Its been forever

I have to say I'm probably the worst blogger in the world.

 So lets see, what's new? I'm down 19.5 lbs since the beginning of March and it feels wonderful. I have about 20 more until I'm happy with my weight but i'm just so proud of myself for finally sticking to a healthy routine. We're going to start trying for baby #2 in the late fall/winter so I want to be as healthy as I can for the next pregnancy. 

Ryland is doing amazing, he's keeping me busy as always and its great. Our summer music classes started yesterday and it was so wonderful, even though he's 2 months shy of being able to be in the toddler class I asked the owner if I could put him in it instead of the infant one (which we attended this spring) and she let us, he thrived in it. He had such a great time dancing with all the kids and playing the instruments. It is so much fun seeing him grow into a toddler and discovering everything. He has this new understanding of how things are supposed to be done and its amazing to watch him figure things out. Lately he's been obsessed with talking on the phone and helping me take dishes out of the dishwasher.  

I have a couple of pictures from the other day when Ryland helped me to clean out the car. He had such a great time. 

Quick almost wordless update!

I've been busy busy busy unpacking, gettin settled and chasing after Ryland but I've found a few seconds to say hello and give an update.

First, Springfield is great, Mark's new job is great and Ryland is great! We adopted a new cat, who we are currently calling David Venable Jr (from the QVC Host) but I think it might change. I'm not a big cat fan but Mark talked me into this kitty. Hes great with Ryland, which is a huge relief. Ryland has unwrapped almost all of our presents under the tree so most of his gifts are in the basement waiting until last minute to appear under the tree. I was going to do Santa this year but I know he has no concept of Santa yet (other than he is a scary man who says HO HO HO) so Santa can come next year when he is almost 2!

Gotta run!

Its been a long time

Updates updates! It's been a busy month. We're moving in two weeks for Springfield, Il! I am so excited but that means I'm very busy right now too. Mark is not much of a packer so I've been packing away everything while taking care of the little Mr.

Both Ryland and I were really sick the last week and a half, Ryland had croup (still no idea where he caught it!) so we were dealing with a bad cough and sleepless nights. I'm still really stuffed up and congested. My mother-in-law came over yesterday to help me get some stuff done around the house. We had some touch up paint to do which turned into having to paint the entire living room. The walls were so dirty from all the dust in my condo that there was no way we could get away with doing a touch up here or there.

Ryland is walking! Lucky for me hes not running yet, or even walking everywhere but he can walk from the chair to the couch, or from Mark to me so I consider that walking (5 or 6 steps is walking right?). I can't believe how big he is getting. Every day his personality comes out more and more, it is the most incredible thing to see him figure out something new or be proud of himself for doing something. Tonight he waved at a girl behind us at the cash register we didn't even know he could do that! He's a flirt. I haven't put up new pictures in a while because Mark has limited me on what I can put onto his computer since I had like 200 GB of space taken up of photos and videos.. oops! The pictures on this post are the more recent photos. You can see his teeth. We've got 5 teeth now and I'm pretty sure theres another one coming in.

Thats all for now, I should be asleep!

4th of July

We got back from our 4th of July week-long extravaganza yesterday. It would take a very long time to go over all the details but in short: we are VERY glad to be home and the next visit to New Jersey will be a very long time from now.

On the positive side: Ryland got to see a lot of family, I got some great pictures of him as always and we gained a VERY cute costume out of the ordeal. My mom went shopping and brought back a skunk costume that she got for $.19, it was a steal. I am going to have a photo shoot sometime this week before we leave for Wisconsin. I can't wait to post the pics.

Day one of my real diet has begun, and good news is: Mark is on board with me! I'm so excited. Usually when I attempt to diet I get sidetracked with burger king that Mark brings home, but since he's on this diet with me that can't happen. I'm hoping once I get into a groove I can stick with it. I find thats the hardest part about starting a diet, getting into a groove.

This week is very busy, I have my final exam in my stat class and then I have the weekend to clean and pack and sunday night we're off for 5 days for Mark's job. I'm pretty excited. The baby is up so I have to run, but I'll post pictures of my little guy in a bit.

its been a while..

So I haven't posted in a few weeks, heres what I've been up to :

I started summer school at Iowa State, I've been insanely busy, in my acct class I have a quiz everyday and homework every day as well. My stat class so far is a piece of cake, I wish I had a better memory- I swear I did all the same stuff my frosh yr of high school which is crazy if you think about it. Pretty sad that as a college student you're not learning anything new.

Rylands been going to a at-home daycare for a few hours a day while i'm in school.. I'm not a big fan of the people hes staying with. The only reason I actually am ok with leaving him there is I know they treat my son well, whenever he sees the couple that watch him he gets a big smile on his face and I figure he wouldn't be ok going with them if he didn't like them.. but to Mark and I they seem to have a bit of an attitude problem when it comes to us.. I don't know if they are like this with everyone or just us because we're young and whatnot. For example, my class starts at 840 so we drop him off at 8 so I can make it to school on time and on most days Mark drives me. Last week I took the bus to school and Mark dropped of Ryland because he had to meet someone at work early, I guess he just kinda handed him off and said he'd be back in a few hours because the lady who watches him, I'll call her "s", gave mark a whole little talk about how they didn't like that we just drop him off and don't have a relationship with them and they don't want to watch him if thats how we're going to be (mind you, when I pick him up I chat so its just when Mark was dropping him off that they didn't like it).. so anyways they half yelled at him for 20 mins (he ended up being late for his apt at work with a client) -who does that? Seriously, if we had time to chat in the AM we prob would drop him off later right?

I prefer that if Mark is home in the morning, Ryland stays with him until I get home, to me that just makes sense (why have a stranger watch my son when he could be spending quality time with his dad, right?) well this one morning Mark told me he was going to drop off Ryland so he could have some alone time.. I said fine but that morning Mark and Ryland fell back asleep on the couch together so I called S and told her that I didn't think Ryland would be in because Mark and he had fallen asleep on the couch, and if he did come it would be in the late morning.. well Mark had to run to work ( yet again) so he just dropped off Ryland and said he'd be back in an hour or so to get him, S ripped him a new one saying that I had called and said Ryland wouldn't be in at all and their daycare was not a place to just drop off a kid for an hour (I don't quite get why she'd be ticked that he was there since we're shelling out $$ to her anyways )..I just feel like there have been a lot of incidents like that and it frusterates me.

Marks been trying to get a promotion, but we'd have to move out of state, which i'm actually excited about. He's looking in Wisconsin but really it could be anywhere from WA to NC. We've already decided as a family that at the end of this sem I'm going to drop school again, for a few reasons 1) financially it doesn't make sense for Ryland to be in daycare, and if I got a job i'd pretty much be PAYING for daycare, I can't justify working to pay for someone to take care of my child ALL DAY just so I get a degree 2) I miss Ryland while i'm at school and even though everyone says its good for me to have a break from him I don't agree and I don't like it 3) If we move, which is around an 80% chance, I'd have to leave school anyways and re-find a sitter and move into a home and everything else... The only thing is i'm terrified of the reaction my parents are going to have (yes, i'm married with a child and still fear the wrath of my parents) they are so happy and keep saying how I can't put my life on hold and i'm getting my act together (they were not happy about me having a child so young), part of me says wow i'm a huge disapointment as a child and the other part of me says i'm doing whats best for my child and my family which sits way better with me.

As for Ryland, my litte man is sitting up.. not for long periods of time somewhere between 5-10 seconds on average (last night we had a fluke of like 3 mins). Its so sad, hes growing up so fast already.. soon he'll be crawling around and talking to us, i'm going to miss my cuddly boy. Hes even grown out of his carseat!! Mark and I are driving to BRU (babies R us) to pick up a bigger seat, its so wierd to think that hes already out of an infant carrier. Today we did his 4 month check up, hes 18lbs and 26 inches. I was worried about telling the doc that I was going to do a delayed vac schedule but he was completely fine with it and it went great, I can def tell this time that Ryland is going to do a lot better than he did last time!

We did take him to his cardiologist and they found more problems but this post is already FAR too long. So I'm done writing for now.