7 Months - Ryker

My baby boy turned 7 months old today! Mobile is the best descriptive word for Ryker these days. He loves to sit, crawl, pull up to stand, cruise on furniture, climb stairs, and today he even stood by himself for about half a second. There is no stopping this kid! Trouble is another descriptive word for Ryker. He loves to find power cords and every little speck on the floor goes directly into his mouth. He also likes to beat up on his sister every time that I lay her down for a diaper change. Every once in a while he'll stop moving long enough to get a little snuggle and nursing session in but as soon as he guzzles his milk he's back to playing again. As far as sleeping goes, he continues to get better. He usually takes two 2 hour naps and a third catnap during the day and at night he usually wakes up once to quickly nurse and then go back to sleep. We've been exploring more solid foods this month and he absolutely loves it. He seems to especially like pancakes and graham crackers although he'll eat most anything we give him. He's recently started to sign 'more' during meals on occasion. We love using sign language with Ilyana and hope that he'll pick up on it too. As far as vocal sounds go he mostly just screams, both happy and mad screams, or growls. He thinks it's hilarious when we growl back. I love my little monster and have been enjoying watching him grow!

He is bigger than a flood

Over the past couple of days we have evacuated our brand new house to seek refuge from an impending flood. If the predictions are correct we will most likely only receive water in our basement however with the risk of mold and mildew accumulating throughout the house we had to take everything out of the entire house. Thank goodness we had a fair amount of warning compared to the flood of 2008. On Thursday evening we met with 5 other church families that reside in the flood zone to discuss plans for moving all our items and finding housing for our families and our possessions. Friday morning the hard work of emptying all of our houses began. By Saturday most of our 6 houses were completely emptied. The love of God was tangible as people came from everywhere to pitch in. There were at least 30 people from our church helping in any way they could, whether that be packing boxes, moving furniture, coordinating help, or babysitting kids. Not to mention the amount of people praying over our city. We had co-workers and neighbors helping people they didn't even know. My dad said there were so many people helping with sandbagging efforts that it was a traffic jam to get into the sandbagging stations. I have heard of several companies donating boxes, storage space, trucks for hauling, and locations to keep vehicles and pets. With all the bad in the world it is refreshing to see so many people helping in any way they can. We asked for God to provide us with the help we needed to prepare our house for the flood and He went above and beyond. Not only did he provide physical help but he provided "peace that surpasses all understanding" (Philippians 4:7). It has been amazing to see how intricately detailed His plan is as every last detail falls into place just in time. It has been comforting to think about how no waters will even touch our house without God's approval first. He is in control and as long as we trust Him there is nothing we need to worry about. Even as the flood crest approaches and we wait to see just how much damage is done we will continue to trust that He will provide everything that we need because He is bigger than a flood.

We're going to the Zoo!

Today we took our first family vacation and we went to the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines. The kids aren't always great passengers in the car so we have shied away from road trips in the past. It took us about 2.5 hours to get to the zoo today and that seems to be about their limit on car riding. On the way there Ryker napped for about the last hour and a half. Ilyana played with some toys and we saved our surprise toy for the last hour when she started getting antsy. We rented a kids tablet from the downtown library which had some fun pre-loaded games on it. She was definitely a huge fan! Once we got to Des Moines we grabbed some lunch and then headed to the zoo! We purposefully went in the middle of the week after school had started so it wasn't crowded. Ilyana had a ton of fun looking at all of the animals, holding her arms out wanting to hold them, and learning animal noises. I think that her favorite animal was the wallabies that were jumping around. She was also a big fan of the macaque monkeys and the flamingos. In fact, we got to see a two day old flamingo. My favorite animal was the lion, which surprisingly wasn't sleeping! Jake's favorite animal was the giraffes which were beautiful! I ended up wearing Ryker in my baby carrier which he enjoyed. In fact, he enjoyed it so much that he took a nap for the last 45 minutes that we were there. We made it through the zoo in about an hour and a half and then we headed back home! Ilyana fell asleep almost instantly when we got in the car. We must have wore her out! The Blank Park Zoo was perfect for our kids and we definitely plan to go back again next year!

Our little Kangaroo

This turtle was HUGE!

family selfie!

She wanted to go get the wallaby!

Petting a llama

Too funny!

Going through a groundhog tunnel

She kept forgetting to breathe she was so amazed by the seals!

Ryker enjoyed the carrier!

Watching the lion with daddy

Must have been comfy

Worn out!

Ryker's half birthday!

Today I received an email stating that my son is now 6 months old. "Woah! That's not possible!" I exclaimed. I am no longer allowed to check emails while Jake drives. I can't believe how fast the past six months have gone! Ryker seems to be growing at a ridiculously fast pace. He can now sit by himself, scoot everywhere, stand while holding onto things, and do all sorts of yoga poses. He absolutely loves to eat. He mostly eats purees however sometimes we'll cut up soft foods like beans, blueberries, and bananas really small. Today he tried pancakes and couldn't get enough! He has recently started to love baths again. He loves kicking and splashing the whole time (much to mommy's dismay). He's starting to do better with sleeping. Recently he's started taking two 2 hour naps a day plus a little cat nap near the end of the day. At night he's usually sleeping from about 7-7, waking to nurse once around 3. We love our chunky, spunky, boy!

Ryker likes: baths, eating, sitting, balls, our wooden activity table, mirrors, his lovie, nursing.

Ryker doesn't like: meat purees, bottles, being patient, being ignored.

First day of 1 year old preschool!

I love being a stay at home mom. However sometimes I struggle with knowing what a good balance between engaging the kids in play and letting them play independently looks like. It can also be hard to know what age appropriate things I should be teaching them throughout the day. So when I saw that my favorite preschool homeschooling site has added a one year old curriculum I knew it was something worth looking into and considering. The curriculum is focused on a lot of things that I was already trying to teach Ilyana. Things like animals, colors, body parts, shapes, and letters. Plus it has a bible story and theme to talk about every week as well. I like how the curriculum already has everything broken down into weeks so we can be focused on a few specific things every week. Most of the activities and "lessons" for the week are easy to integrate into our normal routine. There are activities like pointing out certain shapes, finding items of a specific color, or coloring a fun worksheet. As I look through what we will learn this year I think that it will be the perfect balance of things Ilyana already knows, things that she will easily learn, and things that may challenge her a bit. I also love that it has a specific bible verse and character trait to pray over your child each week! I love being intentional about praying for my children! The suggested schedule for each week is split into 3 days so we are hoping to do school on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday so that Jake can have an active roll in her schooling as well. One of the big perks of homeschooling is the flexibility! We have something on Tuesday this week so we did school today instead! We were easily able to do all of today's activities during Ryker's morning nap. Ilyana had a lot of fun coloring her black train, reading the story of Noah in our favorite children's bible, singing songs, and talking about raccoons. I'm so excited to have a great school year with Ilyana and see just how much she learns!

Cloth diapers - The how and why!

Cloth diapering is something I have been interested in for a long time but never got up the gumption to actually do it. The idea of having to wash dirty diapers and figure out how to put them on was intimidating to say the least. However after receiving a diaper to try in exchange for a review on Amazon (This is the site I use if you're interested in reviewing products) I realized just how easy cloth diapering is and I was hooked!

The two biggest reasons I have been interested in cloth diapering are: 1. Price. For about the same price that I can get a couple months worth of disposable diapers (on sale) I can buy everything that I will ever need for cloth diapering up until Ryker is potty trained. That's a lot of money! 2. At the risk of sounding vane, the other reason I've wanted to cloth diaper is that they are SO CUTE! Seriously, it's so hard to pick which prints to buy, I want them all! My stash definitely includes a Harry Potter and a Pokemon themed diaper, by the way.

So cloth diapering is cost effective and fun, not to mention better for the environment, but surely it can't be easy. False! This is a typical diaper change: Take off diaper, wipe, put on new diaper (just like a disposable, only snaps on the tabs), put dirty diaper in laundry basket, done! Ryker only poops every few days, but if there is poop then there's one extra step of rinsing the poop off the diaper. Washing them is easy too. Every 2-3 days I put all of the dirty diapers into the washing machine and run a heavy rinse cycle with my usual detergent, then add whatever dirty clothes need washed to help bulk up the load and run a regular heavy washing cycle with more detergent,then just throw it all in the dryer. It really is quite simple!

I haven't tried very many kinds of cloth diapers because I really like what I have. Most of mine are Alva pocket diapers. I also have a Mama Koala all-in-one which is probably my least favorite, it's very bulky compared to the others. If you're interested in cloth diapering, the biggest resources I have found have been Fluff Love University and the Cloth Diapering groups on Babycenter and Facebook. You're more than welcome to ask me any questions you have and I'll do my best to answer or at least point you in the right direction!

Photo dump!

Getting ready to delete old pictures off of my camera and I thought I would share a few!

My grandparents wedding day. My brother is my grandpas spitting image!

Sweet sleeping Nala

He's my best friend :)

Cutie pie!

Those eyes :)

Monthly picture outtake

Ilyana and grandpa Phil

We attempted a DIY christmas shoot. It didn't go well ;)

This is why it didn't go well.

Walk at brucemore

It was hot!

Their relationship is the sweetest!

Isn't he a hottie??

"Dog"

My sweet boy!

Being silly!