4 Years +1

This was an interesting month at our house.  Christmas decorations started coming out and being put up all over the house in weird places.  Last year Ryder started trying to get ready for Christmas in June; this year it's April!  Some of the decorations were stored next to the stairs in the basement where he could just get his arm in and yank them out.  Consequently we had a very strange assortment of random Christmas stuff and Christmas lights all over the house.  The lights were even "strung up" and lit up!  It's going to be a long 8 months!

Ryder is still loving dinosaurs.  There is a paleontologist on his dinosaur TV show and now he has been digging up fossils all over the place.  He found a paintbrush and got some digging tools and starting extracting and cleaning fossils all over the place.  There are 12 inch holes everywhere and piles of fossils all over the yard.  The best day was when he brought in a bunch of fossils and cleaned them in the middle of the living room floor!  

As he is every year, Ryder has been a big help in the garden.  He loves to plant seeds and pull weeds.  He knows all the plants that we have growing around the yard and he loves to make the rounds with me to see what has grown and how much.  He gets super excited when the tiny seedlings appear!  He takes his job as chief rabbit chaser very seriously too; he loves to run outside and chase the naughty rabbits out of our garden.

Ryder's favorite new snack is popcorn.  There have been a lot of rainy days here so far this Spring and on a few of them, I've made some popcorn to eat while we watch some shows.  I always seriously overestimate how much popcorn that we need and make a huge bowl.  Ryder will just sit and chow it down!  It is the messiest food ever though- when we eat it, it actually gets everywhere.!

28 months!

Vivien is still the sweetest little mama's girl in the world, but she has started throwing temper tantrums.  This is a lot earlier than Ryder, I feel like, but she has been watching Ryder throw them for a year...  She does the typical yelling and crying and she also goes limp in your arms when you try to pick her up or console her.  It doesn't take very long to distract her or comfort her, though, so it's not that bad.  Once she's been comforted and has stopped crying loudly, then she holds on to my neck for dear life and buries her face in my shoulder.

It is crazy how much she talks now and most of it is comprehensible.  She does have her moments where we can't understand a word of what she has said and we just smile and nod!  My favorite phrase this month is "I love you so much," which she says fairly frequently.  She especially lavishes me with love when I come to pick her up after school.

The past month two new molars erupted, so there were quite a few nights where she woke up in the middle of the night and slept with us.  Thank goodness she is much better to sleep with than she used to be.  Now she just settles in between us and puts and arm or a leg on me and sleeps through the rest of the night.

At some point in the past month we found a bottle of bubble bath that had been gifted to us ages ago and now bubble baths are Vivi's favorite.  She already loved bathtime funtime and now she loves it even more.  If you even mention bath time, within minutes Vivi is in the bathroom getting ready! 

Vivi loves to play outside and now that the weather is better, she asks to go outside constantly.  Her current favorite thing outside is the mud puddle in our driveway.  The minute it rains and starts to fill back up, she's over there poking the mud with a stick, burying toys in there and even sitting in it! 

This goofy girl rarely just sits still

What a sweet little face

She's always good for a big smile!

Being silly

A good jump but a blurry photo!  :(

Exploring the great outdoors

Now that's a walk with a purpose

Examining something she found

4 years old!!!!

It is incredibly hard to believe that Ryder has turned 4!  He has gotten so big and so grown-up; I shudder to think  how fast the next 4 years will go by and how big he and grown -up he'll be then!

Ryder knew all month that his birthday was coming and it was hard for him to contain his excitement!  The week before his party we put up some dinosaur decorations and then finally his birthday banner.  He had requested a red cake, which unfortunately I ended up not having enough food coloring to pull off, but he still got a red Apatosaurus on it, plus all of his favorite foods, including meatballs, fruit and guacamole!  The morning of his party, we gave him and Vivi dinosaur shirts and big inflatable dinosaurs to play with while we finished the preparations.  Most of his gifts were dinosaur related, so of course he loved that.  He got enough dinosaurs and dinosaur activities to last him quite some time!

This month has been the month of the dinosaur.  He knows the name and characteristic of what seems like every dinosaur out there.   All the books that he wanted to read, every game he wanted to play, every show that we watched on TV; it was all dinosaurs!  It is fun to see him so excited about something- he is genuinely thrilled to be learning new things and sharing his knowledge, so that's really cool.

Bedtime is pretty funny.  Ryder still loves to use the monitor.  Almost every naptime and nighttime we hear "Mommy, come on the monitor!"  Most of the time now I can comfort him without having to go upstairs, which really helps keep Vivi asleep in the evening.  What is really funny is that we can hear Ryder over the monitor.  He has books and sometimes toys in his room, plus his own personal flashlight, so he usually plays or reads for a little while before falling asleep.  It is adorable to hear him talking to his dinosaurs or acting out a firefighting scenario!

Aside from turning 4, the other big development this month was that we signed him up for Pre-school and he'll be going 3 mornings a week next year.  This step was so hard for me!  I want him  to be my little baby at home forever!  We visited his new school and he enjoyed seeing the school, playing with the toys and meeting the teacher, so we think that he will love it.