The Desjardins: 8 months old!

Ryder is 8 months old today! Where has the time gone? He is growing way too fast! He is so much fun though. He is sooo smart and learning so much everyday. He is pulling himself up more. Scary. This morning I went in to get him after a nap to find him standing in his crib. I guess we are going to have to put it on the lowest setting, just to be safe. Standing leads to walking .... and that is such a scary thought! He crawls sooo fast now, I can't imagine what it will be like when the boy can run. He still doesn't have any teeth and I am hoping he will not get them any time soon.

It feels like it has been such a crazy week! Rudy got lots of time off which was sooo nice. He had the 4th of July off, of course. Karina, Joel and Kayla came over and we barbecued. The food was delicious! It was nice to hang out with them and it's always fun to get the babies together. After the babies went to sleep, we even got to have a little adult time.

Rudy was scheduled Thursday and Friday off, but on Tuesday night someone from work called and said they had too many people scheduled for Wednesday and since he has a lot of vacation time to use, they asked if he wanted to paid day off. We got 3 days in a row! It was great, but went too fast. I really don't even know what we did .... pretty much just hung around the house. We talked about going to Mt. Lemmon either for the day or even to camp for a night, but we never made it. Hopefully one of these days we will go up to escape the heat.

Karina and I had scrapbooking night again, which is always a blast! I am loving this new hobby, although I wish it wasn't so expensive. I gotta have some "me" time though, right? It is so crazy to look at pictures of Ryder from his first month. He was sooo tiny and I can't believe how much he has grown! 8 MONTHS!!! It really feels like we just brought him home. :(

Thursday night I went and took a "Booty Blast" class taught by my good friend Katie, from Canyon Ranch. She is an awesome pilates instructor (among her many talents) and I miss seeing her face everyday! She kicked my butt ... literally. I am sooooo sore. It made me realize how "out of shape" I am and motivated me to get back into some sort of workout regimen. I mean, really .... it's pretty sad that I was in better shape at 9 months pregnant than I am 8 months post-partum! Not cool. Even if I weigh less than I did pre-pregnancy, I am WEAK. I miss dancing sooooo much and would love to find a ballet class to take. There is no better workout than ballet, in my opinion.

I think I may have an iron deficiency. I have bruises all over my body and never know where they come from. On top of that I am tired all the time and feeling cranky most of the time too. I know this could be lack of sleep and I should really go to bed earlier, but I don't want to ignore it if it's something more. I am going to try and get more iron in my diet and if that doesn't help, I may go see my doctor.

Well, I need to get to bed, but here are the pictures I promised!

He loves pulling his dirty clothes out of the basket

Mmmm, chewing on a bib with old food on it

Precious boy!

Haha, diving into his dirty clothes

The cutest thing I have ever seen!

I found these shoes online and just couldn't pass them up.

Baby pilates, in his shoes!

4th of July .... Ryder and Kayla staring at each other. Little lovebirds.

Checking out her toy .... and a few seconds later he snatched it from her! Luckily, she didn't mind.

Love this one! Ryder showing Kayla one of his favorite things to do ... pull dvd's off the shelf!

A staredown

Haha, this picture cracks me up! Hazy was trying to get a bone from under the couch and he was peeking under there to see what she was looking at! So cute!

The other day, he took a late nap and I put him in his swing .... didn't strap him in. We hardly ever use the swing anymore, but I didn't want to put him in his crib because it was so late in the day. When he woke up, I stood up off the couch to get him, just as he flung himself over the side - I just barely caught him!! He almost hit the floor. That would have been horrible!

My most recent baby-food making adventure was Organic Applesauce, Organic Blueberries and a mixture of the two. I also have some leftover blueberry juice to mix into his cereal or dilute with water for drinking (although I have no intention of giving him juice anytime soon).

He loves the applesauce and the mixture of the two, but didn't seem too crazy about the plain blueberry puree. He didn't like it mixed in his oatmeal either. It came out kind of grainy, so it may have been the consistency of it. At least I only made a small jar of it.

Baking the apples....

Boiling the blueberries

TADA!!!

mmmmmmm....

Happy blueberries & apples boy!

Time for a bath!

Ryder loves to push and follow a ball around. Any ball will do. Sometimes it rolls into places and he has to figure out how to get it out. I like to try and let him figure it out before jumping in to help him. This was kind of funny ..... and after some frustration he figured it out on his own!

Ball goes under table .... so does Ryder

I got the ball out .....

How in the heck do I get out? (He kept bumping his head)

Getting upset!

Stop. Take a deep breath. Try again.

Figuring it out

Finally free!

I gave Ryder his first "biscuit" the other day and since Rudy wasn't home I had to document the whole thing with pictures so he could feel like he was there! This is just a couple, I took sooo many! :)