Too Cute for His Own Good

Rhys' wave is pretty stinkin' cute.  It's unfortunate that he tends to give it freely to those who could care less and withhold it from those who would love to see it.  As an example, there's a semi-weird guy who often sits outside of the church across the street from our house.  I know it doesn't make me a good person, but I wouldn't have minded much if Rhys chose to ignore him on our daily walks.  But, nope.  Rhys really likes that guy and he gets some of the cutest waves.  The little old Asian ladies that beg for a wave get nothin'.  The semi-weird guy is definitely warming up to Rhys, though.  In a recent interaction, he offered Rhys half of his Butterfinger.  You won't be surprised to hear, I swiftly responded "no thanks" and we made our way to the park.
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The guy graciously took "no" for an answer.  We had less luck in a different situation.  Out on yet another walk, we encountered a guy who was a little rough around the edges.  Of course, Rhys waved at him and he immediately pulled a handful of wadded up ones out of his pocket and tried to give one to Rhys.  It was so weird and I did not want Rhys to take it so I was kind of bending over him, holding back his hands and the guy proceeded to stuff the dollar bill in my shirt pocket!  No, I am not kidding.  Yes, we are getting serious about buying a new house.

Perhaps, though, if this cute face waved at you, you'd feel compelled to offer money as well.

    

Lessons: Bubbles and Fire

Tonight we learned that Rhys does not like bubbles.  For the first time, we added bubbles to his bath in an attempt to distract him from the faucet handle and drain plug that he recently figured out how to use.  The distraction attempt ended in crocodile tears and desperate pleas to get out of the tub.  No bubbles.  Got it.

Yesterday Rhys learned the meaning of hot when he touched the fireplace.  Ouch.  He got a couple of little blisters on his fingers and I got some blisters on my eardrums.  That boy was in pain and wanted us to know it.  We had planned to take Rhys on a bus ride downtown (weird, I know, but he loves buses) and I thought we'd forge ahead despite the burns (dumb, I know, but I thought some distraction would be good).  We were at the bus stop waiting and Rhys was shrieking and another passenger waiting just looked at me like "lady, please, please do not get on the bus with that screaming baby."  Fair enough.  We headed home.

    

Dear Rhys

Dear Rhys,

It was really fun hanging out with you this weekend.  Which is good, because hanging out with you last weekend sucked.  You were crabby and I was crabby.  (Poor Dada).  At one point you threw yourself down on the sidewalk and had a little tantrum.  I would have loved to do the same.  Monday could not come soon enough.  Your mood did not improve based on the report from Katie that day.

You're figuring out that you don't always get what you want.  You're realizing that, contrary to the way you've been treated for the past 16 months, the world does not revolve around you.  Those are tough lessons.  I get it.  And I empathize.  Nonetheless, it stinks when you're cranky.  And it really, really stinks that you've found a new notch on your crying/shrieking volume dial.  Wow.  It is something else.

So, I am really glad we had a nice weekend together.  Yeah, you got pissed off here and there when things didn't go your way.  But for the most part you were in good spirits.  We went for walks.  We played at the park.  We met a few dogs.  We bought some Legos (that you couldn't care less about).  We made green smoothies.  Boy do you love your smoothies.  We tortured the cats.  Oh, wait, that was just you.  Poor cats.  We took good naps.  Oh, wait, that was just you.  Poor Mama.  We had fun.  Yep, both of us.

You don't say much other than "up" (which you say A LOT) but you have a few signs (milk and more) and you understand a ton.  You hand us our shoes when we ask.  Tonight you complied when I asked you to get a towel and wipe up the milk you'd spilled.  It is incredibly cool witnessing you learning and growing up.  I am so excited to have conversations with you.

Here are some random pics.  There would be more, but you continue to be obsessed with tech and refuse to let us take your picture without grabbing for the camera.    

In case you can't read see the shirt... "Kiss me I'm Irish".  Thanks Gramma and Grampa!

Self-portrait.

Close up.

You've been asleep for a couple of hours (yes, we still put you to bed at 7 even though it's light out) and now it's time for me to join you in dreamland.  Night, Boop.

Love,

Mama  

P.S. Happy birthday to Mat, Grandma Donna and Shane!

15 Months

Stats:

Height - 32.5" (88th percentile)
Weight - 27lbs (92nd percentile)
Head circumferences - 19.6" (100th percentile)

The handout we get from our doctor at each well-baby check-up includes developmental milestones to look for over the next three months:

Walks or runs well - Check.  We encourage Rhys to walk a lot.  Whether outside for a stroll or out running errands, it's most likely that Rhys is walking.  We sometimes get funny looks from other parents (whose kids are in strollers) but it doesn't bother us in the least.  I've been reading a lot about the importance of walking for a child's development, so we encourage it whenever we can. 
 
Pushes or carries around large objects - Check.  Watching this in action cracks me up.  Rhys loves to try and pick things up that are half (or more) his size and he seems genuinely surprised when he can't do it.  In terms of pushing things, his latest favorite is the big ol' grocery cart.

Imitates parent activities - Check.  This has really come on strong the last couple of weeks.  I particularly enjoy his imitations of Brian putting in hair product and me chewing gum (without the gum of course).

Wants to do more than he can or should - Double check.  'Nuf said.  (How funny is it that this is a developmental milestone?)

Shares poorly - Half check.  (Again, what a funny milestone).  Rhys is actually a good sharer when he wants to be.  He's particularly generous when sharing food...except blueberries.  He'll reach out and get the blueberry nearly in your mouth and then quickly pull it away and eat it.  He thinks he's hilarious.  We do find it pretty darn funny.

In summary, our kid is huge and basically a genius.  Cheers!  :)  

Up Late

It is WAY past my bedtime (10:17) and yet I am still up.  Why?  Well, Rhys seems to have leapfrogged into his teenage years and is now sleeping late.  Yes, I am probably jinxing us, but I must report the happy news that we've gotten to sleep in past 6am for several days this week.  So, here I am up past 10...wanting to record a few random notes...

...Sometime in the last week Rhys decided that he likes to sit in my lap and read.  It is awesome!  He'll grab a book and bring it my direction.  When he's a few steps away, he turns around and backs into my lap.  It is so darn cute.

...This morning he said "bye-bye".  I was getting ready to head out the door and he said it to me.  Katie (nanny) and I just looked at each other like "wow, that was awesome!"  I loved how excited she was.  She really loves Rhys which means so much to us.

...Rhys can now point to his nose when asked "where's your nose" and has figured out that plugging it makes him sound funny.

...This past weekend we went for a walk and there were several City of Seattle trucks with flashing lights parked along the side of the road.  Rhys got so excited.  He is really into big trucks.  His excitement caught the eye of one of the workers who brought over a genuine hard hat for Rhys.  It was a nice gesture that was met with a pouty look and furious head shake "no" when said worker attempted to place said hat on Rhys' head.  No hats, regardless of how cool your truck is, thank you very much.  

...When I say we went for a walk, I mean all three of us.  No more stroller for Rhys on our walk to the hospital for coffee.  Yeah, it takes a lot to keep him headed in the right direction, but it's totally worth it.  He loves walking and I get such a kick out of watching him. 

Ok, it's definitely bed time now.  Night-night!

AM Applesauce

Rhys is a dream to put to bed at night.  We read a couple of stories, sing a couple of songs and then put him in his crib and walk out.  That's it.  Oh, and it's generally somewhere between 6:30 and 7:00 so we have evenings to ourselves (usually to work, unfortunately).

Mornings, on the other hand, are rarely as pleasant.  We're getting accustomed to the early wake-ups, but the screaming is nearly unbearable.  It's not every morning but, man, when he wakes up unhappy and starts in, it just plain sucks.  It is SO LOUD it makes my ears hurt - literally.  Today was one of those days.

So, when life gives you lemons you make lemonade, right?  We made applesauce instead.  (At 6:15am on our day off.) 

 

For me, one of the most amazing parts of this video is that Rhys looks at the camera (phone) several times and not once starts whining for it.  That's highly, highly unusual.  This is more like it...

Playing with Mama is fun, but not as fun is the iPhone.

Grandpa came to visit from Spokane this weekend.  As he did last time, he let Rhys play with his digital camera.  Wow.  Grandkids really can get away with anything.   

Rhys: Look Grandpa, I'm touching the screen with my grubby little fingers that just finished dinner.
Grandpa: Awww, you're so talented and smart and cute!

Motivated

I've been really unmotivated to blog lately.  Ironically, it seemed to happen right around the time we got a second computer.  So I've had no excuses on that front.  Mainly I've just had the January/February blahs and not been feeling particularly creative.  Additionally, it continues to be quite difficult to get a good picture of Rhys due to his obsession with technology.  While I enjoy writing the posts, I know the real allure for our audience is pictures!

Well, today things changed.  Katie captured an incredibly cute picture that needed to be posted ASAP.

Thanks to Gramma and Grampa Wynne for the Valentine's Day shirt.  And, thanks to Dada for putting Rhys in it today (I never would have dreamed of breaking the rules in such a way).

So what else is new?  Well, we (me, Brian and the grandparents) all got some quality time with Rhys last week as Katie was on vacation.  On one of my days with Rhys, we went to a big yoga studio that turns itself into a play area for toddlers for a couple of hours a day.

 

Like all of the kids there, Rhys had a grand time playing on all of the stuff.  Rhys diverged from the other kids, though, when it came time to sit in a circle for songs.  I was astounded when I saw kids Rhys' age curl up in mom's lap to sing with the group.  Rhys pretty much never sits down and this day was no exception, regardless of what the other kids were doing.

Don't bother looking for Rhys.  He's not there.

These pictures aren't the greatest because, as usual, I had to be sneaky.  Even with all of this cool stuff around, as soon as Rhys saw my phone, that's all he wanted.  Rhys' tech love did serve me well, though, on the way home.  He was starting to fall asleep in the car, which I did not want as I wanted him to take a good long nap at home.  I rolled down the windows to keep him awake (yes, it was raining and yes I know it sounds mean) but it wasn't really working.  Heavy eyelids were taking over.  As soon as I handed him "his" phone (my old phone) he woke right up and played with it the whole ride home.

On our second day together we went to the local community center and played with some other kids and a bunch of cool stuff for the bargain price of $2.  Afterwards we came home and both took long naps.  You all know how happy that made me.

Last Sunday (another gray and rainy day) we went to Home Depot.  It seems strange, but it's actually a great store to let Rhys run around in, especially early on Sunday morning when there aren't many customers there.  On our way out we rang the bell, which won't mean much to you unless your name is Grandpa Tom.

What else?  Rhys graduated to a full size crib.  My sweet friend Annette gave us her crib as her 3rd (and final) child is ready for a real bed.  Her offer was out of the blue, but the timing was perfect as both Brian and I had independently noticed that Rhys was starting to seem awfully cramped in his sleeping quarters.  On his first night in the new crib he slept a full 12 hours and woke up in a great mood.  I'd say he was ready for the upgrade.  Thanks, Annette!

We've experienced a few "terrible two" tantrums, but generally Rhys is doing great.  He's really working on his communication skills.  Every day he seems to understand more and more of what we're saying.  He says words occasionally; most consistently he's able to tell us what a duck says (I promise to try and get a video of him saying "quack, quack" - it's super cute).

Alright, night-night for me.