she wanted a cup and she said "uh-huh" (which is also her default response these days) so we got her a cup and poured some milk into it. She was nervous about drinking it though (whenever she tries she usually spills it and that upsets her) so after giving up drinking from it she pulled her straw out of her straw cup and put it in the regular cup and then just drank the milk out of the straw!

Ryan's turning into such a social little guy these days! He LOVES to lay on his changing pad and just "talk" with you! He smiles, blows bubbles, makes little sounds in response to my little sounds, it sooo precious! I need to get it on video, I just melt everytime he does it! He also does his talking when he's laying down in other places as long as he has your undivided attention. I weighed him today on our scale and he was 13.5lbs with his clothes on! Wow!

Thursday was my first day back at work. Our nanny, Lora, was with Megan and Ryan and going back to work wasn't as hard as I thought it might be. I actually kinda enjoyed the adult time and getting to use the engineering side of my brain again! I of course missed the kids terribly and thought about Ryan and his first day without me a lot! Ryan did really well, he's still not liking the bottle though. He did get upset with the first bottle but after lots of different positions, rocking, soothing... he finally latched on and drank 3/4 oz before falling asleep! And he slept for 2hrs! I came home at lunch that first day and he had just woken up and he nursed for 1.5hrs! Luckily my job is flexible and understanding! Lora said Megan was great during Ryan's crying over the bottle and was a great helper all day! Yay! He took another 2hr nap in the afternoon and then Russ tried another bottle when he got home, Ryan took 1/2 oz but that was all. When I got home he nursed for several more hours, pretty much from 6pm - 10pm with a few breaks! He slept a good 6hr stretch that night though!

Friday I only work a half day and Ryan did a repeat performance of his cry, latch, drink a little, fall asleep performance. But even though he's not doing great with the bottle at least he's latching on and he's still his happy self during the day when he's not sleeping. Hopefully next week will be even better!

And here are some pictures from the Rose Bowl watching on New Years Day:


Veronica, Megan and Ryan - I was amazed I was able to get all 3 looking at the camera!


Us in our buckeye gear! We actually took 3 photos but someone is always looking away, crying, blinking... I'm pretty sure that's what family photos are going to be like for the next while though, huh?

2009 in Review

January - it's hard to believe she was this little a year ago!


February - Megan turned 1! Looking back it's hard to believe Megan wasn't that into her first taste of sweet stuff, because she sure LOVES sweets now!


March - Uncle Jay came to visit and Megan was so excited every morning she woke up and saw him!


April - Easter! Megan loved the candy!


May - Brought visits from Grandma and Grandpa and Amy and Cameron


She did the stacking all on her own and was very very proud!


Just love this one of Megan and her Grandpa on the way to the sprinkler park!


June / July - In June we sold our house and bought our current house, so we didn't do too much else! But at the very end of June through the beginning of July we took at trip out to visit my family in NY

Uncle Jay with Cameron and Megan, I LOVE this pic!


Megan and Cameron had a great time at the Saratoga Children's Museum


And asleep while we waited for a trolley in downtown Saratoga!


Oh and gotta love the naked butt!


August


September - Megan started getting into hiding and playing hide n seek


October - Ryan was born! :-)


November - We went to a neighborhood safety festival and they had all sorts of cool stuff including a Helicopter, which started Megan's fascination with Helicopters!!!


And Thanksgiving was great too!


December brought Ryan smiles and our first Christmas as a family of four!