Playing at Park, Playing with Friends, Playing at Home

Ryan is finally old enough to sit in the big sand areas and play rather than try to jam all the dirt he can manage in his mouth. So happy day! We went to a 'big boy' park this weekend. It has higher climbing things for the daring. Trev continues to be a braver monkey lately. He'll get himself through the big catapillar things on his own and is trying to figure out how to climb up poles but still needs a little help. We start up gymnastics again next week after stopping for the summer. I'm thinking he'll love it again.


Ryan not eating sand


Trevor on top of the catipillar

They both had a lot of fun in the little tunnels. Ryan thought it was hilarious when Trevor would pop in and out. And sometimes he just found it pretty exciting sitting in the tube period.





Where'd Trevor go?


He just remembered a funny



Later that day we went over to some friends' house to play games and visit. There were three little girl babies there, all of them under six months. Trevor enjoyed trying to make them laugh (until it got boring of course) and had most success with one of the twins, Jessica. Ryan didn't seem to notice much that they were there except when he occasionally got kicked in the face. Girls. Sheesh. But he did get to play with exciting pink toys part of the evening.


Ahhh aren't they cute?

And this was from a different day--Trevor was making thankyou bags to put his thankyou cookies (dinosaur shaped with extra sprinkles) for his teachers. I put Ryan in chair number two and we managed to avoid any falling disasters. The sitting on the chair was novel for a good fifteen minutes or so. Trevor and Ryan are moving up in their daycare rooms tomorrow. Trevor will be a Hummingbird and Ryan a Teddy Bear. I think it's a bigger switch for Trevor because it'll be more preschool focused and more kids per adult. I guess they get to take real field trips and all that too this year. He's pretty excited about it and dubbed himself a Hummingbird a couple weeks ago. Ryan is blissfully unaware, but seems to be reasonably adaptable for his age so I'm thinking it'll work out okay. I start work this week by going to the agency retreat in Apple Valley. It's just two days, but sort of carries the impending thought that school is indeed starting again.

Teeth!

Ryan has been pretty busy growing in some teeth in the past couple months. I think the two bottoms started early June and now he has four on bottom and four coming in on top already. I was trying to take some pictures to show his top ones, as requested by Grandpa Steve, but it's tricky because they're not fully grown in and he seems to smile without showing the chompers.




















And I just thought he looked cute in this one.
























And off topic, since teeth aren't really required here--Trev and his favorite part of cooking

A Camping We Will Go

We went on our first camping trip with the boys and it turned out to be not awful... even mostly fun. We went up to Horseshoe Meadows--up pretty high around 10,000 feet, out of Lone Pine. The goal was to go somewhere cooler since it's excessively hot in town now. Ryan had some issues on the trip. I'm not sure if he had a little cold before leaving that was worsened by altitude gain or if he was allergic to something, or just doesn't like dirt that much. He had some fun, but also had quite a runny nose/clogged eye ducts going on.


Waiting for John to set up the stuff

We went on a little hike out to the meadow. When we were getting ready to head out Trevor saw the baby backpack and asked what it was. I explained that's what we carry Ryan in when we're hiking. Then Trevor asked what we carry him in... he was quite the trooper. The meadow is really pretty and has a stream running through it. So obviously that means your supposed to throw rocks in. Pretty exciting stuff.






Caught Ry raising his eyebrow--and you can see his new streamlined hair-do

Trev was pretty into helping at the campfire. He had a whole pile of little sticks and acorns gathered to throw in and thought the hotdogs were pretty darn good. He was super tired by marshmallow time, but again the little trooper managed to stay up to eat a few. He pretty much put one on a stick, warmed it up minimally and then popped it in his mouth. He thought it was pretty weird that I liked to eat burned marshmallows. After marshmallows Trevor surprised us by coming over and asking very politely "Can I go to bed now?".





The next day John made pancakes and coffee--both very delicious, and we played around a little bit. Trevor was pretty entertained with everything around him--dirt, trees, rocks, dirt, pine cones, other people's dogs, dirt. Ryan had spurts of happiness, but was pretty tired and filled with snot overall. He had a hard time staying asleep and it was hard to tell if he was too hot, too cold, too weird of a place, or just achey. All four of us went to bed early the next night after we got home and we all slept in an extra hour or too the next morning. We'll definitely do it again, but probably wait til next summer to go overnight so Ryan can be a little more sturdy.


"I climbed a tree!"

More Alaska

We took the boys out to the Eagle River Nature Center to go on a little hike--it was a little short of a mile with a couple of spots to stop and look at things. Trevor was all for it the first half and ran through the treed area all the way to the boardwalks. Then he seemed to loose interest in it all and complained most of the way back. But he was a trooper and walked the whole way. Things become excruciatingly tiring once they are a little bit boring.

























Trev loved the blow-y flowers

Different day... same outfit (daddy dressed him both days as there are stripes with stripes), Grandpa Steve, John, and Trevor went fishing. They went out on a little lake nearby where you can rent boats. Trevor got to sit in a boat, row a boat, hold a fishing pole... all things that make a pretty good trip. Trevor reported back that he did not catch anything, but Grandpa caught two seaweeds. So we didn't have to worry about cleaning anything.


























We went out to a friend of my dad's 'cabin' for the day. It was pretty dang hot out there. Lots to do though. The highlight was a ride on the boat around Big Lake. And of course throwing rocks into the water. That's always a good time.


John and Trev throwing rocks



Big boat ride



Ryan likes to talk about Fox news topics too


My parents moved into their new house while we were visiting and it's pretty snazzy. They put a playhouse in the boys room complete with stairs and slide. I was impressed that Trevor was able to sleep at all. He's already talking about how when he goes back there will be bunkbeds. The rest of the house is nice too and it looks like there might be a good future sledding hill in the back.


Trevor helping grandma make cookies



Ryan helping grandpa watch tv


And Trevor made a video giving a tour of the playhouse, dedicated to his cousin Gracie

Alaska Part 1

As Trev would say "we did lots and lots of stuff" while we were up there. So I guess I'll just kind of go in the order of the pictures and maybe split it up into a couple posts.

Trevor was greatly encouraged in his sport skills--he played baseball and football with grandpa quite a bit. He's getting pretty good at hitting the ball and grandpa has been showing him to run afterwards. The game still needs a little fine tuning as he'll take off running regardless if he hits the thing because he likes to be chased with the ball, then a lot of the time he'll yell "your out!" when he gets back to his bat whether or not he's batting or field. Makes the game more fun.





They have a music in the park program for the kiddos at a park down town. It was pretty fun and interactive (and had reindeer sausage stands close by) so I took the boys a couple times. The downtown area is pretty exciting to walk around with all the tourist shops. Seems like every block or so has a giant stuffed bear, moose, puffin, wolf, etc. Trevor claimed all of them as his friends.


Ryan at the park


Trevor takes egg shaking very seriously


Trevor and his bear friend


I am proud to say that Trevor can now identify Salmon

Trevor got to go to work with Grandpa a couple times while we were up. This means that he got to ride in the big red truck, get a donut, check in with grandma at the office on the cell phone and trail grandpa around in the morning. He was pretty cute in making a production out of it while leaving--waving and telling me he has to go to work with bapa now, he'll see me later.



He also got to help drive the tractor when my parents drive way was being prepared for asphalt. Again, very serious the whole time. Clarence let him move all the sticks and knobs, pushing and lifting the dirt.



We went to the Imaginarium one morning and as luck would have it, a majority of the exhibits were focused on aerodynamics. So Trevor got to play with his first wind tunnel. Ryan enjoyed the mirror room.

LA Trip

We're back from vacation land have tons of pictures all stored up and ready to post... So I thought I'd start with LA.

John was in New Mexico for work the entire week and my parents were visiting anyway to support the John and Jasmine 10 year anniversary retreat, the kids and I flew back up to Alaska with my parents while he was away. We were in LA for a couple days before taking off.

So the LA highlights consisted of going to an outdoor mall (escalators! escalators! fountains!), going to the Labrea tar pits and museum, and then of course going to the airport. I feel a little like we're hicks any time we travel out of town and come across fountains, elevators, or escalators. Trev is super excited about all of these and we get to spend a lot of time looking and riding.






Trevor was a little concerned for the elephants at the tar pit (mammoth statues that show some stuck in the tar). Unfortunately, it was the mommy elephant who seemed to be meeting her demise. Despite there being no dinosaurs there, Trevor enjoyed seeing the fossils (and learned that new word). Grandma bought him some binoculars at the gift shop so looking at stuff became even more fun. And there were fountains. Lots of fountains.



We went to Venice Beach the morning before heading out to the airport. Turns out ducks like cheerios and once we could track some down Trevor had quite the minion to lead around the canals. It stuck with him because a couple weeks later when we were at the Big Lake "cabin" I suggested we get crackers to feed some ducks in the lake and he explained that ducks don't like crackers. Ducks eat cheerios. Duh.



The airport was VERY exciting. Actually, the excitement began at the car rental place. He was pretty impressed by all of the cars there and kept talking to the announcement that periodically played that reminded people to leave the cars unlocked with the keys inside ("I know I know We did that already") Then Trevor was very impressed with riding the bus to the airport. He was spending most of it saying "Weeeeeee!" and every now and then "Whoa!". And he also felt the need to talk to the driver whenever there was an announcement of the airlines we pulled up to ("No, grandma said this is not our stop. We have to stay on the bus"). We traveled in style with the grandparents and got to go to the AK airlines board room to wait for the flight. It's a wonderful place with huge windows for Trevor to look out of, a kids area with a TV movies and books, cookies, and wine.







The flight itself was also exciting. Trevor sat with grandma for the LAX to Seattle flight while dad and I took care of Ryan. Then the Seattle to Anchorage flight I took Trevor because grandma was exhausted and turned out Trev was equally tired out and fell asleep before we even took off. The airports and whole traveling experience felt pretty tiring and hectic, but I think overall I lucked out.

Ryan's Stats

Ryan had his official 6 month appointment recently--John and I were on our anniversary vacation, so the Quigley grandparents ended up having to take Ryan to get measured, poked, and prodded. Here's the update:

Weight: 19 lbs (between 50th and 75th percentile)
Length: 28.5 inches (between 90th and 95th percentile)
Head Circumference: 18.5 inches (off the chart... but it's kind of curving now, so that's good)

So considering the head size, it's also very impressive to us that he's really getting the hang of holding himself up right now. We can sit him down and he can keep it up for quite a while unless something interests him that he feels he needs to make big reaches for, or if his daddy or brother zoom by and he has to look up or around fairly quickly.

All in all we're very happy to have two very healthy and spunky little boys.