Good Friends, Good Fun

Zach and i enjoyed a weekend spent with friends in the ozarks this past weekend. sawyer stayed with grandma val and got to go to corn carnival and to visit great grandma karen. the report from grandma was that he loved the corn carnival parade and all the lights at the carnival. zach and i also had a great weekend away. it was SO hard for me to leave Sawyer but i really did end up having a great time. it was apparently the hottest day at the lake since 1951 on saturday!! we spent most of the weekend floating in the lake and enjoying some adult beverages- something i hadnt done in over a year! it was great for us to get together with all of our buddies at once- that is hard to accomplish for 9 people who all live in different states! we will be heading to cancun with the same group of friends- plus leeann and caleb, next march! this made me even more excited for that. it was great to get home and het my hands on sawyer again though! i missed him like crazy! he is heading to the ozarks with zach and i again next weekend for the 4th- im guessing he wont like fireworks though..

5 months old!

I honestly can't believe it has been 5 months already but what an amazing 5 months they have been. Sawyer can sit up on his own now- he does take his share of falls however and the sitting dosent last more than a few minutes without help but he gets better at it every day. He LOVES to sit up and does mini sit ups in an attempt to get to the sitting position. He loves to eat food and wants to drink out of any cup that I am drinking out of. He loves flowers, and being outside and loves the swimming pool. He just recently has seemed to take great interest in Cooper and likes to pet coopers ears. He has found his feet and likes to grab at his toes like they are the coolest thing ever. I think that he gets even more handsome every month! His hair is very very blonde now like mommy. Daddy still makes him laugh more than anything! He is such an amazing and wonderful little boy and Im still loving every minute with him!!

$5 worth of sweet potatoes..

gets you this much homemade baby food!

Each of those is enough for two days...thats a lot of sweet potatoes! good thing sawyer really liked them! he did NOT seem to like the squash i made though...he made the yuck sound and spit it out.

The only yucky part...sweet potatoes go in, and what comes out ALSO looks like sweet potatoes. fourtuatly he only poos every three days now (like clockwork lol) and he is the messiest eater because he insists on holding the spoon.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Fathers Day to Zach! he is such a good daddy! sawyer and zach have so much fun together already and sawyer thinks daddy is so cool and so funny :) i can tell that they are going to be best buddies forever.

Breastfeeding, it does the body good

So recently i have discovered that i have a slight problem. its really isnt a bad problem to have, in fact- i sort of LIKE having this problem. maybe i shouldnt even describe it as a problem at all, but it seems that suddenly none of my pants fit. they are all too big! when i went back to work, dr d told me that i looked very tiny and asked if i weighed less than before i was even pregnant. i told him i thought i was about the same- since i had returned to pre-pregnancy weight about a week after having sawyer (i fear i will NEVER be this lucky again) but then gained a few pounds after he was born because i was STARVING all the time. then i noticed that one of my favorite pairs of jeans were literraly falling off while i was at the post office and one of my friends from work commented that my scrubs were really big looking (ok, not that i own any tight scrubs) so i decided to weigh myself (which i rarely do because i dont care) and i weigh LESS than i did before i got pregnant with sawyer (only by about 4 pounds but hey ill take it). i think that it is from breastfeeding- and now i just might breastfeed forever- BEST DIETPLAN EVER. for real. today im wearing capris from when i was in highschool. and im totally not trying to brag- truth be told my stomach still slightly resembles a ball of dough and my chest is disproportionatly HUGE compared to the rest of my body (which im now used to and enjoy) and im not tonned one bit and sooo out of shape. im just saying- mammas, breastfeed your babies- because obviously breastfeeding does the body good :) and as you can tell, its working on someone else too! look how big my tiny baby is! it is insane how fast he grows!

Deer Baby, Sawyer Sleeps, and a Nice Weekend

We had a pretty great weekend at our house! The forecast called for a yucky, rainy weekend but the days turned out to be nice with thunderstorms at night! saturday we got a bit of planting done in the yard. everything is so green finally!! my peonies finally started to bloom, they are so pretty again this year, and the peonies we planted last year that didnt grow, grew this year which is awesome!!!! they didnt flower but perhaps next year- i was just excited that they grew! we also went on a nice walk on the path behind the house. zach has been seeing a tiny baby deer in the "green space" area and we wanted to see if we could see it again. we didnt, but the walk was nice- sawyer fell right asleep and cooper had a blast-of course he found a mud puddle to play in right away! i tell him that he is the dirtiest dog in the world!






























here are sawyer and i in the yard near the garden.
















this was the prettiest thing! on the bank of the big creek in our yard there are a TON on dasies growing this year- twice as many as last year. it is georgeous, but sadly it was hard to get a picture of how neat it really is!






























here sawyer and i are under the giant tree by the creek- it is the most awesome location for his future tree house- right next to a bend in the creek, and its so nice and shady under there.
















We had friends over Saturday night. Zach has mastered making amazing bbq chicken on the grill It was so good. Also Saturday night was the first night that we ever put Sawyer to bed in his crib in his own room- he has been sleeping right next to me in a little "van wyk baby bed" which is the bed that every van wyk in Zachs family has slept in since his dad and aunts and uncles were babies. It was awesome because he was just right there next to me and i could see him..but he wasnt in the bed with me. But Zach's cousin just had a baby so it is time to pass it on. He can't sleep in our room untill he goes to college :) He had a rough time last night and woke up a few times after i put him to bed. I had to let him snuggle his puppy toy and listen to George Strait to get him to fall asleep (a habit that daddy started..) he finally stayed asleep at about 10 and slept all night long, even through the thunderstorm which was awesome because it woke me up! Tonight he went to bed at 8 and has been doing great! He cuddled puppy and listend to George Strait again :) but he fell asleep and didnt cry! He loves puppy. Here is is on Saturday playing in his exersaucer AND of course giving puppy a big cuddle at the same time. He is such a snuggler!! I love it!
















Today we went to a cub's game with Chase's parents. The Iowa Donor Network was giving organ donors familys tickets so they brought us along. Saldly the cubs didnt win but it was really nice weather today! I totally got some sun-FINALLY! Here we are with Chase's family.
















Paul and Zach had matching hats, shirts (chase's organ donor be someones hero shirts that we all wore to the game) khaki cargo shorts and matching blue tounges :)

















I am hoping for nice weather this week! I really want to head to the pool this week and get a bit more color. I have a bit of a farmer tan after today!

Sawyer eats Cereal

A few days ago we let Sawyer try rice cereal for the first time and he LOVED it! he ate it right down! it gets pretty messy but he seems to really enjoy getting to eat some food- though i think he def. still prefers to nurse the best. he is also allowed to start eating some baby food now but we havent started that yet...dr w said to start with orange veggies when we start him on food. im going to make baby food for him though as much as possible- i read some not so great things about the store bought kind! i think we will do carrots first and then squash, maybe sweet potatoes...

here is sawyer eating cereal for the first time

things have been busy here with graduation, ect. This weekend we went to uncle marcus's grad party-what a great time! Sawyer was so happy the whole time and was a big hit with everyone there. zach epoxied our garage floor this weekend and it looks great! i cant park my jeep on it for 3 more days though!- thats the only bad part because it looks so so so much nicer now. we also got a blueberry bush and a raspberry bush for our yard this weekend! and more strawberry plants too! and i have been putting my clothesline to good use with these nice days!

here is Sawyer giggling!