10 months

Is my tiny baby boy already 10 months old? I can't believe it! It just hit me a few weeks ago that he is really close to turning 1, and I'm SO not ready for that! Every day he becomes more and more like a little toddler, and less and less like a baby.

Some things about little 10 month old Ryker:

• He has four teeth (and I'm pretty sure a few more are working their way in).
• He has discovered his incredible climbing abilities, and is OBSESSED with climbing everything.
• He is less than an inch away from outgrowing his baby car seat :(
• He loves to do something naughty, and then sprint crawl away as fast as possible.
• He can walk with his walker without help, and sometimes will stand by himself for 10-15 seconds until he realizes that he isn't holding on to anything.
• He is eating pea-sized finger foods (and by "eating," I mean putting in his mouth, mashing, and spitting out).
• He has bad stranger danger and is SUPER clingy. I'm lucky if I get a bathroom break these days without him getting upset.
• He LOVES to play peek-a-boo.
  He says "mamamama" and "dadadada" sometimes meaning mama and dada, and sometimes just blabbering.
• He can high-five, wave hello and goodbye, and clap.

That's all I can come up with! He is seriously so much fun these days, but is so much work because he is always going! With his climbing skills, no matter how much baby proofing we do, we can't take our eyes off of him! But, a serious plus to his obsession with climbing, is he likes to climb all over us, which gives us plenty of chances to sneak in kisses and snuggles which always make my heart melt. We just love our little duck to pieces, and can't imagine life without him. Here are a few pics of the little man!

So in other news... Todd is halfway done with his last semester of didactic year! Then he just has rotations, which means (hopefully) a lot less studying, and a lot more fun! We're also hoping that he can do a good chunk of his rotations back out West, but we won't find out for sure until March sometime.

These last two months have been pretty rough for me. Todd has been doing awesome in school, but has been pretty busy with that. Meanwhile, I was dealing with a lot of kind of crappy health stuff while trying to be a good mommy for Ryker. I won't go into too many details, but it all started with me getting strep throat at the beginning of January. After that, I got this crazy itchy, couldn't sleep at night, red hot rash on my feet and legs. For a while there, I could hardly sleep at night, and unless I was elevating my feet or soaking them in cold water, I was extremely uncomfortable. Luckily, the itchiness has gotten much better, but there is still some weird stuff going on. Since mid Jan, I've been seeing all sorts of doctors and getting all sorts of tests done, and we still don't know what it is.

Anyway, the point I bring all this up is... Todd's Spring Break just started! I've just been pushing to make it to this point because now I have my hubby back, and I can breathe a sigh of relief! Also, after this week of playing with my boys, my mom is going to fly in to visit for a few days! Then, I'm going to fly home with her to Eugene to visit for a week or so. After that is Todd's Easter Break, and then just over one month until the semester is over! So I feel like now that we've made it to this point, time will go by much more quickly.

Oh! Also something kind of exciting... For Ryker's birthday present (though, he'll likely get it as soon as we finish it), we're building him a climbing wall! We got a pretty nice tax return this year, so we figured we'd use a tiny bit of it to make little man a super awesome present, and we're hoping he really likes it. I'll post photos when it's all done, but I just have a couple of pics of the progress. So far we've just gridded out where the holes will go, and we've almost finished the frame. See pics below!

I think those are all of my updates! Here are some fun pics/videos of our little chunk!

He's standing!

He's obsessed with these little yogurt melts

 One of our favorite things is when he cuddles with us for a few minutes after his nap :).

Finally fits into his baby leggings that I got as a freebie when I was preggo!

Our new furniture arrangement since he can climb the couch and likes to go off the sides.

I took this picture just after Ryker took his first few steps by himself to transfer from the walker to the coffee table. I couldn't believe my eyes!

 He's so cute, because now that he's able to get on the couch, he loves to roll around and nuzzle his face into the cushions.

Half Birthday

 So I had a realization a couple weeks ago... Ryker's birthday is April 30th, which makes his half birthday October 30th. But since he was born the last day of April (just before midnight I might add), and the last day of October is the 31st, his half birthday is practically on Halloween. Pretty much the coolest half birthday ever!

I'll start off with his 6 month pics, and then unload about a million vids/pics on you below :)

Chins/Cheeks

Probably my fave :)

 I cannot even believe that he is already 6 months old! And I'm pretty sure I say that every month... I knew it would fly by, and it definitely has! He's just been growing unbelievably fast! It's so much fun to watch him learn new things every day. There's so much he's learned since the last time I posted, I don't even know where to start! I do have some videos though to show off his tricks that he's been working on these past 2 months.


We bought a Jumperoo for little man a couple of months ago, and he loves it! Ryker hasn't quite figured out how to jump up and down quite yet, but for the last month or so he'll just stand in here and rock. He's got excellent footwork.


So I know babies typically learn to roll from their tummies to their backs right around 4 months. However, Ryker has been a little challenged when it comes to this skill... He's been getting better at it, but he still can't do it consistently. This is him doing it at around 5 months.


He was able to master rolling from his back to his tummy though, and I feel like he learned it in one day! It's kind of a problem, because he'll always do it and then he'll get stuck on his tummy. He's also been doing it a lot at night, which reeeaallly makes me nervous because I'm afraid he won't be able to get back to his back if he needs to. But he does seem to sleep better on his stomach, so that's good. I was able to get a vid of him going both ways here... But the returning to his back part is pretty rare.


So I know I already posted this on Facebook/Instagram... but I posted a shorter version, and the long one is just too cute not to share. This little boy's giggles are my absolute favorite! He doesn't really laugh at our silly noises as much these days, but he is super ticklish. So it's fun to tickle him like crazy and make him giggle and squeal.

I'll stop with the video overload, because I'm going to start on my picture overload  :).

Another milestone Ryker has hit is being able to sit on his own. I still don't trust him to sit him down, and not be right there to catch him if he teeters over... but he can sit for quite a long time without losing his balance. He also learned how to do this within like a week of me practicing it with him. His sitting skills make me feel better about his lack of rolling skills.

 Him being able to sit on his own is also convenient when trying to show off a cute outfit. Like his "Take a Hike" shirt made by his Aunt Charity or his adorable plaid romper that he only got to wear once inside.

At Ryker's 4 month appointment, his doc gave us the go ahead to start giving him solids. I probably would have waited until he was 6 months to start, but since he's had bad reflux since he was tiny, I wanted to get a head start since solids can help with that. It took us over a month and a half for him to finally start taking to it, but he's a champ eater now! It was an interesting transition, though, because he started to refuse eating from a bottle (or eat very little), which I've heard is part of the transition and can be due to teething. But it was rough because he wouldn't eat very much of anything for a long time, solid or liquid! I'm just relieved that he's eating well again, even if it is a goopy mess each time.

Another rreeeeaaalllyy nice thing about him eating his solids now is that he's been sleeping! Hallelujah!! I don't know if I told you before, but Ryker has been a horrible napper his entire existence, only conceding to 30 min naps maximum. After sleep training, he would take one 1hr nap a day, which I was super grateful for... but I still dreamed about the 2 hour naps some moms refer to as "normal."

It hasn't been long enough of consistent solid feedings for me to know if the pattern will continue, but it appears as if he can go longer than his usual 2.5 hrs between feeds, and has taken a total of two 2-hour naps over the last week... which he has NEVER done on his own. Two long naps doesn't quite seem like a pattern yet, but I'm hopeful.

Now, this could also have to do with the fact that Ryker caught a little tummy bug last week, and has been trying to sleep it off. But I'm choosing to believe that it's the solids, and it'll continue :). Starting last Friday, we noticed our poor little guy had a really painful-looking diaper rash, and he was acting like he was in a lot of pain. We then realized that he had diarrhea, pooping every hour or more. I thought it was the apples I added to his food to help him want to eat it more. I thought that the apples had caused it, so over the weekend he had no apples, yet was still a pooping madman. He was pooping around 10x each day. Being the paranoid mom that I am, I called his doc and we took him in (even though his 6 month apt was the following week). The doc said it could be from teething cause his bottom teeth are coming in, but more than likely it's a little tummy bug. So we got him a probiotic, and we'll see if that helps. I also learned from that appointment that reflux peaks around 6 months, which explains his massive pukes he's been blessing us with lately. So between letting him go butt-naked to help his diaper rash, and him puking everywhere... we've been cleaning up a TON of bodily waste as of late.

So the thing that just makes me the happiest and melts my heart every single day, is how much this little boy loves his daddy. He can just be sitting and looking at him, and he'll kick his legs and squeal out of happiness. The best is when Todd comes home from school, and no matter what kind of mood Ryker was in before, he'll be grinning from ear to ear to see his daddy. 

This is my favorite one. He's cranking he head back so far so he won't lose sight of Todd.

I'm trying to think of updates on our lives, but there really isn't too much. Todd had a little less than a week break from school, so we took advantage, and took a day trip to Washington DC. It was really cool, and we didn't have nearly enough time to see everything we wanted to. But we were able to see the Holocaust Museum, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, The White House, and the National Archives. Not too shabby for a day trip! Ryker was a trooper the whole day too. We're pretty lucky to have such a happy little boy.

His faces kill me

Ryker was sleeping, but he still made the picture!

As you may have seen on facebook, Ryker was a super cute little shark for Halloween! He even had two opportunities to wear it! We got to attend our ward Halloween party/trunk or treat, and then Todd's PA class had a party/parade. It was fun to show off his super cute costume. He even won an award from Todd's PA class for cutest costume! 

Ryker wouldn't wear his hat for pictures, so we did this instead. ALMOST as cute...

So if you couldn't tell... Ryker was a shark, Todd was the shark attack victim, and I was the life guard. Turned out pretty well I think, even if my lifeguard shirt is so obviously homemade :).

Another exciting update is that Todd and I found an Ultimate team here! Todd was in the library and just so happened to hear someone say the word frisbee. He approached them, and found out that there is a school club team. They're pretty much all brand brand new to the sport and all freshman... we've even been playing much longer than the guy who started it up. But it's an opportunity for us to play, so we're super happy about that. It's also fun to be able to teach them all the basics. They're all so coachable and eager to learn, which we love :).

Oh, and one more story before I go...
We basically win the worst parents award for the following three pics... 

First reason we're horrible... is that it was pretty cold for this pic... But we decided to make it a quickie. Second reason we failed, is that Ryker isn't the greatest of stand-ers quite yet... and he fell. Whoopsie!! You can kinda tell in the last one that he isn't holding on anymore. He was just fine after a few minutes, but I felt horrible! Luckily the pics turned out at least :)


So that's basically it for now! Happy Halloween everybody!