As the birth of our third child quickly approaches (due Sunday!), I want to write a little bit about Ridge. I don’t feel like many people know him—like really know him—all that well. Which is unfortunate because he is hilarious!
Pretty soon he will become the middle child, and I’m not all that sure how he is going take it. The last couple months have been really special as he and I have had all day alone together—something that we never had before and will never have again.
I’ve really enjoyed the time to observe his sweet and silly personality. The quiet time reading stories and receiving his perfect cuddles just before naptime is probably my favorite part of our day together.
That and all the times he does something silly just to make me belly laugh. He is too much fun!
Ridge is so full of personality. In a nutshell, he loves attention and showing off, is usually smiling and laughing, still gives the best hugs and cuddles, and is full of crazy boy energy.
He loves when he has a captive audience, and will do just about anything for a laugh. Don’t get too close though. If he feels his toy or space is threatened, he’s been known to hit, bite, and pull out chunks of hair. A lot of times when we get in the car, he asks to dance, meaning he wants me to turn on the music so he can rock out. He also loves to wear hats and hooded vests/jackets.
When we pick Jade up from school, he runs to find her in line to give her a hug. Jade runs around with a group of kids after school each day; Ridge likes to follow the boys around, whack the trees with big sticks he’s found, or belly flop into the blanket of leaves on the ground. He’s all boy in that his favorite things are trains, cars, airplanes, balls, and dumping out toys everywhere…
…but he definitely doesn’t mind riding Jade’s princess car or playing with her dolls and strollers.
We celebrated our fun-loving kid’s 2nd birthday on Monday. Unlike Jade at this age, he doesn’t really have any friends (and I’m lacking in energy), so we opted to not have a party. I was okay with it until the few days leading up to his birthday, then I started feeling bad. I did throw Jade a birthday party at age two, after all; I wanted to do something special for him too! All we had planned was a new train set and a train cake. Cody was good enough to play with the kids on Sunday so I could get the cake done. That way I had Ridge’s actual birthday completely free, so I could spend it with him and not have to work on the cake.
The day of his birthday—with no special plans—actually turned out perfect. Perfect for his personality that is. My parents Skyped in the morning and gave Ridge an audience. Seriously the best birthday activity for this boy! They laughed at him as he ran around giggling and showing off while he played with the balloons we blew up for him. This probably went on for about an hour and he loved every second of their attention. Then he and I played together, read stories, ate lunch, and had extra naptime cuddles. A seemingly ordinary day, but for this kid, it was exactly what makes him happy. Seeing that he was so cheerful all day, made me realize it was better to cater to his personality than worrying about doing something big just for the sake of it.
After dinner we pulled out the train cake. It was so fun to see his reaction!
Jade didn’t know what Cody and I were giving Ridge for his birthday, so she quickly drew up a train track for him to use with his new trains off the cake. He thought that was pretty great.
Then he opened presents (after dancing on them, of course).
He loves his choo choo trains and has played with them everyday this week. It is so much fun to see this boy grow and develop. We sure do love him!
No comments:
Post a Comment