Ryder Now

My Mom has requested pictures of Ryder where she can actually see his face. And I never reject a request for pictures of my kids! But if I'm going to post pictures of Ryder, I may as well tell you all about him, too, right?

So here's the scoop on Ryder these days. He isn't crawling yet, but he's working on it. Just in the last few days, he's started getting his knees underneath him, so it's coming. And I should probably make Craig clean off my baby gate (which has been doubling as a saw horse) before that day arrives! In the meantime, he's become a stealth scooter. He gets all over the place by rolling and scooting, but I never really seem to see him actually doing any of it. I turn my back for a few minutes, and when I turn around again, he's five feet away from where I put him down. It's kind of amusing, but also scary: in one day, he managed to eat a page out of my planner, almost ripped a page out of the hymn book, and was just grabbing a plastic bag when I snatched it away from him. So he's keeping me on my toes. And clearly I need to start enforcing more strict policies about where the kids can leave their junk. (Because we all know I would never leave any of those things on the floor. ...Right?)

I hate to admit this, but in the spirit of being honest, I will tell you that a week ago, Ryder was a crank. He was fussy and didn't sleep well. And he wasn't much fun. I worried that maybe he was teething, maybe his runny nose was indicative of something worse than just a little cold, maybe this new diet was messing with his feedings. Or maybe my sweet baby just wasn't quite so sweet any more. I worried about everything. But I think it was mostly a sleep issue.

For a while he'd been getting worse and worse about sleeping at night-- he'd wake up around midnight and then again around four in the morning. And it was slowly killing me. Finally one night, when he woke up just two hours after I'd fed him, I decided it was time to put my foot down. I went into his room and comforted him and assured him that he was fine and then went back to bed. And he was furious. He screamed bloody murder. Ten minutes later I sent Craig to do the same. We continued this for an hour before he finally fell asleep. (This is a really fun thing to do at 2:00 in the morning, let me tell you.) But it worked! And he's been sleeping much better now.

We also started putting him to bed way earlier, although that wasn't actually on purpose. I put him down for what was supposed to be a nap at 5:00pm, and then he slept until six the next morning. So I think the reason he'd been grumpy was simply because he just wasn't getting enough sleep! Poor little guy! But I'm so glad to have my happy little baby back again!

So that's the scoop on Ryder these days. Here are a ton of pictures and one video. The video isn't really all that exciting, but right at the end he smiles at the camera and that pretty much melts my heart, so I figure Grandmas and maybe Aunts will be willing to spend a minute watching it, right? Enjoy!

In his Hawaii outfit

Chick-fil-A had a "dress up like a cow and get free food" day. We took full advantage.

Then, just for fun, we put Bentley's cow costume on Ryder!

Then he fell asleep wearing Kendra's costume (which was actually a dalmatian, but close enough for our purposes!)

Yes, I snapped a picture of him during Sunday School. I'm tacky like that.

Sorry it's blurry, but I still think it's worth sharing

Sleeping in his pack-n-play when Daddy was replacing the window in his room

Learning to eat Cheerios (and taking a break to suck his thumb)

Um, I might have been letting him watch a little TV here... Oops

There's my happy boy!

Yup! So happy!