It has been a challenging couple of weeks, Ryken being sick and all. Perhaps even more of a challenge, though, is how mobile he is. It seems like each day we are discovering another piece of “baby-proofing” that needs to get done. We have been keeping off-limit items out of Ryken’s reach for awhile now, but his reach is ever increasing. And our little thinker seems to have a gift at understanding how to get just what he wants, most of the time.
He takes a few minutes, contemplates the situation, and then creates a game plan. It is amazing to see him study things and then come up with creative solutions to his overcoming his road blocks. One road block he will over come quickly, I just know, is reaching the TV remotes. Ryken absolutely loves playing them, and we love letting him play with them, but we don’t love how quickly they end up in his mouth. So they live on top of our TV. But I think they may be moving to a new home sooner than I thought.
His love of technology also extends to cameras, tripods, etc. (Is he Matt’s son or what!?!).
I look forward to seeing what he does with a camera when he knows a little more about how to use it.
I know by now you are all used to Matt’s wonderful images and creative descriptions of our life with a little one. And a plethora of information about smoked meat (and cheese). I am hoping to become a (somewhat) regular contributor to this account of our lives, though instead of tidbits about meat you will probably get some information about my baking or quilting or the like. Don’t worry, I’m home with Ryken all day, so he will definitely play the main role in my posts. Without further ado, The Mommy Diaries: Part 1:
Last week I attended my first quilting class and it went exceptionally well. I am hand-appliqueing Ryken some safari theme soft pictures out of this book, which I picked up at a great little quilt shop while I was on this trip. I was in the process of working on the project during Ryken’s nap this morning, when he decided he was done napping about an hour early. I wasn’t quite ready to pack this up…
…so I decided to see about keeping Ryken occupied for a bit while I finished up. First, I had him “sort through” Daddy’s mail.
As you can see, he had a bit of trouble figuring out where things went, so in the end he decided to mostly “file” everything in his mouth. Since he had helped Daddy out a bit, I thought maybe I could benefit from similar assistance. So I had him help me catch up on correspondence. He seemed to really enjoy “organizing” Mommy’s cards.
After a bit of that, he decided he wanted to chat with Daddy while he was at work.
It was a very nice treat for all of us to get to catch up mid-day. Mommy was very pleased with her little helper and pleasantly surprised that she was able to get all of the quilting loose ends tied up and packed away. Then it was off to play time in Ryken’s room.
After proving what a big boy he was with helping in the office and keeping himself occupied and out of trouble, he decided to impress me yet again by climbing into his little rocking chair…ALL BY HIMSELF!
Impressive, I tell you, impressive. Our little man just keeps revealing what a big boy he is becoming.
Ryken has been feeling pretty lousy as of late. For about a week he has been pretty lethargic, and has had a lingering cough. Amy took him to the doctor, and while it’s nothing beyond a typical cold (and not swine flu mind you), his behavior for the last week has really amplified what a curious little guy he is when he is feeling well. When we have a moment to take a breath, it is interesting to think of the world as he does. What would I do if I didn’t know about pretty much everything that I see (on a basic level - I’m no rocket scientist here)? I’d probably bang on stuff or shove it in my mouth…which basically sums up the life of Ryken at this point. Now when I am interested in something, I tend to take photos of it.
The spring has been fun for that as a fair amount of birds have ventured into our yard, as you’ve seen before. If not our yard, they are nearby. Our neighbor just put in a fence around his yard, and I happened to catch one of the birds standing tall on it looking around:
Not the best shot, but its how I learn about the things I find interesting. When Ryken eats, he squishes things between his fingers, and sometimes holds them up just for kicks - though it often looks like he is trying to share:
Just a note: he is not trying to share. When you try to get what he is ‘offering’, he moves it or eats it. You can also see that he is a little under the weather here. But, even sick, he is amazingly cute and still manages to be cheery overall:
This one features a subtle ‘bananastache’, as we like to call it.
The other area Ryken tends to explore is in the bathtub. You’ve seen shots before, but you’ll see a few more. This time Amy and I had a little fun ‘dressing him up…
…and he provided the silly faces. Even with his spectacular bubble-hair, he still found great interest in his duck…
…and then decided to eat it.
An interesting note on this shot is that he now favors the larger ducky. He used to heavily favor his smaller one. Interesting to see his tastes in duckies change…literally. I couldn’t resist the pun there. I’d say I’m sorry, or that I didn’t mean it, but I’m not sorry, and I did mean it. Once again, even under the weather he retains the countenance of a happy, thoughtful little boy:
And now for something new. We’ve seen the bathtub shots, and we’ve seen the eating shots. But now, we see a new form of exploration that quite honestly caught me off guard a bit.
Ryken and I were hanging out in his room while Amy went to the bathroom. As soon as she walked out of his room, his interest in toys faded immediately. He had accepted a new quest: Find Mommy. He first crawled into the hallway, then laughed at me following him - crawling of course. He shot towards the office, then turned around trying to lose me. Fortunately I am quite adept at crawling. After all, back in the day, I was a baby. He then cut for the bedroom, as he knew that’s where Amy went last before ‘going missing’. He then played with her make-up box a bit (I’m still working on breaking him of that), and finally turned towards the door.
Typically he will hit doors that are shut which we interpret as a call to open the door for him. Not this time. He used the door to stand up, then slowly moved over to the handle. Then, stretching with all his might, he did this:
At once, Amy and I both said ‘oh no’. Oh no indeed. I will say, I’m quite impressed at his ability to understand that pulling a door knob opens a door. Though I do agree with Amy on her insight: ‘I’m glad we got doors knobs that lock’.
This last weekend, we went down to beautiful San Diego to spend a weekend doing nothing. It was a very much needed break for us, as the last month and a half has been spent doing all sorts of yard work. One of the downsides of buying an older home is that you inherit the landscaping decisions of those who lived in it before you. In some cases, that impact is minimal. In our case, there were quite a few areas that needed to be addressed.
We didn’t really have an idea what to expect in terms of where we were staying. All I really knew was that it was a condo. Quite the understatement. It was very nice, and the view was amazing. The trip and stay were a very good test to see how Ryken would do traveling as well. We ended up getting to the place about 2 hours after his bed time - which can often spell disaster for the next day - but he did wonderful. Very exciting turn of events for us, as we can now feel much more comfortable the next time we decide to go away.
I know, I know, enough words! Here are some photos…
The night we arrived, I was absolutely struck by the beautiful view. It was such an interesting thing seeing Amy feeding Ryken with such a stunning backdrop:
Living in a more rural area, you really forget what a city is all about. The amount of people all living so close is amazing! Sure makes for a beautiful backdrop though.
For some context, here is what the tower we stayed in looked like. We weren’t in this specific building, but one next to it that looked the same:
The condo we were fortunate enough to stay in was at the very top! Which is why the view was so amazing.
One thing that really surprised me was how living in a big city could actually be very family friendly. Perhaps San Diego is unique in how many parks it has, but there seemed to be more good parks there than where we live. The parks in our area tend to be fairly run down or dangerous. This photo was taken at a small park that was literally a five minute walk from the condo:
Ryken is trying to figure out what all the green is. He is probably wondering what the tall buildings and the concrete is too. ‘Where is the heat, the wind, and all the brown?’.
Now a shot of Ryken playing in our room:
and looking out the window:
He really enjoyed seeing all the cars and people moving around…as did we. While we were at the park, I decided to take some ‘city shots’. I don’t feel like I’ve had the time to invest in photography like I would like recently, so this was a refreshing change. I’m not particularly blown away by these images, but I thought I’d share as a reminder to myself to keep exploring things through the lens:
This is a shot of a condo tower and the covering that is over the playground. There was an interesting phrase that was cut out of the metal to be displayed in the shadow on a sunny day. Neat idea:
Another view of the park and the nice landscaping that framed it:
Finally, a surprising shot of Ryken. As is the case with fun times with friends, we talked longer and left later than our original plan. Of course, as always, it was totally worth it. Once we had made it into an area we were familiar with, we stopped to get gas and pick up something to munch on in the car. Ryken had fallen asleep so we each took turns going into the restaurant to use the facilities. Ryken had sensed that we had stopped and woke up. But rather than the typical ‘I SHOULD BE SLEEPING SO NOW I’M ANGRY’ cry, he did this:
‘I’m tired and super happy to be up after an amazing weekend with friends’. Good times.
Ryken has been getting more and more mobile, as babies should. He has seemed to be pretty content with crawling though. He stands up using our legs as supports, or any other object nearby, but tends not to experiment with walking on his own too often. Lately, for whatever reason, we decided to encourage him to use his push card a bit more. When we had encouraged him to do so in the past, he obliged, but it took some coaxing. This time, not so much.
He now grabs on the cart and goes. Below is a video I took while he roams around the living room. It is so funny to watch him speed around and express excitement before he goes, as well as the frustration when he hits a wall but wants to go more. At the end of the video, you’ll see that he hasn’t quite mastered the cart - but he is close!
I also took a video with the camera mounted on the cart looking at him, but it came out a bit too shaky to use. I’ll refine my technique and post it soon!
As Ryken is becoming more mobile, our lives are getting more, um, exciting. He can pretty much get wherever he wants to go now. As you have seen, he can even crawl into the bathroom when his water is running to watch the bath fill up. Part of what comes with mobility is Ryken’s ability to now play with things that he shouldn’t. His two favorites at this point are the recycle bin and the fireplace. Overall the fireplace isn’t a horrible place for him to be (the hearth that is), it just lends itself to a handful of problems. I can just see him jumping in the actual fireplace then running around the house covered in soot. Hmm. It might be a good idea to get a lock for that…
Back to the point. While we do have to inform Ryken of certain no-baby zones more often than we used to, we also get a whole lot more fun too. This post will be less about one giant story as it is glimpses into small moments of us having a good time.
The first is the result of a little test I was conducting. He loves his orange ring and his giraffe. So, in order to test his mobility, i put them on the very back of the couch and laid in front of it to see what he would do. Beyond stepping on my throat and choking me - which I contend was payback for the stunt - he figured out a way to climb me to get to them. Quite impressive.
He is also getting quite a bit more able to balance, as you can see here with him standing on the couch. I see jumping in his future…
And taking a moment to reflect on play time:
He is also enjoying being in the car a bit more it seems. He enjoys looking out the window at all the stuff that is happening, and when two of us are in the car, any time we look back he is happy to see us.
Today at lunch, as I was looking back, he was making some funny faces that let me get some shots of his teeth. Here are the bottom teeth:
And in a not so flattering photo, the top teeth. If you look close you can see that 4 are working their way in:
After work today we went and voted. Just like before, Ryken got a sticker too:
And for bedtime Ryken got to wear his new muscle man shirt that shows off his buff arms:
The outfit cracks me up for some reason. I anticipate him to be lifting weights at the beach with greased back hair while wearing it or something.
I’ll be honest, its kinda scary how big he is looking already. In 2 months he will be 1 year old. Absolutely insane. Most of these photos are shot with my phone, so sorry they aren’t the highest quality. I will break out my ‘real’ camera when we have a moment to breath. Perhaps this holiday coming up. All in all, we are having a blast with him. Things are definitely more work than they were before, but what a fun life! Also, I must give props to all the moms out there. What a job! And one that never stops!! Amazing stuff.
Any of you who have met Vega personally know that he is absolutely crazy. Not sort of crazy, or crazy in a cat kind of way. He is crazy. One minute he is sleeping peacefully, the next he is attacking the bed or stalking Amy or I. He sometimes jumps and climbs out leg…while we are standing up…looking at him. Insane.
I often ‘joke’ that one of these days he will end up in the smoker, or outside at night to ‘play’ with the coyotes in our area. Yet I haven’t followed through yet - and the events of this evening are why.
We were relaxing at home after his doctor appointment and watching the NBA playoffs while he was wondering the family room. We were concerned he had an ear infection, but it turns out he just has a minor cold. Ryken loves wandering around while carrying things with him. Today, his traveling buddy was an orange ring. He also loves standing up by a very old rocking chair we have been given that, if I remember right, belonged to my great grandmother. Vega also loves this chair.
Tonight was interesting because Ryken had a toy that Vega could now play with, and it went a little something like this:
Vega asks, ‘is that a toy?’
Ryken says, ‘what, this?’
Ryken shakes the toy saying ‘can you catch it?!’
And Ryken poses with a look of ‘I love getting into trouble’ after Amy breaks up the battle. Things were entirely peaceful, and Vega just kept gently batting at the ring. Every now and then he would bat at Ryken’s other swinging arm, and rarely he would nibble, but no blood was drawn.
And that is why we keep our crazy cat…because he is Ryken’s litter mate.
Very sorry for the long delay in posting. Life has been a bit abnormal for us for quite some time. For pretty much the majority of April, one of us was sick. We seem to have recovered enough to return to normal, but I claim that as my excuse for the little over a month that I haven’t posted. As evidence of us being out of sorts, I don’t even have a ton of things to post!
Ryken has basically become fully mobile. Below, you can see a video I uploaded on April 17th of him standing up in his crib playing, as well as being able to crawl towards something when he was motivated to do so (aka food).
It is amazing to see how much he has grown in his crawling skill in less than a month! The other day I started his bath water while he was in the living room, and he crawled to the bathroom! (sorry for the terrible photo quality on that one)
One quick story about his mobility, then on to a few Easter photos. Amy had put him down for a nap one afternoon, and heard him talking to himself as he normally does when he is first put down. She was concerned that he wouldn’t go down, but was glad that at least he was happy. A little while later, after some silence, she heard him cry hard. Our policy is to always give him a few minutes before we rush in and get him. We’ve read that babies remember when you ’save’ them, and will cry all the time to get you to go in. So, she waited. After a few minutes, it was quite again and she thought he just had a bad dream or something. Then she heard some more talking…only this time it sounded different. It sounded closer.
She decided to go to the door and peek inside to see how he was doing. She turned the doorknob and pushed gently…but she couldn’t get in. Confused, she tried again. Then she realized that Ryken was out of his crib and pushing against the other side of the door! He had managed to lower the rail on his crib, and fall/jump out! Oh how we are doomed.
Fortunately we have solved the problem since. Amy spun the crib around so the adjustable side of the gate faces the wall…so no matter what he can’t lower it to escape.
Now, some photos of our week-late Easter. I got the flu the Friday before Easter, so we celebrated a week late. The first order of business was to have Ryken sit in what was my dads rocking chair when he was a kid. My parents just got it fixed up for Ryken, so he broke it in holding a bunny.
The next day he was given an Easter basket with a few toys. Funny how kids eat non food like us adults eat candy.
And finally, no Easter would be complete without an Easter egg hunt.
He enjoyed chewing on the eggs more than chasing them down. I’m sure next Easter will be a completely different story though. All in all it was a fun Easter, and has been an enjoyable month when we weren’t sick. For more photos of Easter and daily life with Ryken, check out Amy’s Flickr. She takes great photos of Ryken throughout the day, and has some amazing Easter ones.
Finally, in meat smoking news, I was able to ‘cater’ a second event with some smoked meat. The first go around was for a cancer survivors group at church. I smoked two pre-cooked hams and it went over well. Recently, our work had a staff softball game/BBQ instead of our monthly staff breakfast. I was asked to contribute some pulled pork for sandwiches and made 22.24 pounds of it! I’ve never smoked such a huge batch of meat before, and I learned a lot in the process.
Here are some photos of the job. First of all, it was a lot of meat!
You’ll notice the bacon wallet I received from my brother and sister-in-law for Christmas. I use it, and love it. Next is the photo of the meat just after it came out of the smoker:
Finally, I made a few sample sandwiches to make sure it came out OK. I put the remainder of the meat behind the sandwich so you could get an idea of how much came out. Those are 3 - 1 gallon sized bags that are vacuum sealed. I was quite pleased with how it came out, and I figured out a new way to reheat and serve meat through the event. The meat got a lot of compliments, but the one that felt the best was that we ran out! Next year I’m going to smoke 40 pounds. The more I learn, the closer I get to refining the craft to the point of opening a restaurant!
I know I said finally before the meat smoking stuff, but I lied. Finally (for real this time), Amy is getting into bread like I am into meat smoking. Great combo if you ask me. She is just starting out, so I don’t have a ton of pictures of things yet, but expect them!
We are entering our second spring in the high desert, and this one feels different than the first - mostly because we are in a house now. One of the things I enjoy most about having a house is having a backyard. We have a fair amount of trees and shrubs in our yard which is a bit of an anomaly for the high desert. That also means that the birds that are up here enjoy our yard more than the others around us. In the time we’ve been in the house, we haven’t really seen too many animals. One night we saw a coyote in the front yard, which was amazing, but that was about it.
The other day when I came home from work I head some funny noises that sounded like a woodpecker. I don’t recall ever seeing one in Orange County, so I figured I’d go check to see if it was what I thought. Low and behold, one sign spring is here:
I look forward to the annual “search for the woodpecker”:
Such beautiful birds! New life is only one of the many signs of spring. In most areas, snow is melting and trees are just starting to sprout leaves. While I love all those things, one of my favorite spring activities is March Madness. Ryken was slightly less interested than me, but it was fun none the less:
In general, spring is a time of new beginnings. Of course, Ryken exhibits several new beginnings. It seems more and more lately. Some of them are pure conjecture on our part, like, “he will love reading”.
Or, “he will love eating”.
(Photo by Amy)
While those things are all wild theories we have about him, there are other new beginnings that are based completely in reality. The first would be that he is learning how to pull himself up:
And that he enjoys it quite a bit:
For quite some time we had thought he would be walking before crawling, but then we recanted. He seemed to make good progress with rolling and squirming. Recently however, he wants nothing to do with it. In fact, he has even started walking with the help of his cart thingy.
This clip makes me laugh so much. I love his two little steps, and then his vocalization of his success, and then him pulling the cart down onto himself. No babies were harmed too severely in the filming of the video, so don’t worry there. Amy, who filmed the video, always puts baby’s well being above the footage capture process. We’ll try to get some more footage of this as it continues to develop. If we don’t soon, he’ll be running!
In meat smoking news, I recently launched a new website, fattybombatty.com, focused on answering the basic questions that someone interested in meat smoking might have. I’ve been doing it for a little over a year now, and remember having a hard time with the super basic questions as I was researching. Hopefully this site will answer those and help point people in the right direction. If you know anyone who is interested in the hobby, send them the link. And if you have any questions that aren’t answered, please feel free to post them on the site. I hope it will grow to be more and more effective.
Last weekend the baseball team I help coach had a tournament. We went out to the lovely city of Boron where borax is mined. To say that all there is in Boron is a hole in the ground is pretty accurate. There is a nice Mexican food restaurant, and the city is interesting to me because of its history, but it is a random and small city in the middle of the desert. The team I help coach is from a small Christian school with about 120 student. I think that is down from last year, but we’ll use that number to give you an idea of how small we are. Every year we feel fortunate when we have enough players to have some people on the bench in case of injury or the need to give someone a rest. Because we are often scrounging for players, and it is such a small school, we don’t have the collection of talent to choose from that a larger school benefits from.
With a team of less talent, they are required to play as hard as they can to be successful. The tournament was a picture of the opposite…what happens when you don’t focus on the basics. Over the three games, we were outscored 47-3.
Ouch.
After the game I told the players that I wish they weren’t good. I wish that this performance was truly the best they had to offer so I could be proud of them. But it wasn’t. I let them know that if they want to be known for underachieving, they were right on track. That got me thinking about Ryken, and how I hope he invests in everything that he does.
Lately he has been laughing a lot, which has been a blast. After the pain of the tournament, I was really struck with how when Ryken laughs, he is all in. So much so, that he chirps.
Hearing the random noises coming fro his room when he wakes up makes us laugh just about every time, but the chirps are just too funny. I love how once he has decided to laugh, he goes for it all the way.
This can also be seen when he chews his car seat strap:
And when he fall asleep in the car:
And even when he is just generally happy:
Its so fun to see him explore the different parts of life.
For the last few days Ryken and I have been under the weather, so he has been a bit more mellow than usual. Amy has also been using her Peanut Shell in a new way - to carry him on her back. I thought it looked awesome, so I snapped a picture of him in Target:
And one as they were watering our fruit trees in the back yard:
You can tell a bit in the last photo that he isn’t feeling 100%. Hopefully we will get over whatever it is we are fighting.
On a non-Ryken related topic, I decided I would design some labels for the meat products I smoke for people at work. I really enjoy the hobby, and adding a label really takes things up a notch. So, here they are. I have one with a red boarder for smoked meats:
And one for Cheese:
I will be experimenting with making jerky this week, and I’ll probably keep you posted. If Ryken doesn’t like meat, I’ll have to learn to smoke vegetables.
We’ll try to get some more footage of this as it continues to develop. If we don’t soon, he’ll be running!
