Around the house…and a smile!

We haven’t done anything too exciting the past couple of weeks – I feel like I’m still adjusting to 2 kids and just trying to take care of them, get a decent amount of sleep, and keep the house reasonably clean.

Here’s Ryan taking a little nap on the couch- I thought it was funny he would sleep with his arms sticking up like this:

Bennett has been into playing with our card games lately (mainly a couple games of old maid and go fish). I usually pull them out when I have to take care of Ryan and can’t play with him, and they will keep him occupied for quite a while, sorting them and putting all the snowmen in piles, all the dogs in piles, etc.

 

I haven’t been great at taking pictures of Ryan, mainly because he doesn’t seem to do much, at least compared to Bennett :) I did take a few a couple days ago – and even got a cute smile.

 

and here he is yesterday fighting tummy time – look how far his leg / hip is trying to flip over!

And finally, we have taken advantage of the few days we’ve had with nice weather and gone to the park / playground. Bennett looks pretty cute in his sunglasses :)

Finally, a decision!

After a really long application & decision process, Nate decided to get his MBA at BYU, so we will be Cougars once again! It came down to BYU and the U of Texas in Austin, and we had to make a decision right around the time when Ryan was born, so it was a little stressful. We kept saying that one of us had to decide on a school and the other had to decide on a baby name because we couldn't come to a decision about either one. But now that the decision is made, we're excited about it and Nate's looking forward to being back in school. We still have some things to figure out but are glad that we can move forward with making plans!

One Month

I can’t believe how fast the first month has gone with Ryan. As hard as the newborn stage is, I don’t think I’m ready for him to grow out of it quite yet. I can tell though that he’s getting a little stronger and seems to be awake and alert more than he was at first. Otherwise, no major changes :) He did smile at his dad yesterday – it was pretty cute, but we didn’t get a picture. I’ll have to be ready for the next one. He’s been a pretty good sleeper at night – mostly sleeping unless he needs to eat (every 3-4 hours), but sometimes has a hard time going back to sleep. He seems to be a pretty happy baby and we love having him around! Here are some more pictures for you, and a couple of Bennett just because he always tries to get in on the photo shoots (there are a lot – I took some a couple weeks ago and the rest today).

I was disappointed when I saw Ryan was blurry in this last one – I was going to take more but Bennett lasted about 2 seconds laying there by Ryan and I couldn’t get him to do it again.

Happy Mother’s Day!!

We had a great Mother’s Day on Sunday. Nate made me some yummy pancakes for breakfast (pancakes aren’t his favorite so we never make them normally) and didn’t have his usual before-church meetings. I got to take a good nap, then we went up to Nate’s parents’ house for dinner. We were glad that we were able to celebrate with Nate’s mom and enjoyed spending time with his family (and Nate was glad he didn’t have to make dinner for me, just part of dessert :)

Mother’s Day came at a good time for me when I’ve been feeling a little overwhelmed by motherhood – feeling like I’m just barely keeping up with the essentials. It was a good reminder of the importance of what I’m doing and the positive influence I can have.

I decided to attempt to take a picture with Bennett and Ryan – I figured our church clothes wouldn’t last until Nate got home so we set up the tripod and remote. It took some trial and error, but we did manage to get one decent one.

We did manage to get some cute ones in the process.

I’m grateful to be a mom, and grateful for my wonderful mom and mother-in-law and their examples of motherhood! Happy Mother’s Day!

Fishing with Grandpa

We decided to take advantage of the great spring weather yesterday and take Bennett fishing with his grandpa (who is an avid fisherman). We didn’t expect to catch much because we went in the afternoon, but we were a little disappointed that we didn’t catch anything, although we did see a few fish jump. Despite the lack of fishing success, it was still a great afternoon. Bennett learned how to cast mostly by himself (with a little help), we enjoyed the warm weather and being outside, Bennett seemed to have fun and kept wanting to reel in the line, and I got some cute pictures of Bennett and Nate fishing (warning: picture overload! I love being able to take pictures outside :) We’ll have to try again sometime in the morning when we have better odds.

 

Mama duck and her little ducklings. They thought the rocks Bennett was throwing in the water were some sort of food :)

Proof that I was there – and took a short nap

It Grew

This is mostly for my mom – while she was here helping with Ryan, we kept talking about planting wheat grass with Bennett for Easter, but didn’t get everything together for it until right before she left. It took a few days, but the grass grew pretty well. I attempted to have a cute tree with eggs hanging for part of an Easter centerpiece, but it didn’t quite turn out how I pictured (I definitely needed a different “tree”), and my little helper reorganized the eggs the way he wanted them (I didn’t plan to have them all grouped by color). It was still cute that way though.