rough day

we know ryker has had a rough day at preschool when, soon after he comes home, he asks for "bubbles" (a bubble bath). there's nothing like a nice bath to make the stress of a day fade away.

or, in ryker's case, there's nothing like a bath to make messes in attempts to get nigel wet.

put in our place

my beautiful niece, ellie, joined us for dinner a few weeks ago. as we were sitting down at the table, ellie mentioned she wanted to have the TV on so she could continue watching a movie. graham and i told her that dinner time was for talking as a family and that we would finish watching the movie after dinner.

sean and ellie were at our house again this weekend. when we sat down for dinner, ellie said "annie, you're not supposed to watch TV when you eat dinner." sure enough, graham left the TV on so we could keep watching march madness. we all were speechless, not sure how to justify breaking a family rule for big basketball games. after literally ten seconds, and multiple attempts of stuttering the beginnings of some type of rationale, i had to just eventually laugh and give ellie kudos for remembering the rules and for not being afraid to put us in our place.

another haircut

i need to take ryker to get another haircut today. however, i was going through old pictures and i found one of ryker and his curly hair from last summer. even though his hair has no curl to it now, i am tempted to grow it out again.

saving elmo

i'm not sure how ryker became fascinated with elmo but the muppet is either a great way for us to get ryker to do something or an annoyance when we have to watch elmo You Tube videos on our phones or television. for the purposes of this story, i'll focus on elmo's positive aspects.

when ryker was being fussy about eating dinners, graham brilliantly found utensils, a plate, and a bowl with elmo decorations on them. now ryker is much more excited to eat dinner if he gets to use one of these items.

and the other day was classic.

i poured ryker his cereal, and because he loves to be like his dad, he began to drink the milk from the bowl. as he tipped the bowl forward, he caught a glimpse of the elmo drawing in the bottom of the bowl. apparently, this surprised ryker because he shouted “elmo!” but when he put the bowl down, the remaining milk covered up elmo.

ryks was seemingly concerned and made it his mission to “save elmo.” he kept shouting “elmo” right before he started to drink the milk. then when elmo would reappear, ryker would laugh and milk would spill out of his mouth. this continued until ryker drank (or spilled) all the milk so he could see elmo at all times. when finished, he gave us one of his huge smiles and proudly showed us the bowl. so elmo lives for another day.