Our Happy Fathers Day

Better late than never...I love my Dad.

The cute cousins in their Father's Day shirts.

Our Happy Place

Well, I faced my fear of traveling with a baby! With as bad as Ryder has been in the car, I was really not looking forward to a long car ride. Sometimes the 20 minute drive out to my parents house is pure torture. Our child can really scream! It was Monday and Chase and I were at the gym with our good friend Shane. They have been talking about going to Kanab since the beginning of the summer, and decided that it was time to go. I was walking the track upstairs with Ryder and when I came down they told me that they wanted to go that weekend. Great! Every time we would talk about going I told them that they needed to make sure that we planned it in advance so that I could have my sister go with us so that she could help me with Ryder. She has 3 jobs and works just about every day so I needed to give her time to get work off or get people to cover her shifts for her. Apparently they thought telling me at the beginning of the week was giving me enough notice. ha. Well, I called Hannah and luckily she was able to get her work schedule taken care of. Good thing, I would have died without her. That night after I had talked to Hannah and we had gotten our trip planned out, I started to freak out. Ryder was having a hard night and I was nervous that our weekend in Kanab was going to be anything but fun or relaxing. I thought about all the things that I wanted to take for Ryder. His bath tub- it's part of his nightly routine to take a bath before he goes to bed, and I didn't want to screw that up. His swing- sometimes it's the only way he will take a nap during the day, and a tired Ryder = an unhappy baby, mommy and anyone else who is around. His pack and play- He needed a place to sleep. And these were just all of the big things. Of course we had to have all of his clothes, blankets etc. How were we going to get all of these things plus what the four adults needed to pack and the boys fishing stuff and guns in the car. Oh yeah, and we were taking food down there so that we didn't need to drive into town to do shopping. It seemed impossible. Luckily I have really nice Grandparents who were willing to trade us vehicles for the weekend. Their van for our car. It worked out perfectly. There really would have been no way we could have done it in the car. We had the van packed full! Everything turned out great, and we had a good time. Ryder did really well on the drive there and back!

Danger!

Beautiful Three Lakes

A tree had fallen over into the lake and the boys had to get it out with the paddle boat.

Catching Crawdads

Doing boy stuff

Fishing off the dock

The fish.

Auntie Hannah. We couldn't have done it without her!

Mommy and Baby

Cute boy. He loves being all cuddled up to his Mommy.

2 Months

Poor little Ryder had his 2 month appointment last week, and you know what that means.... Yep. Shots. He actually did really well. He only cried for a few minutes. Momma was so proud of her tough boy! I thought it was going to be much worse than it really was.

Ryder now weighs 10 pounds! He is the the 10th percentile for his weight and head circumference, and in the 50th percentile for height. Long and skinny! We are having so much fun watching Ryder grow and learn new things. It's really bitter sweet how fast he's changing. As much as I love all the new things, I miss the old things. Here are a few things about Ryder...

• He loves to smile!
• He is learning how to use his voice and loves to talk to Mommy and Daddy.
• He spends nearly half of his awake hours with his tongue out. So cute!
• Even though the temperature has really heated up, he still loves to be swaddled. He won't sleep any other way, not even to take a nap.
• He still won't sleep on his back or on his side. He has to be on his tummy.
• He has learned to like the car a little more. We have to swaddle him in his seat or else he will scream the whole ride. Thank goodness we have the sweetest Swaddler ever and we can use it in his car seat.
• His colic is finally calming down. He has been such a good baby the past 2 weeks. It gas been such a relief for all of us! Nothings better than a happy baby.
• He hasn't slept through the night yet, but he is doing really well. He eats at about 10:00 or 10:30, has a bath and then goes to bed. He sleeps from them until about 5:00. Good Good Boy!

Thank You..

Thank you Sugar Binky for helping me keep my sanity and for calming my baby. Some days I wouldn't make it with out you. You are the one good thing that has come from our former pediatrician who will remain nameless. I wouldn't want to scare anyone off just because we didn't have a good experience. That's alright with me though. Now I can take my baby to the wonderful Dr. Cramer who saw me from the time I was a baby until I was 18. I think it will be well worth the 20 minute drive south. (Chase still needs some convincing.)

Lucky!

Hannah Graduated this past week. Yes. Hannah is old enough to be graduated. I feel like just yesterday I was the one graduating. Now it's my baby sister's turn. The week before Graduation was Senior Awards. Hannah got a Service Award for all that she did in Senior Pride. They gave her the coin shown in the pictures above and below. Lucky girl can get into any Hillcrest High School activity she wants with that silver coin. Just exactly what Hannah wants! Ha! I think Hannah was even more excited about being done with the High School scene than I was.

Ryder was pretty proud of his Aunt Hannah.

I had to include this picture. Hannah and my Dad crack me up. When my Mom and I got out to the car, this is what we found. Hangin out on the hood of the car.

Blessing Day

Yesterday was Ryder's Blessing Day! I had been stressing all week that he would cry during the whole thing, but he did just great. Thanks to Grandpa Brey who held his Binky in his mouth the whole time, I think that really helped him be calm. Chase gave him a beautiful blessing. I am so grateful to have a husband who honors his priesthood and can use it to bless his family and those around him. Ryder and I are really lucky to have him.

Our little family

Ryder and Mommy

The Griffiths Girls and Ryder

Granny, Mommy, Ryder and Bubby

Grandpa Winegar, Chase and Ryder

The Breys

Our family and Grandma and Grandpa Brey

Ryder's "Elvis face"

His cute outfit

Happy 79!

This weekend Chase's Grandma and Grandpa Brey were in town for Ryder's blessing. It also happened to be Grandpa Brey's 79th birthday, so on Friday night we all got together to celebrate. It was a lot of fun, we had a barbecue, cake and ice cream, swimming, and the boys played some basketball. Happy Birthday Grandpa!

He loves...

Sleeping! He loves to be wrapped up tight like a burrito.. And he loves to sleep on his belly. It's his favorite.

Hanging out with Whitters.

Crying... Enough said.

Swimming at Grandma and Grandpa's pool! We're so glad that we have a place we can go swimming.. Ryder has a blast in the hot tub. We think it might take him all summer to fit into his hat though.

Bath time! Ryder loves his bath. He could be so fussy, and as soon as we put him in the bath, he's a happy boy!

Here are some random pictures of Ryder that I love. We could just look at him all day!

Colic

As you get ready for a baby, you do all you can to be prepared. Get everything you will need, read different books etc etc... Well let me tell you, nothing I did prepared me for Colic. My mom always told me what a hard baby I was. I was fussy all the time and could never be put down. As soon as I was laid down, I would start screaming. Pretty much horrible for my mom. She joked with me during my pregnancy that I was going to have a baby just like I was. Pay back she said. Well guess what?? At about 2 weeks, colic hit. Not fun at all. I have never heard a baby scream like Ryder does. He will scream so hard that eventually no sound comes out. It is one of the worst sounds ever! It's so hard to watch your baby in pain. He just gets the worst tummy aches. One minute he is fine and content, and the next he is pulling his legs up, his tummy is hard, and he's flailing around and screaming and worst of all, there is nothing you can do. He's absolutely inconsolable. Then as quickly as he started the process, he's just fine and relaxed again. This would all happen at the same times every evening and would go on into the night. We tried everything we could think of. I began by trying to cut different things out of my diet. Oranges, tomatoes, chocolate, caffeine.. We tried Mylicon drops, which seemed to help his symptoms for about ten or fifteen minutes. We had heard from a woman that my Mom works with, that going to a chiropractor can help. They don't do any major adjustments, they just massage down the spine and try to get any vertebrae that have gotten misplaced back in the right spot. We did this twice which seemed to help a little bit. I think he mostly just liked the massage he got. We also tried Gripe Water. Three different kinds of Gripe Water to be exact. The pictures above are of Ryder taking Colic Calm brand. One of the ingredients is charcoal which makes it black. It's the messiest, but works really well. Next I stopped breastfeeding and I gave him soy formula. Not only was the formula rank, but I hated not breastfeeding. I was actually glad that didn't work because I would have been really sad if I couldn't feed my baby anymore. The final think that I tried, and the thing that has helped the most... I cut dairy out of my diet. It's amazing the difference that it has made! Ryder is still a little bit fussy, but not anything like he was before. I'm so glad that I finally found something that has helped.

jamon.

We're really late posting but we just had to let everyone know how proud we are of Uncle Chubby. We took Jamon to the MTC about 3 weeks ago. He will be serving in the Stockholm Sweden Mission. We are really going to miss him, but are so proud of the decison he made to give up 2 years to serve the Lord. I think about how big Ryder is going to be when he gets home and it makes me so sad! My baby will be a toddler! So Crazy!