Holy hotness

82 degrees.  Sunny.  St. Louis.  March 12th?  For realz?  We won't argue and we'll take advantage.
al fresco dining
After lunch, Ryan went to a little birthday party for a friend in her class. The first I'll-drop-you-off-and-leave-you-all-by-yourself-for-90-minutes party. Say it isn't so.....Of course when I prepped her for this, telling her I would have to drop her off since the party was during Reese's nap time she was all for it -- "Mom, I'm going to a party so you need to drop me off, go home, wait and then come back and get me, got it?". Anywho, it was a princess themed party so when we got home the girls wanted to change immediately into their own attire.
Seeing as it was 82-freaking-degrees outside, we played in the water on the patio.
Not sure what Ryan was trying to accomplish with her dress....something about not wanting to get it wet.
Seeing as she felt the need to get her hair wet, but god forbid her dress, if you look closely you will see she has disrobed.
That only lasted so long....we got dressed again and enjoyed a little sip.
At the end of our hour outside, Ryan decided they should both be wearing shoes....in she went to get some and they proceeded to soak the bejesus out of each pair.
Thank you Al Gore,  God, whomever for this aaaaaa-mazing weather.

Reese

The cheeks, the thumb, the blanket.
Just shy of her 2nd birthday and the girl couldn't make us laugh more....or raise our blood pressure with her fearless ways. The words/sentences are really starting to flow now and my favorite thus far is her pronunciation of "Jack", Ryan always said it with a French flair "Jacque", well Reese has adopted her own - my mom and I lost it the other day when she was at Grandma's house and started yelling up the stairs for him and it sounded like "C*ck! C*ck! Where is C*ck!"
We'll continue to work on that....

Zerbert

Zerbert (noun; verb):  in Ryan's dictionary a zerbert is the act of blowing on Reese's stomach and/or an Icee Slurpee from Target (not sure how the heck that second definition came about but it has and it's too cute to correct).  Here it is in it's original form:
This is how a zerbert usually starts/ends....morphing from some sort of wrestling move

She's got the whole world in her hands....

Grant and I would like to think our love of travel has been embraced by our children, but in reality my lovely globe (via the clearance section of Home Goods) is apparently a 'trophy' and the ladies love to play 'trophy' in the living room. More accurately, Ryan will tease Reese asking her if she wants to hold her trophy, only to yank it out of her hands .237 seconds later saying 'that's enough, it's my trophy'.
And in all honesty, if you were to pan out a bit, this is what you would see:
Have blanket, will sleep.

Bath time...in black and white

Ryan x 4

This morning Ryan went on dissertation about how "we need to be nice to people, everybody has to be nice to people, it's just the nice thing to do"....to which I, of course, agreed with.  She gives me that look and says "mom, I was talking about you....you need to be nice to me" - I responded by asking if she was referring to when I called her out for not listening to me while she was attacking hugging her sister. She says "Mom, I said, we're talking about you.  Not me.   You need to be nice to everybody in the world". Regardless, here are four shots of my mini-me.

Scooter mania

With the ridiculous weather we've been having, Ryan was able to bust out her scooter and beloved helmet. Cruisin' the hood with her buddy Amelia.  And by 'hood', I mean Amelia's driveway.
This one was only allowed to stand. The day we allow Reese onto any sort of movable device is when they make full body armour for kids and a padded cage for which she can practice. That kid would be off full force down the block at mach speed, belly laughing the whole way, obliviously into onward traffic. Shutter.