Harvest Party

We went "trunk or treating" at our church tonight. It was really fun. They had a little carnival set up with a moonbounce and games when we first got there. It ran all night, but at 6:30 we got to go trunk or treating. A bunch of people from the church decorated their trunks with themes and the kids got to go from car to car. Even closer than townhouses(wink-wink). Some of the people really went crazy. I took pictures of some of my favorites. They should be in my October album tomorrow. Zach had lots of fun and I think Ryan really enjoyed himself. He had lots of people telling him how cute he was, who wouldn't like that. Especially when some of them were older ladies(by this I mean 4 and 5 year olds) dressed as princesses. I almost took a picture of him with one of his princess admirers--you know the frog and the princess--, but I thought her mom my be a little freaked out if I did. It was really cool and different. I think it was much cooler as a parent for a few reasons. It was interesting to see the car decorations(no scary ones), not so much need to check the candy, more entertaining things to do than just watch your child go to one door after another and it was a really fun and nice atmosphere. I give it 4 out of 4 stars as an alternative to trick or treating. Here are some of the better pictures from our night. It was pretty dark, so some didn't turn out very well, but I'm still going to put some of them in my album because they are cool things even if they are not in great focus. Like the Okay Corral and Mickey Dancing at Disney World.
Daddy and Froggy Ryan 

Hoppy Little Frog with Mommy 

Zach at the Candyland car 

Zach, Daddy and Ryan on the hayride 

Halloween Hike and Pumpkin Picasso

Today after church we went to the pumpkin patch to get Ryan a pumpkin. He was asleep, so I got to pick. Then we went to Rock state park for a hike. It was great. The weather was awesome and the scenery was stupendous. I heard several people commenting on our Kelty stroller/backpack which I have to say is quite awesome. One couple even asked me how much it costs. They are expecting, so I told them and told them where to look for the best price. After our hike we came home and painted Ryan's pumpkin. He really enjoyed the finger painting part, but he did not want to let go of those paint brushes! You should have seen our tub after. It took half an hour to clean! It was worth it though. We had lots of fun:-)
Mommy, Ryan and a big rock 


Daddy and Ryan playing on our hike


Ryan and his pumpkin

Ryan painting his pumpkin

Loading his hand for the next stroke

Shadow Puppets

In the middle of the night I woke up to the house shaking and the lights going out. It was a crazy thunderstorm. Daisy came in panicked out of her mind. Thank goodness Ryan didn't wake up. Luckily the power came back quickly, so I went to get a flashlight because I knew Ryan would wake up the next time. It didn't happen, but the flashlight did come in handy this morning. Ryan woke up before Jay and I were willing to get out of bed as he does every weekend, so Jay went to get him. He brought him back to our bed and Ryan slept for a little bit. When he woke up we gave him the flashlight and made shadow puppets on the ceiling. It was great fun. He thought it was pretty funny. And best of all we got to stay in our nice warm bed for an extra 20 minutes!

Dance, Baby, Dance!

I finished the Ryan Dancing movie. It's on the website now.

Doh!

Sorry to anyone who tried to visit my web page today. I tried to install a guestbook button and profoundly messed up the HTML text somehow. The sites republished with no titles and link bars and I could not get them back:-( I took out the button and still no dice. I finally just started with a clean slate, did a lot of cutting and pasting and a little tweaking to hopefully return it to it's old self. Poor little website:-( The only things I can't restore are the number on the tracker and the guestbook entries. I was getting excited about my tracker. It was over 50! Oh well, I guess I'll just add 50 to my counter in my head. It's back up and full functional now. I'm going to add a guest book the original way I tried which not as cool as a button, but it doesn't mess up my page. That will be tomorrow, for now I'm going to bed!

P.S. I got a Wiggles CD from the library, so I'll be making the dancing video tomorrow. I'll post a link when I'm done.

Baby Warning Labels

I was in the shower with Ryan today and I thought 'You should have come with a warning label that says 'slippery when wet'!'

This got me thinking of a whole string of warning labels for babies.
Here are a few:
Slippery when wet
May cause drowsiness
High decibel warning
and of course the most important of all
Fragile: Handle with care

feel free to share your own:-)

The Wiggles

Who would have thought a show with 4 guys from Australia would be Ryan's favorite?! He loves those Wiggles. We just recently discovered this adorable toddler variety show. Now I try to let Ryan watch it every day. He watches intently and when they sing he bounces, spins around and dances with them. It's so cute!!! I have some video clips of him dancing that I'm putting together. I'm going to see if the library has a Wiggles CD so I can put it to music. After I add the music I'll share it on my website:-)

More videos

I added some new videos to the website. Give it a little time to load, the movie will start itself. I'll give you the links so you don't have to go visit just to see. One is a movie I made for Jay. The other is a movie of Ryan walking in the early day when he was 9 months old. This was taken long before the Giraffe posts, but notice what he has in his hand. One more Ryan's First Steps . That is the one with the audio that people kept commenting about.

I am Ryan's MOMMY!

It's 4:15 in the morning. I am awake because the pain in my heart won't let me sleep. Ryan woke up at about 3:30 and I got up, picked him up, replaced his pacifier and put him back down to go back to sleep. This is not abnormal, but my thoughts keeping me up is. A train of thoughts led me to this one that I can't escape. No matter how hard I try I can't stop thinking about it. This is why I'm blogging at such an insane hour of the morning.
I am a little uneasy about this post, but I feel like I need to address this in a public way so I might not have to have this horrible pain inflicted on me again. This is profoundly personal and makes me very vulnerable. I don't like to be vulnerable like this, but I need to say this. You may not understand(especially if you don't know me personally), but bear with me on this. Even if you don't understand by the end of this PLEASE try to oblidge.
I feel like a little background is in order...
It all started when I married a man with a 3 year old son a little over two years ago. They lived together and so we would all come to live together. I was excited to be a part of this family. As the wedding day approached we talked to little Zach about what that meant for our relationship. When his birth mother came to pick him up for a visit that weekend he excitedly told her that he was going to have 2 mommies. His enthusiasm was dashed by his mother's response, "Most people only have one mommy." Those words are forever etched in my memory because they have shaped my life since then. After many bitter fights about this word, "mommy" and it's use in Zach's life we came to a compromise. And when I say compromise let me assure you NOBODY won. I would be called "MommyJen". This was not received well by his birth-mother, so in another compromise(on our part, she was still bitterly against the change) we waited until 3 months after we married to implement this change to "let her get used to the idea". The 3 months was not totally random. That is when my work obligation was finished and I could become a stay-at-home-mommyJen. This was confusing to many since Zach lived with me and I pretty much had him all the time it raised many questions from strangers. Especially since Zach seemed to think it was my name, not my title. When people would call me as Jen he would say, "Her name is not Jen it's MommyJen" even if they were speaking directly to me. Frankly it was uncomfortable for me to explain my personal life to complete strangers(I do realize the irony in this post, but my blog's main purpose is to keep my family and friends up to date). When I got pregnant I knew I could not bear to have my own child call me MommyJen even one time, so again we changed my title. Still a compromise, I would be "mom". I thought 'lots of older kids call their moms "mom" and the younger ones still understand that she is mommy'. After Ryan was born I realized a heart-breaking affect of this name. People refer to me as mom to my own son! Being that this was a compromise for my step-son to even call me this I was astonished. It had never occurred to me that it would be so ingrained in people's minds that I am "mom" that that's how they would refer to me to my baby. My husband is daddy, but I am mom. It just doesn't sound right, "daddy and mom". "Dad and mom", sure, "daddy and mommy", absolutely; but "daddy and mom" how can you not see the inequity in that?!
I've read about mother's hearts breaking the first time their little one calls them mom instead of mommy. Imagine the pain of that word being stolen from you before your child is even born! This issue has brought me to tears on more than one occasion. Probably the most painful part is the fact that my husband doesn't understand. He says "they are just words" and "you are his mom and his mommy". But they are not just words. Being a mommy is my whole life. Seeing as my own husband doesn't understand why I'm hurting so much I guess I can't expect that anyone else would, but please even if you don't understand why I have these feelings just understand that they are my feelings.
After some counsel from some wise Christian friends we have decided that the most important thing is that our family harmony and that Zach's birth-mother's feelings should not be a major factor in the decisions we make about our family. Since we thought it was a great idea for Zach to call me mommy from the beginning and her opinion on the way we run our family is not important anymore there is no longer a need for me to be "mom" to anyone. Zach of course has the choice to call me mom or mommy. Zach knows this, but we didn't really tell anyone else. So, yet again we will be changing(not so much changing, but removing the strict rules about) my title. So I ask you all to do this for me: Any time you would say "daddy" please use the word "mommy". It would mean a lot to me. Maybe they are just words to you, but the implied value means so much to me.

New Video

I changed the website a bit and added a video of Ryan going down the stairs. The changes are not that major, so here is a link if you want to just look at the video without going to the website. I'll be adding more videos soon. I'm considering it my pet project:)

Frog Costume

Ryan got to try out his frog costume today. We went to the "Fall Harvest Day" party for MOPS(Mothers of Preschoolers) at church today. He looked so cute I thought I would share;-)

Little Frog

Ryan playing with a friend at Harvest Party 

New Web Page

I've been working on our new web page for a good part of the day. Check it out:-)

Smartie Pants

You may have noticed that I have not posted anything "personal" in the past few days. I have not really had time. First I was sick and then Ryan got sick. He is also teething. He's currently cutting 3 molars, I personally think the 4th is on the way. I'll let you know if I get proof. He has been so clingy and miserable that I really have not had time to do much of anything besides hold him. Sometimes that isn't even enough! Reading stories seems to be the best way to calm him down.
Needless to say we've read alot of stories in the past few days. I've been noticing alot of things about our stories too. Ryan likes to turn to the pages where he can say the word. I took some pictures of it today:-) Some of the pages he especially likes are "apple", "ball", "duck", the "m" page for which he says "mama"(:big grin:),"O", "P"/"pig", "wah"(w), "baby" and "two". He has also done some other really cute and amazing(at least I think so) things when we read books. Like yesterday when Mrs. Dunning and her friend "Toad"(Her real name is Luanne. It's a long, but cute story maybe I'll tell you sometime.) dropped by I was flipping through a book with him in my lap while I was talking to them and when I got to the cow page he said "mooooo". Another time we were reading the same book and when we got to the hen page he said "duck". I guess all birds will be "duck" for a while until he gets a little more advanced. One of the most amazing things to me is that he anticipates what's going to be on the next page in the alphabet books. When I finish with "'L' is for Lion", but before I turn the page he says "mama". It's so fun to celebrate every accomplishment with him and watch him grow!

When I uploaded the photos from the camara he was in my lap. As he looked at each one he said "apple", "O" and "mama", respectively:-) Is it just me or is this kid smart?!

"Apple"

He had just said "mama" and was looking for a new page, but you can still see the 'm'. 

"O"

Yankees Went DOWN!!!!

::Doing the Happy Dance::

Woohoo! And I'm an Idiot...

Hooray for the Red Sox!!! The first team ever to force a game 7 from a 0-3 start in a championship series! On top of that they beat the Yankees!!! Unfortunately it was another late game and obviously I am still up at the end of it(12:10AM). This is why I am an idiot. I know I have a 13 month old who will be up before 7 and will probably wake up at least once over the night and yet, still awake. I'll let you know if it was worth it tomorrow;-)

Go Red Sox!

Yea for the Red Sox! Anyone who beats the Yankees is okay in my book. Since the Orioles don't have a shot I have to cheer for someone;-)

Little Cowboy

On a horse at one year...he is a boy after my own heart ;-)

Little Cowboy 

When to start again?

So, Ryan is now one. That means my body has had a full year to heal. I set one year as the absolute minimum I would wait until trying for another little wonder. Now that my mandatory time to recoup is over I am faced with the decision of when do I want to try again. I would love to have a spring baby, but that means waiting until early next summer to even try. Jay seems to have changed his tune on the subject. 6 months ago he was ready to have another one right away(with the incubation period of course). Now he seems to think I'm overwhelmed or something. He keeps pointing out how hard it will be to change 2 sets of diapers and have 2 babies waking us up in the night. Then there is the flip side where Jay points out EVERY little tiny baby to me with an "awwww" or "Look how cute; Ryan is not so little anymore." I waiver too sometimes. I think how much I would love to have another little baby, but I am loving every minute with Ryan. He is awesome! I don't want to have another baby too soon, but I don't want to wait too long either. I'm thinking if we have a baby next spring Ryan will be 2 1/2 that sounds like a good time to me. Then I wonder how that will work with potty training. Any thoughts out there?

Being Sick is Yucky:-(

Yesterday my throat hurt so much I couldn't swallow. Then I started feeling sick to my stomach(probably from all the medicine I was taking) and plain old yucky. I called Jay at work to see if he could come home early because I was so miserable and Ryan was being fussy. He said he'd do what he could. That wonderful man came home early and told me to go lie down and he would handle the kids. He took care of the kids and made dinner. He even asked if there was anything he could do to help me feel better. There wasn't, I had taken every sore throat drug known to man and it still hurt, but the thought was nice. This morning he decided to work from home to help me out around here. He got Zach off to school and tried working, but found out that he couldn't get access to some of the key information that he needed, so he told me he could use one of his sick days if I wanted him to stay home or he could go to work. I told him I'd be fine, so he went to work. What a sweetie though! Thanks Honey:-)
Today mostly just my throat hurts and I'm a little tired. I never noticed how much I talk to Ryan until it hurt to do it! I keep wanting to say things and holding back or saying them and wincing. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow. I keep getting sick when we plan to take a road trip. It's not very ideal. We were going to head out to the mountains this weekend to see the fall colors at their peak. Hopefully we will still get to go. A few weekends ago we were going to go to the Smithsonian and I got sick just before that too. I wonder if someone is trying to tell me something or if I just have a really bad immune system.

Changes

I think I may have found a part time solution to my shower problem. It all started last Friday when Ryan wouldn't take his morning nap and I had to go out. I knew he wouldn't do well in his chair and I didn't think the pack and play in the bathroom would work because I couldn't get around it in our little bathroom. Last week I tried putting him in his crib with some toys, the light on and I took the monitor in the bathroom. This worked okay, but I don't want him to think "play time" when he gets in his crib. It also meant that I had to take a quick shower because I only had as long as it took him to throw all his toys out of the crib and get bored. I also felt a little funny with him being awake and me not being as available as I would like, so this didn't seem like a great solution. So I knew I needed to come up with something else. As a last ditch effort to try to get clean and not leave him alone I took him in the shower with me. He loved it! He was fascinated with the water coming out of the shower head and bonus I just cleaned him up while we were in there! One thing I realized afterwards was I should have used baby wash since some of my soap got on him, but since I washed him after me I figured I wouldn't hurt that one time. So, today I got to take a shower in the morning right after breakfast:-) This time I used baby wash. There is one down side, I can't shave with a baby in one arm. I'm thinking if I get a big nonslip mat I can put him down for a minute and have more manuverability. We'll see how it works out before I break out the razor. Yea for babies who love water!
On another note, Zach will be going to school full time tomorrow and hopefully for the rest of the year. Now I will have more flexibility with errands and such since I will only have to work them around Ryan's 2 naps and not catching the bus in the middle of the day. I think Ryan may actually be changing his sleep schedule to go right through the mid-day bus time, so this may be good for his sleep habits as well. I went in to get him to go to the bus stop this afternoon and he didn't even wake up until I put him in the stroller(of course). Since the kindergarten bus stop is 2 and 1/2 blocks away I can't just leave him in his crib and take the monitor like I do in the afternoon. In the afternoon the bus stops at the end of our street about 40 feet from our house. I can hear him on the monitor if he wakes up. It's great. That's the stop where Zach will catch the bus in the morning too. If I park the car right I can watch him from my front door when he gets too old for his mom to walk him to the bus stop;-) Zach is very excited to be going to school for the whole day. I hope he stays excited when he actually goes all day!

Look at Me Mommy!

As promised, here are some pictures of Ryan's funny "put my head on the ground and look through my legs" thing. The first one is the best one I've gotten so far. Neither one really captures how absolutely funny and cute it is when he bends over, puts his head on the ground and laughs at himself. He's such a little clown! I think they can give you the idea though. Maybe some of you will get to see it for yourselves some day and you can back me up on how funny it really is;)
Waving through his legs:-) 

First upside down picture 

A Day at the Park

We went to the playground for a some family time today. Here are some pictures:) Check out my October album for more!

Boys at the playground


Zach at the end of the tunnel 


Ryan looking at Zach through the tunnel 


Teamwork 


Bouncing Fun 


Mommy and Ryan on the slide 

I'm going to scream!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, now for the second time today my post won't post! This day is NOT getting any better!!!!!!!!
How did my posts get backwards?! I hope this fixes it.

Today, not so fun

Okay, if I was talking to you I'd say "Don't even get me started about today!" and then I would relate the following story. This morning Ryan woke up at 5 am and it took a little while and a drink for him to go back to sleep. Then I lay in my bed tossing and turning trying to get back to sleep. I finally do and the the 6am waking. By this time I am totally exhausted since Ryan woke up when I went to bed last night at 11 too. So when he wouldn't go back to sleep I just left him in his room. Jay went to get him and he just kept crying. SO after a few minutes I went in again and calmed him down and got him to go to sleep. When we got up for the day things didn't seem to get better. Zach let the dog in with muddy paws. Ryan was yawning and fussy(wonder why?!) and I burned my waffles. Of course when I made the waffles I forgot that I used the last of the syrup YESTERDAY! So, I had to eat dry, burned waffles for breakfast. Yuck! Then Ryan would not go down for his morning nap(I tried for a really long time). I even tried napping with him. No dice. Yet Ryan can still make me smile, even laugh, in the midst of all this blahness. It's amazing; He's amazing. I love him, he's so fun:-)

Maizequest

Last night was fun. We went to Ring Factory night at Brad's Produce. They have this really great corn maze. The theme of the maze this year is dinosaurs. Inside the maze they have these clues and rubbing stations(where you rub a crayon over a raised picture) that you find to fill out this card they give you. It was lots of fun. Unfortunately when we got to the end of the maze we were still missing one of the rubbings. Since Zach liked doing them so much we let him decide if we should go back and find the missing Triceratops or just finish the maze. He wanted to go back. Boy did that turn out to be a disaster. We never found the rubbing station and we got totally turned around and lost in the maze. It got very quiet and we realized we were the last people there. Oops! We finally made it out(through the entrance). The guy that worked there was very nice about us being in there so long. He told us if we come back during the day the Triceratops would be easier to find. Since we had decided to do Maizequest(BTW-very clever name since Maize=corn in Native American)first we didn't get to do anything else. Needless to say we'll be going back to get a pumpkin at least and we'll probably end up doing the maze and hay ride too. If anyone wants to join us let me know; It's really cool. I didn't think a corn maze could be that hard!
Maizequest by flashlight

The Blog Abyss

I wrote a blog yesterday, but it disappeared. Sometimes they pop up later, so if you re-write it and post that you look pretty sill for posting about the same thing twice, so waited to see if it would come up. It hasn't yet. I guess it will join my other lost blogs in the blog abyss:-( I might try to re-write it later today, but right now I have to go play with some boys:-)

Addendum-It came up when I posted this one. A little bit annoying, but at least I don't have to re-write it.

Early Riser

Today Ryan got me up at 5:30 to make up for letting me sleep in until 9 the other day. Then he lulled me into a false sense of security by being quiet for about 45 minutes before crying again. After trying to get Ryan to understand that this is way to early for any sensible human being to be awake for about 20 minutes I thought he got the message. But as soon as I left the room he informed me that he is not a sensible human being because he wants to be awake. I stubbornly returned to my nice warm bed next to my semi-conscious husband who offered to go get Ryan for me. Ryan then joined us in bed. He was still for about 2 minutes and then decided it was playtime. Daddy had just gotten up to get ready for work and he thought this was a good time for everyone to get up. Needless to say I'm feeling a bit GRRRRRRRRumpy about the whole thing.

Getting a Little Laundry Done

I was folding laundry today and Ryan decided he wanted to help. So, he climbed in the basket. That was fun for a while, but then he thought he needed to help a little more. He started throwing the socks and such that were still in the basket out on the floor. It was too cute, so I had to take some pictures.

Little Laundry Helper

Here's another sock, mom. 

It's fun to throw laundry on the floor!