Back!

I just can't find enough hours in the day anymore! When I checked my email tonight, I had 190 new emails.......daunting. So if you have emailed me in the last 10 days, I finally read it and I am sorry to have taken so long. I am going to make myself check it at least once during the week so this won't happen again! Last night I said to Dennis, "I wish I could just stay home!" His response: "You'd get everything done in two days and then what would you do?" Needless to say the conversation ended there.......

Today I took Ryan to the store for the first time and he sat like a big kid in the cart!! It's just so much easier to leave him with Dennis to do the shopping, but today I just wanted to get him out of the house and getting some fresh air! Having him at the store was certainly a different experience! First of all, more people stopped to comment on how cute he is (with one employee commenting on how he just had to kick his 25 and 23 year old kids out of the house this week. Um. ok.) He also ate my grocery list before we even got out of the produce department and I couldn't remember a lot of the things we needed! Dinner will be a hodge podge of things this week!

My friend Anna came to visit us this week. We lived together with another friend Amy the year before Dennis and I got married and right now she's in a PhD program at Wheaton. Smarty!! She's still got five years of school left though. Ouch. :)

Here are my sisters with Ryan. We celebrated Christmas with my family since the weather destroyed any Christmas celebrations the first go-around. They are so purdy. :)

Here is Ryan. This week has been a VERY exciting one for him! Last Saturday he started crawling (out of nowhere might I add - I totally thought he would skip that entire stage)!!! It's an army crawl using his elbows and the tips of his toes to lurch forward. It's so adorable though he's already worn out one pair of socks and one pair of footie jammies.....I'd better get used to it though - such is the life of mothering a boy I suppose!

When he's not reading, he's pulling himself up on the book basket. This week has had its share of developmental leaps that's for sure! Today he clapped on command for the first time. And he kept missing his hands at first because he was looking so hard at me and Dennis. My heart melted!

This was part of his breakfast this morning. The staple Cheerio. Would he put them in his own mouth? No. Would he let me put them in his mouth? Of course. Will he put anything and everything in his mouth EXCEPT food? Absolutely. He never ceases to amaze me!

Notice the Cheerio on the very tip of his finger?? Working on those fine motor skills!

Before I forget, today I received my first email scam!!! Someone who claims to know me is stranded in Spain and needs 2,000 pounds in order to be bailed out. First of all, the official currency of Spain in the Euro, so I have no idea what immediate good the pound will do for him unless he can exchange it from jail. In any case, I was tempted to respond that I've lost quite a few pounds myself lately, but I've only got about 10 to give and he's welcome to take them. Tonight preferably. ;)