Birthday Boy

On Sept. 29th, our Ry-boy turned three years old!  I can't believe he's so big and the time has flown since I remember bringing him home from the hospital not so long ago.  He's so different from his big brother and has thrown me for a loop on many a parenting issue, but I love his stubborn personality and how silly and smart he is.

Ryan takes his morning cartoons pretty seriously and ever since Jack started school, he has a meltdown once I make him turn off the TV and he realizes he's just got me for the next couple hours.  I offer to play Legos and all the other fun things he does with his brother, but I guess it's just not the same. Besides Legos, he loves Star Wars "guys", Super Heroes and really anything his brother likes.

(on this day they both insisted on wearing the same color from head to toe)

Lately Ryan has an obsession with dressing up and pretending he's someone else.  He's very excited about being a cowboy for Halloween but has many other options he likes to try out in the meantime.  He got a Wolverine costume for his birthday, a Thor helmet, and a Captain America t-shirt.  He also loves Jack's old costumes and creating new dress-ups like black socks and shoes to be a basketball player like Dad.

His gift from Mom and Dad was his own bike--also something to help in keeping up with his big brother.  He was pretty excited even though he's yet to master the whole pedaling part of it.  And yes, I either get scowls or cheesy smiles in most pictures with him!

We continue to battle on the whole sleep issue, but he's much better at staying in his own room all night now that we set up his bed on the floor.  He prefers a sleeping bag to the bottom bunk and that's fine with me so long as he's not cuddled up to me in my bed--it stopped being sweet a long time ago.

He's also been pretty stubborn on the whole potty-training issue, but I'm pleased with how long we've been out of diapers for as strong-willed as he is.  He turned into a puppy a few weeks ago and just starting leaving puddles on the carpet for no reason other than he was too busy playing, but knock-on-wood that phase has passed.  I have to be really clever when it's time to leave the house or go to bed and make it seem like using the bathroom is all his idea or some kind of contest with Jack; otherwise he's not interested.  He drives me crazy when he dances in place and thinks he can go hours on end without a bathroom break, but there's no forcing this kid to do anything--I've tried.

For all his stubborn antics, he's pretty smart and tries to rationalize his way out of a lot of things like how he can't help clean up a mess because "it's not his problem" or "it's too dangerous."  I crack up daily at the things he says and have tried catching his funny conversations on video more than once.  Some things we hear on a regular basis are, "It wasn't me...it did it by itself", "NO, NEVER", "I want to do it all day", and "I'm big, right?"

I think he'll make an excellent big brother after having some practice with his little cousins that have visited over the past month.  He loves babies and helping take care of them like holding Owen's bottle and alerting someone the second he started crying since something needed to be done ASAP.  Little does he know he's got some crying to get used to with a newborn coming home soon, but covering his ears seemed to do the trick if the noise didn't stop fast enough.

We sure love Ryan and all that he brings to our little family.