Rylie 10 months

It is hard to believe how quickly Rylie is growing up. She has now been out of my belly just as long as she was in my belly. Rylie is such a happy girl and brings us such joy. She is always smiling and waving. Her smile is BRIGHT and contagious. She still has BIG blue eyes. Rylie's hair has finally started growing in, especially on the back of her head. It is blonde, just like Derek's. Rylie is babbling a lot and will "sing" with us. She also says the word "YEEAAH" and some form of "bye." Rylie responds to her name, turning her head when we call her, and she waves whenever she hears goodbye or hello. When we say we are going to pray at the dinner table Rylie puts her hands together (trying to fold them). She also has learned the sign for all done and will use it at the table now when she wants to get down. (We found the signs "all done" and "more" to be so helpful with Derek and have started teaching them to Rylie.) Rylie LOVES to give hugs. When we are holding her and say, "Rylie, can you give Mommy/Daddy a hug?" and she makes the sweetest "ahh" sound and then puts her head right on our shoulder. Melts our hearts!! She will also crawl/cruise over to me, climb up in my lap and give me a hug. Rylie has learned to point to objects. She LOVES music and will wave her arms to the beat whenever she hears it. This month Rylie's two front teeth came in!! This makes her tooth total 4 (Derek had 4 teeth by 6 months and 8 teeth by 10 months). We moved changing table out of her room, which is a little sad because she is growing up so fast, (since we have to wrestle her during diaper changes) and replaced it with a storage organizer with toys in the bins. The kids are playing more in their rooms and its nice to move some toys out of the playroom. Rylie loves books and will point to pictures in the books. We are so blessed to be her parents and cannot imagine our family without her! Sweet Rylie girl we love you!

pointing at things

Rylie LOVES to eat and eats everything!! She will sit in her seat for about 40 mins each meal eating whatever table food we put in front of her. It is so wonderful to all be eating the same food at meals!! I love her avocado makeup in this picture.

Rylie LOVES to move. She does not want to be held much and wiggles to get out of our arms. She is getting more adventurous with cruising. She enjoys opening the supposedly childproofed cabinets, looking out the windows over the windowsills and walking laps around our house "chasing Derek." She hasn't taken any steps by herself yet, but can stand for a quick second unassisted. She also likes to walk holding one of our fingers or pushing something. It won't be long now before she is walking around on her own!

Love the determination in her face!

One of Rylie's favorite toys is the Cozy Coupe. She climbs in and out, pretends to drive, opens and closes the door, and pushes it around the house. Sometimes she falls out or slips through the open floor. She will often play in it for 30 minutes at a time!!

Rylie LOVES to climb. She has mastered the stairs and enjoys climbing onto the dishwasher, chairs, cabinets etc. She is quick and we have to keep a close eye on her.

Rylie LOVES to play with her big brother. This month she has begun to wrestle and climb on top of Derek. They both think its hilarious, but we have to keep a close eye on it since Derek is so much bigger and stronger and he is learning how to treat her gently.

daily video chat with Daddy during breakfast

Biking with Bella
Today we went to the park to go biking with our friends Christina, Bella and Caden. Derek was in his element with the hills and some dirt hills!! It was so much fun watching Derek and Bella bike together. They biked for almost an hour on the dirt hills. Derek LOVED the big grass hill too.

Here we are getting ready for the walk to the park. The Strider bikes are on top of the strollers!

Christmastime Fun in Phoenix

 

Derek 2.5 years old and Rylie 9 months old 

ZooLights

I displayed our Christmas cards this way (we had 3 more strings) this year and we have LOVED looking at them. Thanks everyone for sharing your family with us!

This year we bought a real tree right after Thanksgiving, knowing we were going to buy a fake tree at the end of the season. We were excited to find out that the tree was tagged wrong so we got a larger tree for less, but we were soon disappointed to find that after a week the tree had not taken any water and one side of it was dead. We knew it was not going to last a month in AZ...so I took pictures of it and returned it (without actually having to take the tree back). After getting fully refunded we went out and bought a 9' fake tree, which we LOVE. Growing up with a real tree every year, I never thought I would ever want a fake tree, but here in AZ it just makes sense. Matt and I joke that we are becoming true Arizonians after getting fake grass in our backyard and a fake tree!!

Derek decorating our real, but soon to be dead tree

pondering over all the ornaments

our second tree of the season, our fake tree

Derek and his best friend Zack put together boxes for Operation Christmas Child with things that boys their age would like. Without shopping together, it was amazing to see the boys picked out almost the exact same stuff for their boxes. The boxes will be shipped and handed as Christmas presents to kids all over the world.

 decorating gingerbread house

 getting the candles set up for our windows

 playing with the Christmas train my Grandmother made

 Christmas sweetheart!

 telling the Christmas story and playing with the Nativity

the kids in front of our dead tree

I love that Derek's dump truck is in the picture.

 ornament Derek and I made

 making peppermint ice cream

enjoying hot cocoa on a special date with just Mommy and Daddy

We did a lot of singing Christmas songs and dancing around the kitchen. Please excuse my singing in this video, but Rylie is so cute with her jingle bells. To this day whenever Derek sings jingle bells she pretends to shake her bells.

Helping Mommy make a Christmas lasagna

Rylie was curious about the tree and the ornaments.

Christmas morning