Happy One Month!

Wow! I have so much to say, I don't even know where to begin. This last month has been a whirlwind! I'll just start off by saying that today we celebrate Ryker turning one month old! Ryker decided to start his celebration a little early by keeping us up all night... Punk! I can't believe it's already been a month, and it makes me sad to see how fast he's growing. I love my tiny little nugget, and kind of with he could stay tiny forever. At his two week appointment, he had already gained almost a whole pound (measuring 6lbs 10oz)! I really want to know what he is now... And he is due for his one month appointment, but we don't have insurance for him yet cause we just moved. Speaking of moving, I have a lot of updates about that! But I'll wait until after these cute one month pics of our little tike.

Some of Ryker's classic faces

The Inquisitive Look

Ryker's attempt at duck lips

This guy is such a sweet little boy, we couldn't feel any luckier. I could just sit and stare at him all day, he is so precious. Even when he's screaming his brains out, he's pretty adorable :). Parenthood has definitely been a learning experience to say the least. I don't think any amount of reading material, or pinterest posts could have prepared me for this. I often stress out that I'm doing everything wrong (as the crazy moms on pinterest will often lead me to believe), but I just try to remember that we're showing this little boy all the love and energy that we possess, and that we're doing the very best that we can do.

So last post, I mentioned all of the miracles we've been witnessing in relation to little Ryker joining our family. At the time I couldn't say quite yet another huge miracle involving his birth. We hadn't announced yet that Todd had made it into his top choice school in Pennsylvania, which in and of itself was a huge blessing. But the timing of everything was the real miracle. Ryker came two and a half weeks early, and just a few days after he was born, Todd received an email saying that a spot became available at St. Francis! Had Ryker not come early, I would have still been pregnant when we found out, and then we would have had to work out where to have the baby and when to move. With Ryker coming when he did, we were able to have a little over two weeks at home with family and we even had his baby blessing right before we left. Huge blessing! Then, just how everything fell into place for us to move here so quickly was a miracle. When we came here for Todd's interview, we both felt like this is where we were supposed to be. We had our doubts for a while when months went by, and we still hadn't gotten into this school. We both had basically wrote it off in our minds, and were preparing mentally for a life out in NY. It was pretty hard to change our mindset yet again when we found out, but we both knew that Pennsylvania would be better for us. With how everything has fallen into place, this last month has just been another testament to me that it really is meant to be after all.

So Pennsylvania. For those of you who don't know, we are living in Loretto, which is a teeny tiny town of a little over a thousand people. We have a Walmart about 15 min away in a bigger town (a little over three thousand!) and we are a 30 min drive in either direction to cities with 30 to 50 thousand! I'm pretty sure I might go a little crazy due to isolation, but it's not forever. Right now, I'm just blown away with how gorgeous it is here anyway. It is so lush and so green, I'm in heaven! I can't wait until little man is a little bigger so we can all go on hikes and enjoy the great outdoors. I just hope Todd will have a tiny bit of time every now and then for things like that :). 

Here are a few pics to give you an idea.

This little pond is about 100 yards away from our apartment. There are no fish in it sadly, but it's pretty! Then, off to the left is a gorgeous hillside where a ton of sheep roam. You can hear them baa-ing from our windows :)

This is just beyond our little pond, so a little over 100 yards from our place. So pretty!

We hear that the Fall is the most beautiful thing you'll ever see, so I'm pretty excited for that! I'm not so excited for winter, however. Apparently the winters here are pretty brutal... Lots of snow and super cold. We are lucky that we live so close to campus though, so commutes won't really be an issue. 

Those are pretty much all of the updates that I have right now. I did want to share some (a lot) more pictures though, because I've already exploded facebook enough, and I don't have anywhere else to share :). Besides, I figure people who read this are hopefully people who want to see my millions of pictures :)... hopefully. 

I'm going to start with more pics from the day Ryker was born. Todd wanted a way to document his birth (quite understandably...), but I really didn't want it to be documented with video. I guess I sort of imagined it being much more horrific than it actually was, and I didn't want to remember myself in that much pain (which I really wasn't at all, thanks to the epidural). So anyway, we asked if Todd's sis, Summer would take some pics of the delivery for us. I'm so thankful and glad that she did, because she captured some precious moments. I didn't want to post them on facebook, however, cause I'm friends with people who prob don't want to see my upper thighs, and me gritting my teeth pushing a baby out... but hopefully those of you who read this won't mind that sort of thing :). So here you go. I tried to only pick the best ones, but there turned out being a lot of them, hehe.

Todd assisting me in applying chapstick

When we found out I was fully dilated

There he is!

so precious <3

I'm not going to lie... I kind of thought he looked like an alien at first :) A very cute alien

First time holding him

Love it. I'm so happy we had such a special moment documented. It really does help me relive the magic of that day. 

We are so lucky that Summer is such an amazing photographer, and so happy to take pics for us when we ask. We got to take a few family pics before leaving for PA, and I'm just obsessed with all of them! 

This might be my absolute favorite!

These pics were when Ryker was 2 weeks old. I can't believe he's already TWICE as old! Craziness. The last two weeks especially have flown by with the packing, moving, and unpacking. It has been absolute craziness. Unpacking is an ongoing process, and probably won't get fully done for a very long time. In the meantime, I am happy to slow it down and just enjoy our sweet boy as much as possible. 

So that's about it for now! If any of you ever get bored and want to skype with Ryker and I, I imagine we're going to get pretty bored around here while Todd is at school :).