Peaches!

It's that time of year -peaches are ripe and ready for picking at our nearby orchard! My two sisters, one brother-in-law and my niece accompanied Ryan and me to Eckert's in Belleville yesterday, and we had a sticky, sweaty good time.

It was probably only about 90 degrees while we were out there, but with the sun beating down on you in the field, it felt like you were in an oven. The kids loved the experience, despite the heat. Haedyn loved actually picking the peaches (and eating them, of course!) -- they were so ripe they were literally falling off the trees. Ryan mostly loved smooshing the fallen, overripe peaches and pulling leaves off the trees. Eh...boys will be boys.

Here I am with the kiddos in front of the tractor that drove us out to the orchards:

Ryan entered the orchard with his aunt "Yado" and uncle Tom:
Aunt "Koggy" picked a perfect peach for Ryan and peeled a bit of the skin back - Ryan took a bite and excitedly declared, "SNACK!"
Haedyn shows off a peach she picked, pop-star style (is there any other way?):
Here's Ryan attempting to pick his own peach...except once he got it off the tree, he just stuck his thumb into it and smashed it. Sigh...
We capped off the day with a trip to the Eckert's custard shop. Our peach pie concretes were delicious. Haedyn insisted on a sugar cone...and while most of it melted down her arm and body, she ate every bit she could, including the paper around the cone (whoops!):
There's a fresh peach pie in my house, as well as about a dozen more peaches sitting on the counter. Life is good!

Storytime

We've been reading to Ryan at bedtime (as well as throughout the day) since he was only a few months old. As a result, he loooooves reading, especially if it means reading the same stories over and over and over. It's a normal kid thing, but it's been driving us crazy for months now.

The last few weeks of storytime, however, have been really fun, as we're now seeing the results of so much story repetition. You see, Ryan is now reading parts of his stories to us -- or at least, repeating words from memory -- and it's really fun to listen to him and hear his little brain hard at work.

Don't believe me? Here's a recent reading of "I'll Always Love You" with daddy. It's 3 min long (you are forewarned) - enjoy!

A trip to the Magic House

I've been waiting for what seems like forever to take Ryan to a children's museum. I wasn't sure if he was old enough to enjoy most of the exhibits, or if he'd get trampled by "big kids" -- so we've stayed away from them so far. Tonight, however, Purina had the entire Magic House rented out for a private party for its marketing department, so we took the chance to avoid the crowds and give it a whirl. Man, have we been missing out.

The Magic House is incredible...if you haven't been there since they completed the massive addition and renovations the last year or so, you need to go again. They have a HUGE area for kids under 6, and another separate area for kids under 2. Here's a few shots of our visit:

Daddy helped Ryan play mechanic on this car -- you can change the tires, check the oil, change the air filter, and press all kinds of buttons that make noise. Ryan's favorite? A button that "honked" the car.

Here's Ryan gassing up a more simple car.

Ah, the beauty of simplicity. Here, Ryan practices his "on-off" skills with a wall full of light switches.
There's a grocery store where kids can shop -- Ryan stocked up on milk more than anything else. (That's 3 gallons in his basket!)
Ryan's always a fan of the "beeper" at the grocery store checkout, so he loved that he could do it himself at the play store.
Ryan enjoyed a lot of opportunities to climb and slide (this place is designed to wear your kids out)!
In the little kids area, there's a big water play area, including the opportunity to squirt a water gun (inside a case, thankfully). Notice the sweet smocks - kudos to the person who thought of that one!
Here's Ryan enjoying the water table.
Ryan usually loooves bubbles, but the bubble room here was just a little out of his abilities. Here, mommy tries to get Ryan inside a bubble.
Finally, I leave you with a shot of another potential future profession for Ryan. Hail to the chief?

Ryan's 1st trip to the beach

We just returned from a week-long trip to Destin, Fl. -- Ryan's first time being at a beach! It was beautiful there -- great weather, great food, great company, and best of all, NO OIL. :) While we were there, we celebrated grandma's 60th birthday, dug in the sand at the beach, splashed in the waves, swam at the pool, took a dolphin cruise and enjoyed the sun with grandma, papa, uncle Lucas, aunt Karyn and cousin Autumn. Here are a few favorite pics:

Ryan wasn't so sure about the beach at first. It took some time to warm up to the feel of the sand and water, as evidenced by his uncertainty with having his feet buried soon after arriving. :)
Here's Ryan checking out the ocean with daddy.
The kids took a sweet ride to the beach each day - it was a very short walk, but with all the gear that two toddlers require, the wagon was quite helpful -- as well as super fun for the kids.
Here's one of my favorite shots of our niece, Autumn - little girl + pig tails + a cute swimsuit + beautiful landscape = no way to not love this shot.
We had a day or two of pristine sand and ocean, and then the unfortunate "june grass" made the water thick with green algae, and by the last day, it was washed up on the beach in chunks. It seems yucky, but serves an ecological purpose for fish spawning and keeping little fishies safe from predators, and we enjoyed the beach despite the "hairy" feel of the ocean. Here's a shot of Ryan in the washed up muck.
The dolphin cruise was fun - we saw so many swimming and playing alongside our boat. Here's a shot of Ryan and mommy on the boat.
Here's everyone on the boat, though Autumn's hiding...the boat was jumping over huge waves at this point so we were all more focused on not letting the kids fall overboard than on the photo opp. :)
If you've ever been on one of these cruises, you know the kids get to "drive" the boat for a photo opp. Let's just say that a 2-hr cruise is waaaay too long for a toddler, so both Ryan and Autumn were hot, cranky and tired at this point (hence Ry's binky accessorizing the sweet captain's hat).
Here's a family shot outside of our house.
And last, here's a shot of the whole group on our last night.
I'm so glad we got to take Ryan to experience all of this while he's at this age - it was awesome watching him discover each little thing. (Even though I know he won't remember any of it.) :) Now, back to the real world.

Our little Picasso

Ladies and gentlemen, I'll start the bidding at $100,000....
This, of course, is Ryan's first official art project. Ryan loves coloring with his "markas" and crayons at home and has gifted several family members with original works of scribble...but today we tried our first art class at Gymboree and this was the result.

Yes, he had help -- the kid's only 19 months old for goodness sake -- but those are his handprints, his "clouds" and he used the glue stick to stick on the rest of the goodies. It's going in his memory box, and while to the rest of the world it's a sticky mess, to me it's priceless.

A spontaneous trip to Grant's Farm

When rain has you cooped up in your house with an active toddler for an entire week, it can drive you crazy! You can imagine how a normally un-spontaneous mommy would turn spontaneous when the rain broke for a few hours this past Sunday morning.

We'd gone to church on Saturday evening, so with no plans ahead of us Sunday, I took a look at the radar when we got up, we got dressed and were out of the house within a half hour of deciding that we'd be going to Grant's Farm! (For some people, that's nothing special...but for moi, well...let's just say it was pretty out of character.)

Ryan loved feeding the animals, and in general, running like a banshee around the place. It wasn't as big as I remembered, but it was the perfect short trip for the short attention span of a toddler. Enjoy a few pics below of our Sunday morning fun!

Here's Ryan and I on the tram tour of the deer park.

Here we are passing a spotted long horn. That steer was clooooooose.
Daddy braved the goat pen armed only with Ryan and one bottle of milk. They quickly attracted a furry little friend.
And as you'd expect, one quickly turned into two.
Which, quickly turned into three.

And then four....

Things got out of hand quickly. Ryan stayed calm through it all, intently watching the goats while daddy kept them from eating his jacket. :)
We also fed a camel. Yep, a camel. You pay 50 cents and get a handful of pellets that apparently taste like filet mignon to these guys. Here's Ryan and I carefully feeding our new friend (and yes, I held most of his hand covered with mine so that he didn't get chomped). Ryan kept saying "more?" after each time we gave a pellet or two - it was cute, cute, cute (and slobbery, slobbery, slobbery.)
Last, but not least, Ryan and daddy rode the carousel on the way out. Note to motion-sickness prone adults: this sucker spins FAST...I was sooo grateful that Stephen bit the bullet on this one, or we might have been in trouble.
It was a whirlwind morning, but Ryan had a ball. Poor Stephen walked to our departing tram looking longingly back at the free beer sampling area, but Ryan had had enough and it was starting to sprinkle on us. There's always next time, right?

Chef Ryan

Ryan has always loved "cooking" like mommy with a bowl and spoon. (Don't all kids?) He has his own kitchen cabinet filled with various cannisters, tupperware and toys as well as a hand-me-down play kitchen, so he gets a lot of practice. The other night, while I made a labor-intensive recipe (Giada's dirty risotto, one of our favorites), we gave Ryan some noodles to "cook" -- and wow...he worked like a focused little sous chef for most of an hour on the kitchen floor, measuring, scooping, pouring, and yes, of course spilling.

Here's a peek at his new favorite activity. Enjoy!

*Update: sorry for the very poor video quality - not sure why it's so jumpy...