Spring Break

Nan came in town for the second half of Spring Break. The first half was Potty Training Boot Camp for Mac... thankful for success on that front! We had a great time on Friday at Ponte Vedra Beach. Not as great as the day when I get to sit on the beach in a chair and read a book without any children drowning or getting lost. I'm really looking forward to that day!

Alright, alright...

It has been over a month. Most of the time I feel like we are just keeping our heads above water these days, so getting to blogging is TOUGH. And today I decided 5:00 might be a good time to try to get back to it. All three boys are completely crazy right now, but I'm pressing on. Most days I do some form of exercise that involves a stroller -- it is rough when these two crazies are both with me. Lots of touching, fighting, yelling (they enjoy screaming "contests" back and forth a few times a day), etc. Everyone knows we are coming from blocks away.

St. Patty's Day

Everyone wanted to be festive for school!

Playing "surgery." Yes, Mac is often naked even when not potty training :)

Comic Relief

... we never have a shortage of comic relief around here. We just have to be willing to laugh.
A few minutes ago (approximately an hour and a half after I put the boys to bed) I went up to take a shower and found the peanut butter with a baby spoon under the dining room table. This is a signature move by Mac and sure enough when I turned left in to the kitchen there stood the CULPRIT!

with peanut butter everywhere.

In other hilarity around our home, Tucker lost his first tooth. We have no photo documentation because it -- in usual Tucker fashion -- was a traumatic event. Let's just say it involved T being so freaked out by the tooth finally coming out (in the Chick-Fil-A play area) that he went with Kyle to the bathroom and threw up and passed out. He then asked Kyle to look at it in the mirror and went limp again!

loves to scare us by being a lion or dinosaur ("roar-roar") or pirate ("aiy-aiy") -
loves to get dirty and be outside
loves to be goofy and make us laugh

Mac loves school. He cries when he doesn't get to go after we drop Tuck off.
He skipped over 3T and now wears all 4T and 5T.
He is saying a lot more - mostly things those of us who know him best can understand, but he is making great strides.
He does Speech Therapy twice a week now at Tucker's elementary school. She says he is a tough cookie - won't do anything he doesn't want to do. Hmmm... no big shock here!
His favorite thing on the planet these days is "boo boo num-num" (blue car) otherwise known as Finn McMissile from Cars 2. He carries it with him and plays with it all day and takes it to bed and sleeps holding on to it. It is presently lost (the second one - already had to replace it once) and he bursts in to tears about once an hour about it's whereabouts. We are approaching 2 hours and I may need to go buy another one!

Sweet Chi-Chi

This little one is almost always called "Chi-Chi" thanks to our adopted second language around here -- "Macish." Tucker made up Macish when trying to explain to one of his friends how Mac doesn't quite speak English yet :) Mac calls Charlie "Chi-Chi" and now so do we. Or "Cheech" for short!

He started walking a few weeks ago.
He is drooling constantly and has been working on 4 teeth at the same time. The last one is almost in and perhaps we will have a break from that for a bit!
He eats for hours on end... The picture below was taken to document one of the Ryan children consuming broccoli. He didn't love it, but he eats most everything else.

Can You Feel The Love???

More and more, after emerging from the "baby-under-1 phase," I am able to sit and appreciate these three crazy boys God has blessed us with. Most of the time the brotherly love emerges like the picture above (so much love it hurts!), but there are increasing moments of tenderness. Fleeting moments, but I'll take them.

Mac and Charlie, who spend a lot more time together, really have a special bond. They are both pretty fiesty and aggressive - it will be interesting watching that play out! They just crack each other up which is hilarious. Tucker spends a lot of time telling us how to discipline them, but he is also really sweet about pointing out how cute Charlie is or how proud he is of Mac for a new accomplishment.

The camera is fixed!!!

...so let's get caught up...

Tucker is still scary consumed with all things commercial airline. He has taken a particular interest lately in emergency landings. [Everyone can send us thank you notes later when your child emerges from a play date at the Ryan household with a huge fear of flying!] He likes two things about emergency landings: the inflatable slides (he knows where most models' slides are located - see picture below) and he also likes that during an evacuation you can tell a lot of people what to do.

He researches the different planes online and then uses construction paper to reconstruct the exits on his model planes.

He also spends a lot of time drawing. He LOVES art. This picture shows how it usually goes -- the Eiffel Tower, French flag & a massive Air France aircraft flying over head. He always finds a way to incorporate his one true love.
Usually sweet, but we do get this face a bunch!


Researching...

ONE!

This precious child turned one last week! It's birthday craziness around here... Reason #452 that we haven't purchased one Christmas present.

He is 50% weight, 95% height
He is not walking yet and isn't all that interested
He loves to "talk" and loves saying "ro-ro" in his deep voice
He plays with cars with full sound effects like big brothers & can throw a ball across the room
He is TOUGH and now yells at his brothers when they are bugging him or hurting him

We did his cake a bit too late... he was ready for bed!

Again, pardon all the horrible iphone pics!

Mac's Big 3rd Bday!

Mac, Tucker, Issie & Jackson on the train for Mac's Birthday. Mac's "party" was hanging out with friends at Chick-Fil-A and riding the mall train! He loved it and felt celebrated. I have a friend whose birthday is in this same time period and when I was pregnant with Mac she told me how horrible it was to have a birthday in early December. I dismissed it originally because it is 3 weeks before Christmas, but I now see it is actually the worst/most hectic week of the year!! Eek! Poor Mac.

We did celebrate originally in St.Louis over Thanksgiving. In VINTAGE form, the pirate cake he wanted so much was in my parents' house for all of 4 minutes before he dug his fingers in and "erased" Charlie's name from the cake!

The train...

Safety First

Tucker's "flotation device" outfit while going over his memorized airplane safety instructions.

What?! You didn't grow up with your brother forcing you to play "emergency landing" over & over?? (Mac's required to wear his bathrobe during these sessions)

Thanksgiving...

Sean, Patrick & Kyle during our visit in middle-of-nowhere Illinois! We had a great day gathering all the Ryan boys during Thanksgiving.

I will need to fill this in as I get some pictures from people in St.Louis. We still don't have a camera so we are relying on others for capturing our lives :)

Happy Halloween!

Charlie's Halloween inspiration - Willie! (Uncle Brian's St. Bernard)

This first one is purely to see our St.Bernard's head :)