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.