Goodbye 2010!

Somehow it is the last day of the year! I literally have no idea how this happened. I have never had a year go by faster! Oh dear! And only 17 more of these and Ryan will graduate from high school! (seriously, I am not quite that crazy to already be worrying about that but I know that when that day is here, it will feel like yesterday that I rocked him to sleep!) Anyway, just wanted to get caught up on the rest of our December... This is Ryan playing with his monster truck that his daddy gave him for his birthday. He loves it as long as the batteries are out so that it won't growl at him and move on its own. He loves to set it up like this and spin the wheels. He also pushes it all around the house! This was the picture of Ryan on our Christmas card this year ( I love his teeth!) My dear friend Noel got to come visit for a few days before Christmas! She is in Germany right now in the Army (she is a nurse). We haven't seen her in almost 2 years. She had been in Washington D.C. for training for the past few months, so she was sweet enough to take some time to come visit. It was a whirlwind visit...I had to work some of the time she was here but I am so glad that she came!



Now, most people will tell you that Ryan looks like his daddy but this picture is eerily similar to a picture of me when I was his age...same expression. I don't have a scanner or I would put the picture on here. (Ryan had been to the eye doctor the day this picture was taken and his eye was still dilated.) Ryan has one eye that seems a little "lazy" sometimes. The doctor said that a lot of the time the eye muscle will get stronger and it won't be a problem later. If not, then it requires surgery for some kids. We are praying that his eye muscle gets stronger! Every year, Santa takes a ride on a Lumberton fire truck and they go through all the neighborhoods. Michael heard it coming and we made it out just as they were passing our house. Christmas was crazy ...as usual! Our main busy day is Christmas Eve. We start out with Christmas at Michel's parents with Amy and her family, then go to Vidor for Christmas with Michael's extended family, then go to Wildwood for Christmas with my family. (Not to mention, Christmas with Michael's King family, my Varner family and my Arceneaux family, which were at other times too!) Last year, we started the tradition of being at our house on Christmas morning. It is nice to be home and get to relax just the 3 of us. These pictures are of us at Michael's parents house: I love Ryan's serious face This is Ryan with all his cousins on Michael's side (first cousins and second cousins) Neither me or Jenny took one picture at of our family Christmas! :(

Our Christmas morning was very relaxed. All of us slept until 9 o'clock :) Ryan has gotten so many gifts the day before that he was more interested in playing with the ones that were already open than opening more gifts!

This is a walker toy that we got Ryan. He obviously is not walking yet but he is also not pulling up to stand. The doctor suggested that we get with ECI (Early Childhood Intervention) about helping us with that. We have met with a lady who is the case worker (I think that is her title) and also a physical therapist. He was very encouraging and says he sees no problems with Ryan that could be causing it. He says his best guess is that it is a side affect of his ear infections and that he probably never felt comfortable with standing (because of balance issues with the inner ear stuff). He gave me a few pointers on helping him and I think we will meet with him in the near future. I pray (and I really think it will be this way) that this is something that will only take a couple months to work out. Even with the little bit that Michael and I have been working with him I already see an improvement. Today, when I set him on the floor, twice, he put his feet down to stand up instead of lifting his feet out of the way so I would set him on his booty. He had never done that before! Thank God for people who are experienced in these things and can help us.
Oh! One funny thing is Ryan likes to grab on to the bars and hop behind his dinosaur on his knees :) One day soon it will be his walker!

I got Michael and Ryan this....
This is a picture from the stairs of our living room. Uhhhh...do you think this kid is deprived of toys?! I do not!
Christmas day 2010
We had a whirlwind week the week after Christmas. Michael's great uncle James died on Christmas morning so he went to his visitation and funeral on Monday and Tuesday. I worked both of those days but was off on Wednesday to be home with Ryan. He had a scope done by the reflux doctor (I don't remember his technical name). Since he is still gagging/throwing up some when he eats (even though it is greatly improved), the doctor wanted to make sure there wasn't something causing it that we needed to fix. Everything is fine. Ryan's asophogas is narrowed a little more than normal but nothing to cause any concern. The doctor thinks that as he grows, it will get better.

These are Ryan's "little King" boxer shorts :)
On New Year's Eve, we just stayed at our house again this year. Our neighbors from across the street came over for dinner and we did a few fireworks. Their 2 older kids loved the fireworks...especially little miss petite cutie girl!
This was our last picture of 2010...of course, Ryan is asleep :)

Catching up

Oh dear. This has not been a good blogging month! I told myself that I was not gonna blog until I finished all the thank you cards from Ryan's birthday party....still not done. But I need to catch up on our December so I can order my blog book for 2010 :) I am excited about that!

At the beginning of December, we decided that Ryan really needed a hair cut (we had actually decided this a lot earlier but I was not ready to do it until he turned 1 :) Michael works with a guy who's wife is a hair dresser so we took Ryan to her. These are some before pictures of him:

I think his hair looks like Conan O'Brien in these pictures! Ryan gets pretty crazy bed head like his momma :)
This is the back of his head before his haircut...kinda looks like a mullet!
Ryan did really great during his hair cut. He sat up on the booster like a big boy!
She didn't scalp him but he looks so much more kept now!
Ryan had tubes put in his ears a couple of weeks ago. They were very infected and had thick fluid and gross gunk in them. I am so thankful that he got them! The doctor had done a hearing test and Ryan scored a 20...they want it to be 20 or below, so he was right on the border. No wonder he wasn't hearing as well as he should...with all that junk in his ears. Ryan has definitely gotten better at eating since he got tubes. He used to put his hands in front of his face and fight eating. Poor thing. Probably made his ears hurt! Thank God that has gotten better now.

Hen House Ridge

We got to go camping a few weekends ago and this time we got to stay at Hen House Ridge! We had a GREAT spot, it was a perfect fall weekend and there were not many people there! It was so nice and relaxing. I have so many good memories from going there as a kid and I am excited to start making good memories with Michael and Ryan there too!

1st Birthday Party!

Ryan's first birthday party was so fun! I enjoyed planning and preparing the party to celebrate Ryan :) The theme of the party was Sock Monkey! I wasn't over the top with the theme...just some accents here and there!

The lady from http://www.etsy.com/shop/ohmygluestick designed his card and also these party circles (for cupcake toppers or decoration). I put them on a "tree" for decoration and as tags on the party favors. (forgot to take pictures of all the favor bags...this was one of the adult ones and I had different ones for the kids with bubbles, stickers, crazy straws and candy in them)

Another decoration I did was this photo display of monthly pictures of Ryan during his first year. (I saw this idea on another blog but I don't remember the blog address) Jenny helped me put this together! This was Ryan's cake! I loved it! One layer was chocolate and one was vanilla. The smaller cake was Ryan's smash cake. Here are some present opening pictures :) The opening of the gifts started off pretty calm but by the end all of the kids were opening up gifts!! It was a little crazy! I figured this was the only year the Ryan wouldn't care if they opened his gifts so might as well let them enjoy it while they can :) (Love this! Aunt Jenny made it for us and I can hang Ryan's art work or school work on it! "Look what Ryan did") This was one of Michael's gifts to Ryan. The boots were Michael's when he was a kid, the wood gun was carved by his granddad in the 1920's (grandpa played with it when he was a kid!) and the holster was Michael's dads that he played with as a kid!) Pretty cool gift! My sweet friend Carrie and her kids came from Pearland just to come to Ryan's party :) Our friends, Shanelle and Gavin (and Kelsey in the background) The smashing of the cake: Laura was hoovering around Ryan because she was wiping the icing off of his face and eating it! Michael tried to get Ryan to dig in by sticking his chin in the icing but it didn't really work! Not too interested! After we got him cleaned up, he was a little more comfortable! These are some more of the people who were at Ryan's party: This is the Red Rider wagon that we got Ryan...he loves it :) When we were singing Happy Birthday to Ryan, I was thinking about how blessed Ryan is with so many people who love him! There were about 50 people there who decided that of all the things they could have done that day, they wanted to come to a 1 year old's birthday party. That makes me a little teary! So glad that we could all get together and celebrate Ryan!