9 Month Birthday

Originally uploaded by flowmug

I am a little late wishing Little Man a Happy 9 Month Birthday on the blog but it took me a little while to get these pictures off the camera. Sharis' whole family (except Ben) was in town the weekend I went to Oklahoma City for the Kayak Olympic Trials (bummer for me, good for them). Kyle was invited to speak to a class at ND about his career so the whole family took the opportunity to come see him.

Andrew and Ryan were able to see each other again but Andrew can't quite interact with Ryan yet. This is the time Ryan has to take advantage of because he can handle Andrew. Pretty soon though the tables will be turned.

They are both shown here in the Star Wars shirts their Uncle Kyle brought for them from Lucas Films out in California.

Marla has some VERY good shots of the boys from the same weekend on her Flickr page.

Ryan's first kiss

Ryan had his first kiss last week when we got together with some of our neighbors for our weekly playdate. Most of the people in our building have one young child as well, and most are girls...so it was inevitable I suppose. Ryan played it cool and let her come to him. It was really cute. They just stared at each other for a couple seconds and Ryan "puckered up" and Katlyn Vengazo (so I remember who gave him his first kiss) leaned in and planted one on him! Such a stud.

Thunder Thighs

Ryan gets really excited for his baths. He loves to watch the bath fill up - in fact he loves to watch and feel any flowing water. He doesn't like the water on his head though.

Unfortunately he has his Dad's thighs.

Courtney and Her Little One

Originally uploaded by flowmug

Time for some more Ryan photos. This is the last of the pictures from the "Ryan Month 9" set. We had brunch with Courtney and Paul a couple of weekends ago and were able to get a couple of shots. C&P adore Ryan but pretty soon they won't have time to adore him because they have one of their own on the way. Congrats to C&P, we can't wait to meet the Little One.

Olympic Trials

This past weekend a couple of buddies and I went down to Oklahoma City for the U.S. Olympic Trials in Kayaking to cheer on our old roommate Jeff Smoke (jeffsmoke.com).  He did well but not as well as he wanted.  He is still in contention to go to the Olympics but needs to win some races in Montreal in about a month where teams from North and South America will be competing (qualifying for the Olympics is quite complicated and I couldn't really do it justice in this forum).   This is Jeff paddling out to his first race of the weekend - Heat #1 of the K1 500m.

Here we are at dinner "carb loading" before their race. Notice how Augy, Ryan and I are "carb loading" with beers and the other two are "carb loading" with pasta. Jeff is on the left. I am flanked by Augy and Ryan who made the trip down to OKC with me. And Rami is on the right and is Jeff's partner in the 2 man boats.

Here is Jeff paddling out to the starting line for one of his races. If you go to the Flickr site and check out any of the pics - which isn't advisable because there are 280 of them - any shots going left to right are the races and the ones going right to left are them paddling out to the starting line.

Here are Jeff and Rami paddling out to the K2 1000m Finals and then them getting their gold medals after winning the race. Essentially, if they win this race in Montreal, they are going to China for the Olympics (it is a little more complicated than that, but let's stick with that for now).

We were also able to get over and see the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial. While we were there, they were setting up for the 13th Anniversary ceremonies. We were quite impressed with how thoughtful and symbolic the memorial was. In the picture, there is one chair for each person who lost their life. They have smaller chairs for the children who died.

In all honesty, there are some more pictures worth checking out on the Flickr site but I didn't take many out this time because I wanted Smoke to see all he could. I usually take out pictures that look the same (especially when I am shooting in burst mode like I did all weekend to capture the action). Just go here and pick and choose the ones you want to look at.

Stay tuned for how Smoke does in Montreal and China.

New Opportunities

I want to apologize for the lack of updates lately. Hopefully Sharis' video satiated you for a little while.  The reason I haven't been able to get to the blog as much is because a couple of partners and I are starting a new trading business.  Needless to say we have been very busy.  This has been going on since about the beginning of April.  We are excited for the new opportunities but have a LOT of work to do.

The boys take Cabo by storm

So here we are...FINALLY...
I apologize for many things about this video:
-for the extremely poor quality (iMovie woes)
-for the lack of footage (I wish I had more video to work w/)
-for how long it took me to get this up (the program crashed on me like 20 times)
-for whatever else you might see wrong with this
Hope you are able to eek some enjoyment out of this regardless.
P.S. If you care (b/c I know Dan will be pissed that I am "Apple-bashing")...I now see why they created a new iMovie. I used the old one for this b/c the editing tools are WAY better, but that is the reason it crashed and why the quality is poor (I have to reduce quality in order to get the file onto youtube). Anywho, there is the extent of my "geekdom". Not quite par with Dan and Kyle (if you've read the latest on comments exchanged between them).

Sometimes Mom's Need to Entertain Themselves

I came up with some new song lyrics to the itsy bitsy spider awhile ago and I've been meaning to document them. They are "Ryan-inspired"...from days when he is a little fussier than normal.

The Itsy Bitsy Spider (remix):

The crabby crabby spider went up the water spout
He got so sad that the waterworks came out
His mommy made him hap-py and dried up all his tears
Then the crabby crabby spider had nothing left to fear.
[Dramatic Pause]
But fear itself [spoken intelligently].

Laughing at Dan making noises.

Pay no attention to Old School playing in the background.

Laughing is always fun.

Fireplace Obsession

Some backlogged videos from the archive. This one is from the beginning of March.

Ryan loves the fireplace. Consequently, we now have plexiglass (as opposed to pillows and the ottoman) blocking his access to it.

New Things

/; p
Ryan typed that. I guess that's one new thing...he's typing.

Anyway, Ryan's new favorite toy is a lasagna tin. You know, one of those cheap, throw-away ones that you find in packs of 3 at the grocery? He loves to open the oven drawer and pull it out and bang it around. Which brings me to my next thing: opening.

Yes, he can now open drawers and cabinets. So we have installed the infamous safety latches. Dan and I get frustrated every time we open the cabinet to throw something away and it bangs shut on us. Damn safety latches. We'll get used to it, I'm sure. Nice thing is, the kids these days are using these really cool latches that aren't an eyesore, don't ruin your cabinets [much], and swivel around easily to a disabling position. Pretty clever these Americans.

Finally, Ryan is clicking his tongue! He picked up this crafty skill just recently and I was really surprised. Dan and I do it all the time to him, but I thought it was a little further in his future...he's so advanced. JK.

Do I Have Anything on My Face?

Ryan continues to eat well. He loves Cheerios and despite the picture here of him trying to eat them without using his hands, he has been able to use his "pinchers" quite well. Although a lot of times he would rather shove them in with his fist rather than one by one with his 2 fingers.

We have added corn and mango to his repertoire of fruits and veggies. Despite his disdain for applesauce in the beginning, he has come around on that. I would still say he likes pears the best - although Sharis might say something different. He eats anywhere from 4 to 8 cubes of veggies / fruits at once - with any combination of the different varieties.

We try to continue to teach him sign language but he hasn't quite picked it up yet. We think he knows what we are talking about when we do the sign for "milk" or "eat" or "more" but he doesn't do them himself yet. Needless to say, we aren't disappointed - after all he is only 9 months old. 

Hey, that's MY hat!

Originally uploaded by flowmug

Ryan usually doesn't LOVE to have hats on his head (he often takes them off when I'm not looking). But Grandma does such a fine job of sporting this look that he wants to have it too! As you can see from the pic, I'm not so much in agreement of how "fine" this look is on my mom. She won't either...she's not going to be too happy about this post. Sorry mom.

New Layout

I have changed the look of the blog a little bit mainly because the area where the posts were going in the old template was too small.  This new template allows the post area to be changed based on how large the user's browser is.  When the user has a wider browser, the post area is wider and vice versa.  Basically it is more practical and it was bugging me that some of the posts weren't looking how I wanted them to look.  As you can see in the post before this one, 65 Degrees, I was able to figure out how to place pictures in a more defined way rather than just throwing them up there.  I know most people won't care but it was bugging me.  The downside is the color scheme is a little bit boring at the moment.  I might try and change that later by either using the tools Google gives me or by getting Kyle to help me out.  He was able to reach into the HTML code to make his site look quite good.  I will also talk to Sharis to see what color scheme she wants.  Let us know in the comments if you like, dislike or are indifferent.

65 Degrees

It was a gorgeous 65 degrees here yesterday. The park was flooded with kids and their parents. We were able to secure a swing and enjoy that for a while - but it seemed like Ryan was more interested in the other kids around him than the swinging itself. We let him down to crawl around for a while but he still isn't at a point where he can enjoy the park yet.








He was pretty tuckered out by the end of the day. As you can see in the last picture he also had some messy hair from his hat - which is good because that means his hair is getting long enough where that happens. You can click on any of the pictures to be taken to Flickr so see all the pictures taken in 65 degree weather yesterday.

Drawstring

Drawstring
Originally uploaded by flowmug

This is my first try at a collage - Ryan playing with one of my Mom's drawstrings.

I have been trying to figure out how to make collages for a while. Apparently Picasa is able to do it but I don't use Picasa (I was considering starting if I could get collages made). I found out how I can make them in a new piece of software I was able to obtain called Aperture 2.0 (Apple makes it - you know I love those Apple products). It is kind of like a Photoshop but a little less intense (and a LOT less expensive). So I have now moved from strictly using iPhoto (which I loved) to using Aperture.

That's My Boy!

A Gift

We love love love Ryan's new high chair, which was a gift from Grammy and Papa (thank you!). Only problem is that I am still juggling the freedom it allows me with the new dangers it presents. Case in point. The other day I was making a bunch of new food for Ryan in the kitchen, while he was happily eating "Cheerios" (health-nut mom gives him the no-sugar, organic ones) in his high chair. All of a sudden, I hear him choking! I rush over to find that he has grabbed the place mat (now within reach since he is level with our kitchen table) and scooted it towards himself, allowing access to my 3-part dish. The dish is filled with 3 things, but like his mom and his grampa g, he likes the salty snacks...so he opted for the pumpkin seeds (salted, in the shell). He had two fist fulls, a trail across the table and his high chair, and a mouth full! I acted quickly and haven't seen any whole seeds come out the other end so I don't think he actually swallowed any. Sorry that you only get a "post-incident" pic, but like I said, I was in panic mode. BTW, in case you were wondering, he still had plenty of "Cheerios" to occupy himself...he just apparently preferred pumpkin seeds at that time.

Abacus

Today I took Ryan to the gym for the first time. I have been wary about all of the germs (considering Ryan puts EVERYTHING in his mouth) and what the childcare is actually like. A mom I know took her son there recently though and he came out alive...so I figured I'd try it out! For all of you who take your kids to daycare routinely, it probably seems like I'm being silly.

Anywho, it worked out pretty nicely. Cost of childcare is only $1/hr and I got a great workout in and was even able to watch Ryan playing on the video monitor the entire time. That brings me to my purpose of this post. Ryan's parents are, obviously, in finance and engineering b/c he played with Legos and an abacus the entire time! Pretty funny. Mommy was proud.

Calm

Originally uploaded by flowmug

This is one of the top pics from Cabo. I love how relaxed Jackson looks here. Nothing in the world could bother him - not even an annoying photographer.

Eating BBQ Sauce

Originally uploaded by flowmug

Happy Birthday

Originally uploaded by flowmug

My Dad's Birthday was on Monday and we celebrated when we were home for Easter. Ryan helped my Dad blow out the candles (not really) despite the fact that he [obviously] loves to watch them lit. Sorry about the poor photo quality. I took this with my phone.