I’ve been putting a lot of new Ryan pictures up in the gallery the past few weeks, but haven’t noted it here yet.
I split the Ryan gallery into years 1, 2, and 3 now. The 3rd year pictures are all the new ones I’ve been putting up. Click on the picture for a direct link to that gallery.
Once you enter a gallery, use the cool slideshow viewer to peruse it.
Three weeks ago, Ryan’s Aunts Karen, Julie, Kim and Val and Grandma Lola bought him a nice truck for his 2nd birthday. Until today, he’s been a bit hesitant to ride it.
We were outside playing, and I talked to him about the truck for a while, then encouraged him to give it another try. He decided he’d hop in and give it a go.
He doesn’t quite have the steering thing figured out yet, nor the accelerator…but he had fun and it’ll be no time before he’s the King of the Road.
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I finally got the gallery software updated, and now we have a really neat new slideshow that is much better than the old one. I still have some customization to do, but it’s functional!
I added pictures to Ryan’s 19th month gallery, and then put new ones up for the 20th thru 24th months.
When you get into an album, you’ll find the “view slideshow” link in the left navigation. Try it out! In the first view, you get a 3D “wall” that allows you to peruse the gallery quickly by grabbing and dragging. Then you click on any picture and it will zoom in. From there, you can click the right and left nav arrows to move through the gallery, or click the slideshow icon in the middle to bring it into automatic mode. It’s set for 8 seconds, but you can move thru faster using the arrow button. In the lower left, you’ll find a “full screen” option which is very nice for looking at pictures.
Here’s a quick link to the top-level Ryan gallery. All the new ones are at the bottom.
Let me know how the new slideshow works for you. One tip: Right-click on the slideshow and select “settings.” Increase the local storage limit for the flash application, you’ll probably get better performance.
It’s been a while since I’ve put up some more Ryan pictures. I was trying to upgrade the gallery software, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen for now, so I’ll get pics up soon.
In the meantime, Ryan just turned 22 months yesterday and there have been a lot of new developments and fun stuff that I thought I should catch up on.
He’s been able to say his ABCs all the way through for a few months now, and is presently counting up to 16. He’s fascinated by numbers and letters, one of his favorite toys is the magnetic set of plastic numbers and letters that he got for Christmas. His other current favorite toys are his mega bloks, play-doh, and the Aquadoodle mat. His favorite stuffed animals are Big Bear, a white Santa bear from Christmas 2008, his Elmo doll, and his big stuffed puppy. We often have to move them from one level of the house to another throughout the day when he says “all of them in the tent” or “all of them on the couch.”
On the topic of speaking, Jen was documenting all of his words but stopped somewhere when he got over a few hundred. He can communicate quite well with us, putting together 4-8 word sentences (missing a word here or there) to tell us what he wants. He also likes to repeat everything you say to him to the best of his ability.
Ryan’s got Spring fever big time here in the last two weeks. Temperatures have gotten into the 60’s several times, so we hear “outside Daddy, outside Mommy!” many times a day. I’m pretty sure he’d be just fine if you kept him out from sunrise to sunset. He likes to walk up and down the neighborhood, get pulled around in his wagon, ride on his swing, and play on the neighbors slide. It has a 6 step ladder that he climbs with ease.
He’s also had a big fascination with water in the last few weeks, so he has to get in the shower with each of us and usually wants it to run until we’re out of hot water. With both the outdoors sessions and the shower / bath sessions, he’s been getting pretty upset when he has to come inside or get out of the water, although in the last few days that seems to be less of a problem. The “2’s” stage is upon us, so whenever he wants something, it’s the most important thing in the world at that moment.
Ryan has started toilet training a little bit. He is able to sit on his potty and pee if we put him on it, but he’s not yet asking for it or indicating that he needs to go. Whenever he has to poo, you always know it because he goes off to be on his own for a while in another room, and he gets quiet – except for some mild grunting. So the other day, after I got out of the shower, Ryan wanted to stay in there and play. After a period of quiet, he was saying something that we weren’t sure of. I opened the door and he had left a number two on the floor of the shower! It turns out, he was saying “stain,” which is what he says when he sees a stain on the carpet. Jen and I got a good laugh out of that one.
A few weeks back, Ryan’s Grandma Lola and Aunt Kim came up to watch him on a Saturday afternoon while Jen and I went out, and they stayed the night at our house. On Sunday, we had plans to head over to Lansing for Dad’s 79th birthday party at 5 pm. Kim and Mom left to head back to Lansing at noon the same day, and kind of jokingly asked Ryan if he wanted to go with them. Just like a little trooper, he went and got his coat, hat, and shoes and climbed into Kim’s van to go on a trip. He wasn’t in the least bit afraid to leave Mom and Dad, so Kim got to keep him for the afternoon until we all met up at the restaurant for Dad’s birthday. Apparently, he was as sweet as pie all day, no fussiness about being away from us! I think he handled it much better than his Mom, in fact. It was good for Ryan and Aunt Kim to spend some time together.
We’re getting ready to take off his crib rail soon and put on the toddler rail. He hasn’t started climbing out yet, but I think he’s responsible enough to get out of his own bed when he wants to now. I’ll probably put a gate at the top of the stairs, just to prevent him from sleepwalking and falling down them.
Two years old in two months! Time flies…
I just put up most of the pictures for Ryan’s 18th and 19th months. There are still some on the camera from the 19th month that I will add later.
These sets include Ryan at the John Ball Zoo and the Potter Park Zoo in Lansing, and his first time playing in the snow.
Quick links:
We took Ryan to the zoo today and had a great time. On the way home, he treated us to a song. This is great stuff!
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I’ve started on a project to scan all of my old film camera photos into the site, and while I was playing around I put together two pictures of Ryan and me at about the same age…
There’s a bigger version of it in the gallery.
Also, check out the Dave’s Old Photos gallery, just getting started on it.
Ryan turned 17 months on Saturday. We were at Reno’s in Lansing having pizza with him and someone had left a bunch of balloons at the table from a party. We gave them to Ryan and he had a blast knocking them around. Unfortunately, we didn’t have our better video camera with us, so all I got was this cell phone capture, but it’s still very cute.
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I put up Ryan’s 14th and 15th month galleries today, check them out! The 15th Month features pics from the Ionia Free Fair with his Aunt Julie and Aunt Val, and pics from his Memphis trip with Uncle Eric and Aunt Crystal.
Yesterday we took Ryan on his first annual Cedar Point trip, it was really a great time. At first Jen and I weren’t sure about going to Cedar Point with a 15 month old, but it wasn’t long before we both felt that we couldn’t imagine being there without him.
Ryan had a great time. He rode in the Cadillac Cars with us, rode by himself in 3-4 of the kiddie cars, and rode on a merry-go-round with Jen. Cedar Point has a nice deal called “Parent Swap” that allowed us to take turns riding the major attractions while taking turns watching Ryan. One of us would stand in line for the ride while the other stayed with Ryan. When the first of us completed our ride, the second one got to go on almost immediately. So while we didn’t ride together, we still got to enjoy the big coasters while having fun with Ryan as we waited for one another. Since it was my favorite week to visit Cedar Point, our average wait was 15 minutes per ride. Only the Maverick was 1/2 hour wait.
A beautiful day ended perfectly when Ryan got his first ride on a real train – a 15 minute ride on a real steam engine. He was almost completely tuckered out when we got on the train, but as we started moving and the train whistle sounded, he got a second wind. The ride took us through “Boneville” as it was getting dark, and Ryan pointed at all of the neat skeleton characters in the Old West setting. Then after dark we walked through the starry night display with millions of lights dancing to the music. Ryan was wearing his own lighted necklace that flickered, he loved it.
He was so tired by the end of the day that he was asleep five minutes after we got him in the car, and slept soundly for the four hour ride home.
I’ll post the Cedar Point pics later…in the meantime, here are some quick links for the 14th and 15th Months.
We’re in Memphis this weekend for Jennifer’s Mom’s 60th birthday party, and they decided to take Ryan and his triplet cousins Cole, Aden, and Eva Claire Pettet to the photographer for a session.
Some pretty nice pictures came out of the shoot. They included lower-res copies of all the images from the shoot on a CD, so I published them here to the site. Ryan is 14 months here and his cousins are three years old.
Quick Link:
