NOPE. No baby yet.

Looks like this baby wants to follow in Anthony's footsteps and take his time making an appearance. Let's just hope it's not 6 days, like AJ was! Thank you for your prayers and thoughts. I promise I will post when he's born!

December

December has been quite eventful for us so far. Vince was a shepherd in the Christmas program at school. He even sang along with the other kids during the first song. By the end, though, he got the stage fright and clammed up. I might be biased, but I think he's just about the cutest little shepherd ever!

The boys got new gear for their beds. Too bad Anthony still has to sleep in the crib. He climbs out of the big bed and gets into his toys. I'm hoping he'll be more ready for it in a few months.

The boys LOVED the snow. We didn't last too long out there, because it was just too cold, but they had fun anyway.

Vincent's Christmas party at school. All the kids had a great time and got hopped up on sugar before being released early for the day.


This is the 38 week belly picture (last week). I am feeling great and every day we get closer to Dan coming home is a big sigh of relief. At this point I'm feeling good about the chances that Baby will wait for Daddy (or longer, which is fine with me, too).


Vincent and I had a great time baking my Grandma Lutton's sugar cookie recipe. I'm so thankful for her legacy of love and joy, combined with FOOD! :)

33 weeks

These are a few of my favorite shots from the session we had with Mariah. She did a fantastic job. I don't know how I managed to narrow it down...there are at least 15 more that also look fantastic and I still don't know if I can name my favorite one yet!

Maternity photos, sneak peak

Dan came home for a short visit and we were able to get some maternity pictures done. Mariah took some FANTASTIC shots. We had a great time during the photo shoot! She's posted a few on her blog:
http://mariahcharles.blogspot.com/

First School Photo

Vincent's first school photo. I have no idea where this smile came from. It's not one we usually see around here. Needless to say, I'm not ordering a million copies of it.

24 weeks

Baby Ripley is growing right on target. I had my 24 week check-up on Friday and my belly measured right at 24 weeks, and the heart rate was 140, which is perfectly consistent with the other boys at this stage! Hopefully Baby Ripley #3 will continue to be an easy pregnancy! I have my glucose test in about 4 weeks to find out whether I have Gestational Diabetes again. I'm hoping to dodge that bullet again this time around. Although, I am still convinced that my restricted diet was the only reason I didn't gain an obscene amount of weight with Vince, so it did have its perks!

First Day update and a little more...

Well, it took a while, but I'm finally posting the update of Vince's first day of school and his first couple weeks!

He loves school, loves Mrs. Stanton (see below), and loves learning. One of the pictures below is of both boys with their backpacks on. They played together like that for ages after Vince got home on the first day.

Is it me, or do they look more like mother and son than he and I do?

Two big boys, happily chasing each other around.

Mommy and the boys after Day 1.

We decided to do a full day every day (for my sanity). They do all their lessons in the morning and after they have lunch and recess, they take a nap in the afternoon. It seems like it would be a waste to pay for someone else to nap him, but it's been worth every extra penny so far. AJ can nap whenever he wants because we don't have to worry about syncing up with Vincent's nap or having to wake up early to go get him, and I'll be free to take the Bible Study class on the book of Isaiah that I've been looking forward to. I won't get back to town until after noon, so if he was going half days it would be more of a juggling act to find someone to pick him up, etc.

They have already memorized TWO Bible verses: Genesis 1:1 and John 1:3, which Vince recites perfectly. (I think they must use a Children's version of the Bible, because even I would have a hard time with John 1:3 in the NIV.)

They're learning shapes and numbers right now. They will do the letters A & B this month as well. It will be mostly review for him, but he'll have a better grasp of the importance and uses of all that stuff. My non-teacher mentality only got as far as teaching him to recognize all the shapes, numbers and letters. He was starting to tell me what sounds are made by each letter, but it was more guess-work than solid understanding. I happily passed him on to the pros for that stuff. He also knows how to spell his name, which I think he already could, but was never asked to do it until now.

He loves playtime in the preschoolers' playground. The ground is gravel, so he comes home filthy every day and always has rocks in his shoes, but he sleeps well at night, and that's all that matters...right? Every day when we pick him up he runs and hugs AJ, tells him that he missed him, and then the same to me. As we are leaving he begs to show me his playground, which we can see from a window in the cafeteria. It looks the same every day, but he is convinced that I'll be impressed with it. After the first few days of my saying, "Vince, tell me all about your day!" he started saying, as we approached the van, "Mom, let me tell you all about my day!" I found out on Friday that he doesn't talk hardly at all in school. When the teacher or her assistant asks him a question during story time (or whenever), he just stares at them and refuses to speak until they're forced to move on to the next kid.

Last Saturday I took the boys to feed the "ducks" at a park (somewhat) nearby. They're not ducks; they're geese. And I couldn't take any pics during the actual feeding because they're really aggressive and I was paranoid that they would start pecking at Anthony. So instead we have a pic of the boys, with "ducks" in the background. (Vince refuses to acknowledge that they're geese. He will only call them ducks.)



Anthony goes to bed first and Vincent helps me "tuck him in." I tried (unsuccessfully) to capture one of the cutest things I've ever seen. They always give each other a kiss through the bars of the crib. That night, by the time I got the camera, they were playing keep away, and AJ was teasing Vince. Still pretty cute. Don't mind the ghetto fabulous bows and fabric on the crib. AJ gnawed away at the crib rail, so we had to buy plastic covers, which he promptly tore off, until I clamped them down with some loose fabric and ribbon.


Tuesday marks 24 weeks of pregnancy. I'll try to take a belly pic tomorrow, but I might just wait until Mariah, Sidney and Gabe come over on Friday and have her do it after my OB appointment.

First Day of School

Today is Vincent's first day of school. His teacher is Mrs. Stanton. I dropped him off less than an hour ago and I'm not sure what I'm going to do for the next 2 hours! Here's a photo of him before we left the house. I'll try to get a pic of him with his teacher soon.

Tres Hombres, Indeed!!!

Baby Ripley is a BOY!!! We are thrilled to welcome another little boy to the team family!

Tres Hombres

There's a great little Mexican restaurant in Carbondale called Tres Hombres (for the Spanish-challenged, that translates to Three Men). In case you missed the Facebook announcement, we are expecting baby number 3 on December 28 (or later, as I suspect). Anyway, we don't know the gender yet, but we're guessing for several reasons that this one will be a boy as well, so we have been referring to all the kids as Tres Hombres. Watch, this one will be a girl and we won't be able to say it anymore. We haven't decided yet whether we'll find out the gender, but I have seen so many cute baby girl things, that I think I'll have to find out just so I don't go buying a boat-load of "just-in-case" outfits!

In other news, Vince recently celebrated his 3rd birthday and of course we've been potty training. It started out kind of rocky, because none of us knew what we were doing, but Vince is finally getting the hang of it. Today was Day Two with no accidents! He's finally starting to warn me before he goes pee and we can make it to the bathroom without having an accident. It's nice to be able to say that I have only one child in diapers for the next 6 months, anyway. He has to be completely potty trained before school starts in August, and I had my doubts for a while, but now I'm pretty confident he'll be ready. He'll be going to preschool 5 days per week, from 8am - 11am.

Anthony continues to develop well. He is adding new words to his vocabulary every day and saying them quite well. He still has an oral fixation and I'm sure he misses his pacifier: he puts EVERYTHING in his mouth. Literally. Clothes, toys, tools, puzzles, Bosley. All of it. He is learning to swim and made a lot of progress today in our dear friends Stephanie and Chip's pool. He's quite a bit younger than Vince was when we started using the little floatie vest suit, so he's having a slower time of it. Vince is an old pro at this point, swimming around all on his own (in the vest and floaties, of course).

Baby Ripley is growing fast. Vince loves examining my belly to see how much it's grown each day. I had a little bit of nausea and a lot of fatigue, but those have both gone away in the last couple weeks. I'm feeling great now (at 14 weeks) and just waiting to be able to feel the baby moving around.

We visited my Aunt Susie a couple weeks ago and the boys adored her. She took us to a beautiful park nearby and we all had a great time.

Hope you enjoy these recent photos:

Visiting Susie in Columbia, MO

Little Blue Eyes making a run for it.

Vince decided it was his turn in the stroller...AJ was up to the task.

At Chip and Steph's pool

Nana and Papa Jim came for Vincent's birthday week

Vince, sporting Papa Jim's hat

May 2010

The weather is finally warming up again. I dropped the van off today to get the oil changed and walked home with the boys. We stopped at the park and had lunch there; the boys really enjoyed it. Anthony has been sleeping off his time in the sun for almost 3 hours now!

Here are some pics and videos.

Vince is quite the little soccer player. Can't wait to see him play on a team next year.

Someone left me a surprise.

They finally re-mulched the park. The boys watched them all day. Vince wanted to go over and thank the guys who were fixing our park. We settled for a quick drive by on our way to the store, and Vince got to say thank you out the window.

Milk time for the boys = cuddle time for the family

Me and Val on Mother's Day

Vince catching up on his reading.

We had a bunny in our yard...the boys were fascinated.

Vince likes to dance along to the Jolly Joe's song on The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything.

Self-inflicted Raspberries

Anthony tries to reach his own belly, but can't quite make it. Needless to say, this is a priceless source of entertainment for the Ripley family.

Anthony Strikes Back

A rare post by Dan Ripley:

Today I got to stay with the boys while Lacy went to a women's function at church. During the boys' playtime, I noticed Anthony, our youngest, has developed a movement-to-contact strategy. The boys were playing with their large train set and Vince built a tower out of blocks and proudly turned to me to show it off. Anthony, who had been lying in wait, began walking over to the tower and was immediately fixated on destroying it. Vince noticed this immediately and became very protective of the tower. It's my opinion that Anthony had already devised this plan in his mind: to distract Vincent, have him chase Anthony and then destroy the tower. It went like this: Anthony approached the tower in an aggressive manner. Vince began yelling, "No, Annunie, no Annunie!" Then Anthony grabbed one of the trains on the table, and the chase began around the train table. Poor Vince fell right into Anthony's trap. By grabbing the train, Anthony lured Vince away from the tower, and as they came full circle back to the tower, which was now unprotected, Anthony leveled the tower with one strike and threw the train in the opposite direction, and Vince fell to the ground, screaming, "Annunie! NOOOOO!!!" I could only sit back and shake my head as I saw these events unraveling before my eyes.

Spring time

We have all been enjoying the warm weather. The boys love being outside so much that I've had to get creative with ways to get work done. I folded laundry on the front porch a couple days, and I try to get reading done while the boys play with their toys. Hopefully our next house will have a fenced yard so I can let them play on their own! Enjoy some pics of our spring season.

Before we moved the lawn chairs outside

Morning milk and belly button check.

Working up an appetite

Lunch on the porch

Dragon PJs from Nana

Vince was driving his truck with Stephanie and he thought it was hysterical when she started driving it too. We all love it when she comes to hang out with us.

Anthony says no

AJ's expressing his opinion more and more these days.

videos work

Somehow the videos from the previous post were not working, but I fixed them. If you were unable to view them before, you should be able to see them now. Update: Anthony has made huge progress since the last post just a few days ago. He is now crossing entire rooms on his own and loves it. He takes off on his own, he can pivot and turn and come down somewhat safely to a sitting position. We can't wait to show Mary his progress in the past week!

Upright and Mobile!!!!

Anthony is doing great with his physical therapy! He is making great progress and taking lots of steps on his own. He still needs to learn to get up without furniture or a wall for support, but he's great at getting going on his own. The video is of AJ and Mary (the physical therapist). We love Mary. She is so wonderful with both of the boys and is really great about including Vincent in Anthony's learning.







It's been so long since we've posted, it's hard to think of what all is new. Vince is really talkative and is making really long and complex sentences. He's not afraid to voice his desires...we're working on respectful voicing of said desires. It's a lot of hit and miss, but lately I've been asking him to smile while he says what he wants so that I can hear the smile in his voice. I think that's the route we're going to use for a while; it seems to help. He had a great time playing in the snow while it lasted.







The other day Vince came over to me and gave me a big hug and said, "Oh, my sweetie." It made my day. And Anthony is incredibly affectionate. He loves kissing...sometimes he just leans his head in and lets us kiss his forehead.