Smile!

On Friday, we took Ryan to get his pictures and he did great this time! We like to call him "smiley" because most of the time you can find him smiling and he did just that for the photographer! We were worried because when we took him for his pictures at 6 months old, he was scared and cried most of the time. This time he did fabulous and Sean helped us in getting Ryan to smile real big.

Happy 1st Birthday Ryan!

On Friday, Ryan turned 1 year old! We can hardly believe the time has gone by so quickly. Ryan is truly a blessing to our family and we enjoy him everyday! While on vacation in Illinois, we had an early birthday party for him and he had a blast, especially with the cake.

A few things about Ryan at 1 year old:

Not yet walking, but stands on his own and crawls everywhere!

Loves playing in the kitchen cabinets

Can wave hello and bye-bye

Says "mama", "dada", "oh", "nana" and babbles all the time. I'm sure he is trying to say alot more, we just can't make out the words yet!

Is getting all 4 top teeth at the same time - ouch!

Loves to point at things with his index finger

Likes animals especially dogs and cats

Adores his big brother. Sean is the only one who can truly make Ryan belly laugh out loud

Smiles most of the time - people call him "smiley"

Enjoys playing with his toys (and Sean's too)

Thinks it's fun to climb the stairs and have someone chase him

Likes to play with the toilet - eww!

Only likes to eat apples whole (not in slices! - I think this is because he sees big brother eating that way)

Likes to dance

Still has trouble sleeping through the night

Never would take a bottle

Favorite book - "There's a Cat in God's Tree"

Loves water - enjoys taking a bath and playing with the water table. We recently learned he also likes to play in the sprinkler

Is getting better about separation from mommy

Favorite foods - bananas, french fries, baked beans, Nilla wafer cookies, apples, chicken

These are just a few things about Ryan - there are too many to list! :-)

Today, I took Ryan to the doctor for his 1 year check-up appointment. Overall, the doctor said he is in great health. He's on the small side as far as weight goes so we need to work on putting some weight on him! He's had 2 sicknesses in the past few months where he lost weight and I think that has contributed to his low weight. Here are his stats:

18 pounds (2nd percentile)

29 inches (45th percentile)

I checked back in Sean's baby book and at 1 year old he was 20.4 pounds and 29.5 inches. The doctor said Ryan is more lean and long!

We look forward to the upcoming year with Ryan as he begins to walk, talk more, and just be a blessing to our family.

Illinois Trip

Greetings everyone! The Wilson family is back from our trip to Illinois to visit friends and family. It was a very long (did I say long?) drive, but it was worth it - we had a really good time on our trip.

Since our road trip to AZ was somewhere around 13 hours, we decided to break our Illinois road trip into 2 days because it was a 15 hour drive. Ryan wasn't so happy the way there, but was better on the drive home. Poor little guy was still recovering from a week long stomach bug that he was sick with before we left for vacation.

On our trip we spent a lot of time with friends and family. We ate and we ate and we ate - sometimes it seemed like that was all we were doing! Derek wanted to make sure that he ate at all of his favorite places back home. We ate at this one pizza place 4 or 5 times!

We were surprised by the rainy weather and unfortunately it put a damper on some of our plans. There were lots of bugs and Sean was amazed by the lightening bugs. Daddy also caught a couple of frogs. It rained all day long on July 4th. Thankfully we had seen fireworks the night before so we were set! Sean really enjoyed watching the fireworks and Ryan was unsure. He never really cried, but would whine off and on and kept looking to me for assurance that everything was okay.

The boys enjoyed going to the zoo, a farm park, and playing with all of the fun toys at Grams and Gramps house. The first couple of days Ryan was crabby, but once he caught up on his sleep he was a sweet boy. Sean wanted his Aunt Megan to play with him from the moment he woke up until it was bedtime. I'm sure she was tired, but it was a nice break for me! :-)

Mommy and daddy enjoyed several nights away from the kids including dinner and a movie with friends, a really nice surprise hotel stay from Grams and Gramps, and a dinner out to a Hibachi grill with the adults. It was really nice to have some "adult" time and the boys loved staying with Grams, Gramps, and Aunt Megan while we were away!

Derek's sister Monica and her husband Ryan who live in Wisconsin were able to come down the Thursday night before we had to leave. It was nice to spend time with them too!

On the last day of the trip before we left, we had an early 1st birthday party for Ryan at Gram's and Gramp's house. It was so much fun and I still can't believe that he is already 1! More info on that in the next post!

Summer Fun

Now that the weather is warm and sunny, we have enjoyed spending most days outside! The first half of June was cool and rainy most days and we were even wearing long sleeve shirts and jeans on some days!
Sean just finished swim lessons. We had lessons Monday - Thursday for 2 weeks for 45 minutes. It was a tough schedule between Ryan's morning nap, the swim lesson, my afternoon work schedule, and the boys' afternoon naps - I found it very hard to get much of anything done especially running errands. This is the first year that he was in a class without me. He did great. He is pretty brave when it comes to the water (scary for me!) so on the first day he decided that he would just stray away from the wall on his own and he made it out to the middle of the pool area and the teacher had to rush and help him because he was falling underwater. He learned his lesson because he didn't do it again! We'll probably take lessons again the fall and spring so Sean can progress to the next level and learn to swim more independently. I wanted to take pictures, but I forgot my camera every single day!

We spend most days outside. Daddy found a great buy at a garage sale and bought Sean a Power Wheels 4 wheeler and he LOVES it! We have a smaller Power Wheels car that a friend gave us and he enjoyed riding it, but this 4 wheeler is much more powerful. He rides it all around the neighborhood when we go for walks. Now if we can just get him to learn to ride his bicycle. Ryan still enjoys being pushed around in his plastic car.

We also bought a used outdoor playhouse that my friend was selling for a pretty good deal. Both of the boys love playing in the house. We recently took out the water table and Ryan just loves it! He has the biggest smile on his face when he plays with it.

Ryan really wants to be like his big brother. He wants to eat whatever Sean is eating and play whatever Sean is playing. He has recently decided to be pretty vocal when he is not happy.

I'm still trying to get Sean to cooperate in taking pictures, but he's not really fond of staying still long enough for my camera delay! That's why there aren't too many pics of him. The rest of the summer: heading to Illinois for a road trip, Ryan's 1st birthday, vacation Bible school, and sign-up for fall soccer!

Pictures of the Boys!

I forgot to post these pictures taken when Ryan was about 9 and a half months old. Since Ryan was camera shy (okay, camera terrified) the last time we went to have professional pictures taken, I decided to ask my friend to take pictures of him for his 9 month pictures. We will hopefully try the photo studio again when he turns 1 which is just around the corner! :-(

NAU Stop

While on our road trip to Arizona, we stopped in Flagstaff. On the way to Arizona, we stopped at our friend's house (Lee & Drea Music) for a quick stop for dinner. We enjoyed takeout from our favorite Chinese restaurant and met Lee & Drea's baby girl, Audrey, for the first time. I'm bummed, but I didn't take any pictures! She is adorable and she and Ryan began playing right away (Ryan is only about a month older than Audrey). We didn't get to stay for very long, but we enjoyed seeing them.

On the way home, we stopped in Flagstaff on Sunday morning. We drove through our college campus, Northern Arizona University, where Derek and I met. It was so beautiful and so many things had changed, but so much was also the same. We really miss living there and it brought back a lot of memories. We took a picture of Sean by the giant Lumberjack; the school mascot. We wish we would have had more time to look around and take Sean around the city.

The rest of the pictures are just some recent pictures of the boys - enjoy!

AZ Trip

We recently had an awesome trip to Arizona! Derek and I were pretty nervous about the very long drive (13 hours with stops) with 2 small boys, but they both did great! We stopped every 2 hours to let them stretch and take potty breaks. Letting the boys watch movies really helped too. We have a DVD player in the van, but because Ryan is still rear facing in his car seat we borrowed a portable DVD player for him to watch Baby Einstein videos. He'd never watched them before, but they kept him occupied!

We realized that we are no longer used to the AZ heat. While it was only 99-100 degrees the week we visited (not bad for this time of the year in AZ), we still thought it was hot! We spent some fun time in the pool to cool off which was really nice. When we got home, it was only 44 degrees! The weather has been pretty cool for this time of the year.

We spent most of the time hanging out with family and, of course, eating. We were also able to get in some shopping time and eat at a few of our favorite places. My mom (who lives in Florida) also came to visit my sister and I got to visit with my mom at the same time which was great to have the girl time together. My sister had a baby at the end of March and that is the adorable baby that you see in the pictures. It was pretty chaotic at times with 5 kids running around, but it was fun.

Sean really enjoyed spending time with his cousins Billy and Lilly. They played nearly everyday and even had sleepovers. Ryan was surprisingly very flexible being out of his normal routine and schedule. The best part of all was that he started sleeping through the night while we were on our trip! Don't ask me why (believe me, we have been analyzing the reasons why!) he started to do it on the trip, but I felt like a new person getting 5-6 hours of continuous sleep. He would sleep from bedtime until about 4:00-4:30 and would wake up to eat and sleep for another 3 hours. Since we've been home this past week, he has continued this sleep pattern most nights.

When it was time to leave Arizona, Sean really had a hard time saying goodbye. I never imagined that it would be so hard for him. He started bawling when he had to say goodbye to his cousins and then Lilly and Billy started crying and soon nearly all of us were in tears. It was so sad to see the kids cry so hard and for so long. It was really precious. They were all pretty sad most of the night and Sean continues to tell me that he misses them. They're already sending each other cards in the mail. In fact, we're preparing a package for them to send out this week.

Next trip - Illinois!