Teapot

Rhys' rendition of I'm a Little Teapot.

It doesn't get much cuter than this.

It's a...

For the last several weeks, whenever we asked Rhys if he thinks he's getting a brother or sister, he would inevitably respond sister.  It didn't matter the order of the options either - brother/sister, sister/brother - he always said sister.  A friend of Brian's suggested that to really test him we should throw in another really enticing option like, say, a puppy!  So, we tried that...

Me:  Rhys are you getting a sister, brother or puppy?

Rhys:  A puppy!!

Since we laughed so hard at his response, going forward he'd always answer puppy even if we didn't offer that as an option.  (He's quite a ham.)

And, it turns out, he was right on both accounts!

We had our anatomy ultrasound this morning and found out that, in fact, we are having a girl.  Before we got to that part of the scan, though, the technician measured one of her little feet and said "you'll notice that the foot is about as long as the femur, so it looks like you're having a puppy!"  It cracked me up when she said that.

All looks well with our little one.  The scan was very comprehensive.  The tech took all kinds of measurements, looked at her brain and heart, other internal organs and probably other stuff that we didn't even realize.  We are grateful that everything is progressing right on track.

We are excited to meet our little puppy girl around May 25th!

 

Mr. Independent

Rhys' language skills continue to explode.  It is an awesome process to witness.  It would be even more awesome if his favorite phrase wasn't "no, no, no, no, no!"  Seriously, this kid's independence and assertiveness have reached new levels and boy can it get frustrating.

Parenting has improved my patience by leaps and bounds, but I still have work to do...and Rhys is doing everything he can to help me.  Getting him to do things, from putting on his socks and shoes to walking the direction I ask, takes a ridiculous amount of coaxing which, frankly, gets really annoying.  What's worse, though, is if we make the mistake of doing something that he wants to do.  He wants to do EVERYTHING we do - making coffee, cooking dinner, vacuuming, etc. - and if we do it without letting him help?  Lord help us.  The other morning he sobbed for 20 minutes straight because we got started on the coffee and smoothies without him.  Sometimes when we ask if he wants to help with something he says "no."  Forgetting that we are dealing with an irrational two year-old we foolishly move forward without him and, again, Lord help us.  Of course he didn't actually mean "no" he just said it because it's his favorite word!

One of his favorite tasks of late is peeling oranges.  We've had lots of satsumas around lately and boy does he love them.  So, though I find his independence exceedingly annoying and frustrating at times, I am proud enough of it to take a two minute video of him peeling a freakin' orange.  Enjoy!  (Don't worry, I edited it down to 60 seconds).

P.S. "See Rhys" means show me the picture or video of me that you're taking.  In addition to being very independent, he's rather narcissistic as well.  And, yes, he always speaks in the third person. 

Rhys Turns Two - The Party

This post is long overdue, but the blog would be remiss to not include a little something about Rhys' second birthday party.

As with his first birthday, we celebrated with family at our house.  It's small, but we made it work.  And, when it got too crowded, we just went outside for some play time.  

Rhys received many fun presents, but mostly he enjoyed having all of his favorite people in one place.  My favorite aspect of the party was the awesome cake that Brian made.  Cake creations are one of Brian's hidden talents.  Over the years he's made me many delicious and creative cakes and this year Rhys got one too.  Given Rhys' love of the outdoors, Brian went with that theme and came up with this:

The "lake" is blue jello and that's a yellow submarine getting ready to submerge.

Still to this day, when Rhys sees the truck that was climbing the mountain he says/sings, "Happy Birthday, Rhys."  It's really stinkin' cute.

The trees are frosting creations hand-crafted by Brian.

 Brian never uses any sort of template or pattern, he just dreams up an idea and makes it a reality.  It's pretty cool.

The other particularly noteworthy part of Rhys' party was the announcement that he is going to be a big brother.  Papa helped Rhys unwrap his "Big Brother" t-shirt and it got *awfully* quiet in the room when everyone saw it.  We found it pretty funny.   

All in all, a most excellent second birthday party.

  

Cookin'

Rhys loves to cook.  Before I got pregnant and thus wasn't repulsed by the idea of preparing meat, I was very diligent in my efforts to come home after work and make a nice dinner.  Rhys would "help" in whatever way he could and he loved it.  He's continued to love it even over the last two months when we've pretty much just made scrambled eggs or grilled cheese sandwiches every night.

Given his affinity for cooking, Brian and I got him a play kitchen for his birthday.  It is as big of a hit as we'd hoped.  It's the only "toy" that he consistently plays with and is willing to play with by himself.

On another note, this is one of the cool motorcycle shirts that Rhys got for his birthday. Unfortunately, it's just a tad too small...we couldn't help but think of Chris Farley when we put it on him...big boy in a little shirt.

Saturday Morning

Most of our Saturday mornings involve a walk to Starbucks and the nearby park.  Here are a couple of pics from a recent morning that was particularly beautiful.

I love the sweet way Rhys is resting his hand on Dada's leg.

I'm kind of shocked we were able to get a decent pic of the three of us!

A different Saturday morning, a different walk - same cute boy.

Undies!

On most nights, the last thing I do before I put Rhys in his crib is list for him all of the people that love him.  If I forget, or try to skip this step, he reminds me.  He says "talk people".  This means "let's talk about all of the people that love me."  So, we go down the list...

Mama loves Rhys
Dada loves Rhys
Grandpa loves Rhys
Grandma Donna loves Rhys
Grandma Ann loves Rhys
Nanna loves Rhys
Papa loves Rhys

etc, etc, etc

After each person he repeats me, except that he leaves out "loves."  It goes like this:

Me:  Auntie Audrey loves Rhys
Rhys:  Auntie Aud-da-da-da Rhys

Last night, our routine took a funny twist.  The last book we read was The Potty Book, so that topic was on the brain.  The very last page in that book says "undies" and we talked about how he'll get to wear undies, like Mama and Dada, when he goes to the bathroom in the potty.  And then our "talk people" routine turned into this:

Me:  Katie loves Rhys
Rhys:  Katie wear undies

Me:  Debra loves Rhys
Rhys:  Debra wear undies

And so we went down the list.  It was quite funny.