Ryan is 10 months old

Ry Ry,

You’re 10 and a half months old now; maybe we should create a paper chain to countdown for your birthday! I’m really excited for it, but at the same time am a little sad about it! I was working on party details tonight, you’re going to have a great monster bash 😉

You’re *thisclose* to walking. If you’re standing up and we sit close to you and call you over, we can tell you’re psyching yourself up for it… you kind of get up on your tip toes, get a huge smile on your face, lift your arms high in the air, and make your best attempt at walking to us. I think you’re up to about 2-3 steps before you fall into us…. so close! And it’s absolutely adorable 🙂

Today you emptied the balls from your shopping cart and grandmama said “all gone” and you definitely responded with “all gone!” Amazing. Speaking of how smart you are… you love to take people’s glasses off their head/face and now you like to try to put them on your own face. You’re too cute in mama’s sunglasses! You also pick up your toy phone–or our phones–or really anything that’s the right size and shape for a cell phone–and you hold it to your ear, talk some Ryan talk, and put the phone back down. We knew we had a genius on our hands 😉

We’re getting ready for your FIRST Christmas (and birthday two days later!), but every present we’ve bought so far has already been opened and given to you…. daddy is just too excited! He can’t handle keeping things for you all packaged up for another month and a half, haha.

After asking you how big you are since birth, you’ve finally decided to play along with us. You lift your arms up high and even get on your tip toes. How big are you?! Sooooo BIG! And so smart and so cute!

You eat 3 meals a day and still nurse a lot (but less, I think). I’m amazed at how you can chow down sometimes! Speaking of, you had a check up at the doctor and weigh 19 pounds. Perfect!

Oh and you LOVE to climb the stairs. You can even go back down the stairs (with us watching you!) and climb down from the couch! You’re a pro, you turn around and slide off and rarely ever fall. The other night I woke up because I heard you whining. That’s usually my cue to get you out of the crib and take you into bed with me, but I knew I had already done that… so where were you?? I sat up, so confused! You whined again and the room was dark so I got out of bed and you came crawling over from the doorway! You had climbed down from bed and gone exploring.. it was probably like 3am. I was amazed (and a little worried), but all was okay, you lil stinker!

We’re trying to work on teaching you manners… like not hitting the cats or trying to grab their eyeballs out of their heads… and not hitting mama and daddy. You love to share! You feed us your cheerios (and think it’s hilarious) and you go after toys just to hand them over to us. When we say thank you, you’re so pleased with yourself–and then you put your hand out to have it back 🙂

The other day you grabbed a jar of tomato sauce from the lazy susan and dropped it on the floor–glass and sauce everywhere! But no one got hurt 😉 and we cleaned it up quickly. You’re just so mischievous and curious! Your favorite thing to do is empty things… empty your shopping cart, empty the dryer, empty the bookcase of allllll mama’s papers, empty your toy chest–especially if mama or daddy have JUST put everything away or back in. Sometimes you’ll go after the exact item we just put away so you can pull it back out again, haha. You’re always making us laugh!

Mama took you to school the other day and you met one of my classes! You crawled around the floor for awhile and stood at the desks. The students were taking a quiz and you started chatting away, even laughing. It was a fun day for mama even though you had to leave early with grandmama for nap time. I wish you could come to work with me every day!

We love you so so so much, to the moon and back 9,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999 times,
<3 mama and daddy