The definition of...

ram-bunc-tious (adj) --  (1) difficult to control or handle; wildly boisterous.  (2) turbulently active and noisy.

This week Dylan has shown me the true definition of this word.

One unfortunate consequence to the cold winter season is having to stay inside a lot more.  This does not make Dylan a happy camper.  He loves going outside!  It also allows him to run around and burn off some of his energy.  Therefore, on weeks similar to this one, when the weather is rainy, cold, and just generally crappy, we are trapped indoors.  Dylan starts to go stir crazy and then that eventually starts to drive Mom crazy, lol.

For example:

I'm not sure if he plans things out or not but Dylan sets little traps.  

Step 1:  He makes the kitchen & living room look like a small tornado passed through and uses this to distract me.  Within minutes (I have no idea how he moves so fast) the kitchen/living room is covered in pots, pans, dish towels, toys, books, etc. 

Step 2:  As I desperately try to keep things slightly under control, he'll start making bigger messes that usually involve a drink.

Step 3:  By now, I have been cleaning and picking up mess after mess for several minutes.  As I am carrying things back into the living room to put them away, Dylan will do something that he knows that he is not supposed to do.  Or as I'm cleaning up a mess of spilled milk, Dylan will try to pull the nightlight out of the wall, or start the dishwasher, or try to throw something in the trashcan that does not belong there.

Sometimes I feel like I'm being set up.  Like he might be setting up the small messes to keep me busy while he trys to do all the stuff he knows he can't do.

Oh...not to mention, Dylan also has found great amusement in chasing me around the house by tickling me (Thanks for teaching him that Daddy).  He runs up to you pinching his fingers together and usually tries to tickle the back of your knee.  

I will be very glad when the rain stops so that Dylan and I can get back outside again.  It would even be cool to get maybe a little snow to go outside and play in.

Silly Faces

Just a little photoshop thing of all of Dylan's super silly faces.

Thanksgiving '08

Thanksgiving Round 1. This year we had a Thanksgiving dinner at Great-Grandma & Grandpa Guyer's house a few days early. Dylan had fun playing with his buddies Justin, Kennady, and Kelsey and gathering with The Guyer side of the family. He explored and socialized with everyone and ates lots of turkey.

Thanksgiving Round 2. We all packed up and headed back home to Great-Grandma & Grandpa Sheets' house for Thanksgiving lunch on Thanksgiving Day. Dylan socialized as the rounds of people shifted to and from the kitchen.

Uncle Dustin & Dylan posing for a few cameras. Although it looks like Dylan was just trying to figure out what Dust was doing.

Dylan playing with Grandpa. Dylan had the opportunity to try all sorts of new sweets thanks to Grandpa that day.

Uncle Cameron trying to get Dylan to share with him, lol.

Uncle Dustin & Dylan playing with the kiddy piano. Grandma had a stash of some new interesting toys that she pulled out for Dylan to play with.

Grandpa Faith, Mom, Dylan & Uncle Dustin

Aunt Blake & Dylan. They were posing for a few pictures but Dylan decided that he reallyliked Blake's hair and decided to check it out too.

Alisha, Blake & I

The ladies hanging out at Thanksgiving.

Adam & Dylan playing together at Grandma & Grandpa Gray's house.

Thanksgiving Round 3.  We spent Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma & Grandpa Gray's house with the Gray family.  As you can see, Dylan was being a little rambunctious by then, haha.

I'm sorry I don't have more pictures from the other Thanksgiving dinners but I completely forgot about the camera. Little man can do that you sometimes, lol.

Have you laughed today?

Well...we are getting super close to the holidays. We actually already celebrated an early Thanksgiving dinner and everything. So this week I figured I would put up some cute, funny, adorable videos of the munchkin to give everyone a little extra cheer or if nothing else to put a smile on your face at the moment. All of these are fairly recent videos from October & November '08. Enjoy!

As I'm sure you all know by now, Dylan loves Elmo.  I bought him a "Best of Elmo" DVD a long time ago and the boy loves to watch it.  Recently however, he has become more interested in actually sitting and watching it instead of running around and stopping to watch for a few seconds here and there.  One day I put his Elmo DVD in and he plopped himself down on his little car in front of the TV and watched and danced to his favorite Elmo songs.  I tried to upload this video multiple times straight to the blog but for some reason it is having problems "processing" it.  Therefore I had to post the YouTube version of it so it looks a little more blurry than it normally would.  I'm going to try to replace it later when the problem is fixed (hopefully), lol. Oh yeah, I bet you are wondering why you are looking at Dylan's back. Well, Dylan is quite curious about cameras of any sort and usually as soon as he sees one, he stops what ever cute thing he is doing to come over, point to the camera, and ask "What's this?"



Dylan has mastered this thing called running. Not only that, he has now moved on to running in place. It seems like Dylan learns or does something new every single day. It's quite hard to keep up with all the new activities. The first time I saw Dylan being a goof-ball and running in place, I had laughed until there were tears.



How many times have you heard someone say, "If I had even half of his energy, I would be set." Well, if I had even one tenth of Dylan's energy, I could run a marathon. The boy is high energy all the time. He definitely keeps me on my toes. I swear chasing after him could be the "Ultimate Weight Loss Solution," lol. If you don't believe me, here is a typical afternoon with Dylan. Running, squealing, and spinning. Anyone want to babysit? I'm kidding. Not about the high energy part though. He is still a really good kid and listens to me MOST of the time. He is just hard to keep up with sometimes and makes you enjoy his nap times VERY much.



Dylan is goofy pretty much all day. He is almost always in a good mood. In this video, Dylan had just woke up from his afternoon nap. Silly boy tries to get me to tickle him. Also, this poor boy always gets hiccups. Even when I was pregnant, I could feel him hiccuping at least once a day, lol. He usually gets them if he laughs really hard. He still gets them all the time but thankfully not nearly as much as he used to.



One Sunday, Grandma & Grandpa Faith came up to visit us. When they came up to visit, they brought Dylan his new toybox (as seen in previous pictures, lol) and also this red fireman's hat. Dylan played with this thing for the entire next day. Maybe he'll be a firefighter like his Uncle Cam, lol. Unfortunately for him, the plastic hat didn't survive for too long. The plastic could only handle so much Dylan. He definitely enjoyed it while it lasted and had a blast playing with it.



Just an FYI: Jeff just informed me that if you click on the video again that it will redirect you to my YouTube page where you can watch these videos in high quality if you click below the video where it says "watch in high quality." They definitely look a little better if you want to check that out.

Brrrrrr!

Brrrrr! It definitely feels like winter now. It took some time to finally get to the real cold wintery weather and I am definitely not complaining. I would prefer to live where I never had to see, deal with, and drive in the snow. Anyways, now that it is starting to feel like winter time, we broke out Dylan's winter coat. Dylan still needed a hat and some gloves/mittens for the winter. So Dylan, Daddy & I stopped at Target one day on the way home and picked up some more wintery accessories. Now we are ready for the winter!

Dylan and I were outside playing last week and it was really cold out. It doesn't matter how cold it gets, the little man always still wants to go outside. Although now that it is getting really cold, he doesn't want to stay out as long as he used to. Not to mention he can't quite run around as fast and crazy as he did before now that he has a big puffy winter coat on.

I woke up this morning to the snow falling. Some people might have already seen some snow but this was the first snow here. It didn't snow for very long this morning and started melting immediately after it stopped snowing. It was nice to see just a little bit of white though.

Playing with Friends & Family

Dylan & Daddy. Dylan loves playing with Daddy.  He looks forward to when Daddy comes home from work every day.  Just the other day, Dylan did the cutest thing in the world when Jeff got home.  Dylan was sitting on the couch with me watching TV and relaxing when Daddy walked in the door.  The minute he opened the door, Dylan started waving and said "Hi Da!"  He did it all on his own!

Dylan & Uncle Dust. Dylan loves playing with both Uncle Dustin & Aunt Alisha. It always takes Dylan a couple seconds to warm up to people but when he does, you better be ready, lol. He was even trying to tickle Uncle Dusty's feet, lol.

Dylan, Uncle Dustin & Aunt Alisha. Dust & Alisha came up to visit us the past Saturday. They always make an extra effort to see their nephew. Like a couple of others, if they haven't seen in a while, then they come up to visit us. They love spending time with the little goofball.


Dylan & Great-Grandma Guyer. Dylan & I took a little day trip to Mercersburg yesterday to visit Great-Grandma & Grandpa Guyer and Mommy's cousin, Cortney.

The Toy Box

So earlier this week, I decided to try to clean Dylan's bathroom while he was awake and playing.  I normally reserve these kinds of activities for when little man is napping.  However, this day I was going to put a couple baby gates up and let him play in his bedroom and the connecting hallway.  From the bathroom, I can see most of Dylan's room so it's easy to keep an eye on him.  Dylan played quietly for most of the time.  By the time I worked my way over to scrub the bathtub, Dylan got quiet.  Too quiet!  Usually when it's that quiet, he's doing something that he is not supposed to be doing.  So I quickly dropped everything and peaked around the corner to his bedroom.  This is what I saw.

I was relieved to find him just sitting in his toybox playing with his toys.  But then I started to think, "How in the world did he get in there?"  He only had maybe 2-3 minutes at the very most since the last time I went in his room to check on him.

I'm still not quite sure how he got in there.  There is a little chair that sits beside the toy box that Dylan's Great-Grandfather Faith had made for him.  The only logical explanation that I could come to is that somehow my little monkey climbed up on the chair and then proceeded to somehow swing his leg over the side of the toy box to slide down in it.  I'm not even sure if this is possible considering it was super quiet and I really think I would have heard him.  I guess I'll never know.  Here's one of Dylan's first mysteries that Mom might not ever figure out.

Thank You Grandma & Grandpa Faith for the toy box. As you can see we are working on filling it up. Not only does it store toys out of sight for us, but it is also enjoyment for the curious little monkey man who climbs everything!