Cross posted from Facebook - Parental Abuse

If you think I am being mean to you, something like this has likely happened to me within the past 24 hours.
If my son wasn't so darn cute, I'd probably scream at him every second he was awake. 

To all my friends out there with small children: you may be the best parent in the world but your three-year-old will eventually do something like this, especially if they go to day-care.  ;)

Addendum

Also, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, a list of things I am thankful for, in no particular order: 

• God and salvation!
• Ryan, Tanner, Ariana, and Steve the Cat, and our health.
• My fabulous parents and in-laws
• my brother Josh and his beautiful children, my brother-in-law Casey and his wife Shannon and their little boy who will be born this January
• a warm house with lots of lights and food
• Leidsekaas
• wonderful time and fellowship with family who are more than friends this year and always
• Great co-workers (doesn't hurt that one of them is my dad ;))...props out to our NY guys...on that note, thankful that both Ryan and I are gainfully employed
• All the little extra things that we have but don't need
• I'm thankful that it's winter, but that spring comes afterwards, and with spring comes yet another year of chasing those elusive trout! (Thank goodness I will fit in my waders again!)  Hopefully no creepy old men in their underwear wading up and down past me in the river at sunset again this year...

There are myriad other things I'm so, so grateful for, but that covers the most important ones, I think.   Now.  With those things in mind, BRING ON THE HOLIDAYS!! (I haven't even screamed at Ryan yet this season, and we're past Thanksgiving Day!...I guess he has things to be thankful for, too!)

Let the Holidays begin!!

So now begins the busiest time of the year for us.  Now that Thanksgiving is done (with two fabulous Thanksgiving dinners in a ridiculously short period of time - thanks Aunt Sharon (and all the cooks) and Ryan's mom Shelly), we have coming up - four birthdays between December and January, five Christmas celebrations in two days, another one in January, ....general mayhem preparing itself to ensue.  I am, of course, already behind.  I have Christmas cards to get ready, but I need to get everyone prepared for our Christmas picture beforehand.  I don't know when I got this freaking domesticated, but it isn't all that bad.  So not much has really happened recently, so this is a photo update.  Here are some recent pics of the fam:

 And Thanksgiving:

My baby cousin Addy...who is not so much of a baby anymore.  I can't believe she's 10 years younger than me; she looks all grown up!

Tanner and Ryan ready to go out and play in the ice puddles.

Apparently his new boots are, in fact, waterproof.  Good deal.

My beautiful smiley girl!

"Ice skating"...as it were...

Tanner enjoying the fruits of his and his Grandma R.'s labors.

Super bubbles!

I love my in-laws' bath tub.  Tanner looks tiny inside it.

So as you can see, we had quite the eventful few days.  Now to enjoy the (short) lull before it all goes to you-know-where with the busy busy.  Yeoorgh!

Hope everyone else is staying warm, and sane.  I am really really hoping that this spring Ryan will be able to get down to NC to fish with his buddies; if he goes, I am going to take the kids to Philly to visit with some friends.  (Fingers crossed).


So now the question of the day is...when did we all grow up enough to have pictures and plans like this?  I'm not sure that I'm prepared to be an adult...too bad I have been for a while now.

Halloween 2010

Holy cow.  The sugar content of our house went up by about a billionty seven over the weekend.  The cold of doom that the four of us contracted was more or less over with by Saturday, at which point I raced to finish Tanner's costume in time for the Lafata's Halloween party (4-6 with trick-or-treating beginning PROMPTLY at 6 p.m.) and also to help Ryan clean the house in preparation for the appearance of all four grandparents, who we invited over to see the kids in full costume.  Tanner helped clean.

Well...it sort of worked out.  I put the last stitches in Tanner's dinosaur at about quarter after 4, and while I'm definitely not very proud of my work on this costume, it turned out well enough for Tanner to trick-or-treat in and not fall into tatters immediately.

Tanner was thrilled with the candy, the kids, the costume.  He had very specifically asked for a blue dinosaur with green spikes, and ran around for hours rawring.  He was also very enthused by the neighborhood kids who dressed up as The Cat in the Hat and Thing 1 and Thing 2.  They were pretty stellar looking, I must say.

Little Ariana was a ladybug, which we purchased from Carter's.  I have to say, with a great deal of bias of course, we have two extremely cute kids.

We also carved some pumpkins.  Tanner drew the entire face for his pumpkin, and Ryan only helped him to outline the mouth (T kept drawing over and over the same squiggly line for the mouth).  The kid has some talent! 

From left to right, Ryan's pumpkin, mine, and Tanner's.  Ari's is the little painted one in front (I helped her :-p)
...and I think she liked it!

Annnd, here they are all lit up:

So that was our Halloween.  Now we are winding down, and every day trying to find new reasons why we don't need candy right now.  Poor Tanner, we take all the fun out of everything.  He keeps telling us that he can have candy because "the dentist told me my teeth are for crunching candy because I'm a big kid and Ari can't have any because she don't have any teeth!"  yeah...right...

So on to our next escapade.  I am planning a baby shower for Ryan's brother's girlfriend and Ryan's cousin who are both due in January.  The shower is next weekend so if I don't lose my mind, maybe I'll post some pictures of cute pregnant ladies.  Yayyy pregnant ladies.

Cold Season: 4, Reynolds Family: 0

Before Ariana was born, one of our claims to fame was that Tanner didn't have his first cold/flu/"serious" illness until he was 18 months old.  (I know, we're lame.)  We've now been broken of that claim...Ari has her first cold already!  Of course, Tanner didn't have a 2-1/2 year old sibling dragging home bugs from school, so that was a big part of it.  And he got his first cold after starting at daycare, so really, we can blame close proximity with multiple toddlers for the advent of sickness in our household. 

Of course, being home sick now is a lot different than when we were non-parents.  No more sitting at home on the couch doing crossword puzzles and watching reruns of sitcoms for us.  Now it's get up, get the kids ready, get ready, get to daycare, work, change diapers, tend children, try to keep everyone from going stir-craaaazy.  I never realized how awesome the previous situation was.  Of course, being a semi-work-from-home mom makes the situation much more livable, since when the kids are sick I'm set up to take phone calls and access our computer system from home, which is awesome and insanely challenging all at once.  I thought it'd be a walk in the park, this working from home thing, but I'm always torn between trying to set up cool stuff for T-man and trying to get things done.  This usually results in Ryan getting hollered at when he gets home from work.  (Poor saintly Ryan.)  We are figuring it out, though, and the benefit of being able to be with my kids is well worth any struggles we may face.

So for now the goal is to get Tanner's dinosaur costume finished before Saturday morning, finish up a couple projects for work, and get some rest so that everyone can be well prior to trick-or-treating.  I think I'm going to wear my big cloaky coat that Mom gave me when I was pregnant with Tanner and try to find a wig, and then tell everyone that I'm Martin Luther as I hand out copies of the Theses.  In the meantime, I am going to ignore the baskets of laundry piling up to be folded and avoid as much cleaning as humanly possible.  Pictures of Halloween will follow shortly.  Tomorrow is pumpkin-carving day, I hope I'm up to it!

Trying this business out

In an effort to keep folks updated on our comings and goings without the sterile impersonal quality of Facebook status updates, I've decided to try my hand at this whole family blog thing.  Expect none of the acidic and terrifying rants from the old livejournal, just family-friendly stories and the like.  We'll see how this goes, I guess.  You may at times see a post from Ryan, but I rather doubt it. I'm hoping this will hold me more accountable for documenting the kids' milestones, too.


So drop by once in a while.  This might be a great place to relax with a cup of tea and catch up with your favorite Reynolds family.  Then again, it might be a great place to relax with a cup of tea and fall asleep to the nonsensical ennui of our lives.

It's going to be a lot of mushy mommy goodness about these two.