What Was I Thinking?

This afternoon on our errands Grandma needed to stop at the scrapbook store for Aunt Erica, no problem except I forgot my stroller! A two year old running free in a scrapbook store is just never a good idea. She was doing really well at first, but then we found the die cuts. She dumped two boxes of leaves out all over the floor and started to throw them everywhere. This led to one melt down after another because we would no longer let her walk or play at the play table, because she would just dart away to throw something else. We should have stayed in the car.

A New Potty Training Method

If you are wondering where we disappered to last week, it was to the wonderful world of potty training. My sweet 2 year old did so well the first three days, but we have been struggling since! Today we were out shopping for a new kitchen sink, but Rylee went searching for a toilet. Grandma said maybe letting her pick her own toilet would help her catch on to potty training! Hey at this point I am up for anything!

Beautiful Little Girl

We were getting a little tired of Rylee's hair falling into her cute face, so I took her on Saturday and had them give her a trim. She has some new bangs, many layers, and about an inch off all the way around! Then Sunday morning Rye and Grandma did their make-up together. Isn't she beautiful?

Dinner with Grandma

The other night we met up with Grandma Kathi, yes she is in town :), and Rylee was extremely excited. She wanted to show off everything she has learned for Grandma. She was showing her how she smiles, how she licks Mommy, and how she whistles! Grandma was so sweet and patient to watch all of her antics.

New Home Decor

A friend that I grew up with, Shauna, has recently started painting portraits for people as wedding gifts, and pictures of kids, and she is awesome. We had her do one of Rylee and I am so excited to get it--it's in the mail. Absolutely adorable! I highly recommend checking out her etsy website and seeing some of the other paintings she has done. I am already thinking of different things to get painted: the new baby, our wedding portrait and others. . . maybe Christmas presents for people! So if you need a gift idea, send her your favorite family picture or picture of your kids and she will do a great job.

Family Pictures

While in California a few weeks ago we took family pictures. Here are a couple.

2 Year Check-Up

Rylee had her 2 year check-up today and it went great. She weighs 22.7 pounds (4th percentile) and she was 32.5 inches (12th percentile). The doctor and I talked about her size and he is not worried at all, he said "she is just a cute little peanut!" I have to agree! We talked about potty training and getting it done soon, so we will not have problems with reverting back when her brother comes. That adventure will start on Monday. We also talked about her gross motor skills, and he said that she is completely caught up, even though she didn't want to walk until 19 months. Unfortunately we had to end the check up with her first Hepatitis A shot, she did not enjoy that at all!

Baby Wyatt

For some reason I did not get any pictures of baby Wyatt while we were there, but luckily Aunt Heather and Uncle Jason had our back. We all took turns holding baby Wyatt, we need to practice the whole newborn baby thing again. Rylee even got to hold him the other day, and she could not stop giving him hugs. She is going to make a fantastic big sister to her baby brother!

Are You Kidding Me?

This morning Rylee and I went to the gym as usual, but she sure looks like she had more fun today. I dropped off a clean, freshly bathed two year old, and I found this little monster when I picked her up. It was craft day at the daycare and she found all of the markers. She had marker on her shirt, her shorts, her legs, arms, hands, next to her eye, and somehow in her nose! :) Luckily the markers are all washable, but still! To go along with the markers, somehow she managed to pull out her pony tail and hair bow. She sure had an exciting time today.

Rylee and Kylie

Rylee is obsessed with the the three babies that we around all weekend! Kylie was staying at Grandma and Papa's house too, so the two of them had so much fun playing together, or at least I know Rylee had fun playing with Kylie! Rylee didn't quite understand how come the babies couldn't move that well, she would pull on them and ask them to follow her, it was really cute. This picture was after the older kids had gone to bed and the two little one's had the chance to play just by themselves.

Pool Time

Rylee spent a bit of time in the pool with everyone this weekend at Grandma and Papa's house, and she is getting much braver in the water. She loves jumping in the pool to Papa and Daddy, blowing bubbles and being thrown up in the air. She has already asked for the pool about 10 times since we have been home, poor little kid!

Popsicle

Uncle Jeff and Aunt Lisa have a perfect little patio that Rylee was able to enjoy a Popsicle on. Luckily I stripped her down, because the Popsicle went everywhere. The idea to create mini-popsicles for kids is perfect, but making the colors stronger and brighter, honestly? We had to scrub Rylee three different times to get her face back to a normal color!

Pike Place

After Gelato we walked over to Pike's Place to watch them throw the fish. It is really amazing because the opening to get the fish into is not that big, and most people would miss with a baseball let alone a fish. Then we walked all the shops through the Market Place and went to look over the water. Aunt Lisa was so sweet to show Rylee the water, the boats, and the cars going by!

Gelato

After the Aquarium we headed to the Gelato Shop! Aunt Lisa had mentioned this place and I thought it sounded like a wonderful idea. Rylee hasn't been a huge ice cream fan, but I should have gotten an extra scoop just for her today. I think by the end we each got about half of the Gelato, but who could blame her it was delicious!

Exotic Fish

This afternoon our tour guide, Aunt Lisa, took us to downtown Seattle and showed us the sites. We had talked about going to an Aquarium and she mentioned this one in the International District and it was really neat. It was not really an Aquarium, it was more of an exotic fish store. The fish in there were amazing, I had never seen most of them before. There was one that cost 750 dollars--for a FISH! Rylee had a great time because the fish were really active, and whenever she put her finger against the glass they would come swimming over and follow her finger wherever it went.

Playing With Uncle Jeff

After church yesterday, and after much-needed Sunday Naps, Rylee enjoyed a solid block Uncle Jeff Time. They spent time hammering and Uncle Jeff even wore her princess necklace and bracelet, what a good Uncle!

Throwing Rocks

If she could have, I think she would have jumped right in the water. But it was far too cold, so she had to settle with her second-favorite: throwing rocks! (On the walk to the lake we had a little stumble and bumped our lip, so you may notice a minor injury, but she is just fine now.)

Rylee and Mommy

It is sort of fun actually getting to be in a picture. Aunt Lisa was so nice to take our picture while on our walk. After the park we walked passed a dog park and Rylee went crazy because she loves to look at the puppies. She will not touch them, but she likes to look. From there we headed down to the shore of Lake Washington to throw rocks in the lake!

The Park

Across the street from Uncle Jeff and Aunt Lisa's place is a huge park, and we took advantage of it on Saturday evening. While the boys were still out playing, Aunt Lisa took Rylee and I over to the park to show us around. We started at the playground, and Rylee was so excited to be outside and free to run everywhere. The playground was really neat, because it had about four different play areas that were for all different ages. Rylee loved running and climbing, but still wouldn't do the slide by herself. Her good Aunt Lisa was more than willing to help out.

Road Trip - Stage 1

We headed out on Friday for our drive to Seattle, and it went much better than I could have even imagined. On Friday we went roughly 10 hours to Yakima, WA, and stayed the night. During the drive we only had one 10 minute meltdown and it was about the sun getting Rylee in her eyes. I wish I would have had the camera out to capture the DRAMA, it was unbelievable. ("Owww! MY EYES!")
We made two stops, once in Boise and to let her run for about thirty minutes, and then once about 3 hours later to let her play at McDonald's Playland. She was so cute in McDonald's. Everything she did was frantic, as if she would never get to do it again. She would run and take a bite, run to slide, run back for another bite, everything was at turbo speed.
She watched two movies, but her favorite was Jungle Book, wonder where she gets that from. (Her Daddy) The funny thing is one of the characters in Jungle Book is a puppy, and every time they come on the screen she sceams "PUPPY". We do not know which character is the puppy yet.
Saturday morning we drove about three hours to drop Matt off at the most intense paintball place I had ever seen, it seriously was Rambo style! Matt, Jeff, Scott and Jeff's friend, Jud, spent the whole day out there together, while Rylee and I finished up the drive to hang out with Aunt Lisa.
We are very encouraged by how well Rylee did on the way up here, but we are keeping our fingers crossed for Wednesday as we drive to Sacramento from Seattle.