She’ll be hanging out at home with N while I go to an all day marching band rehearsal.

N wasn’t jazzed about spending the day hanging around the school taking care of E (so I could breastfeed her on demand) while I am working. I don’t blame him, if I were him would rather spend my Saturday at home relaxing.

Besides It’s better that she’s not out in the heat and blazing sun for that long anyway… So the two of them will be relaxing at home without me all day.

This is why we’ve been trying so hard to get her to take a bottle lately. There are gonna be days when she’s home with him and I am out working. We also would love to have a date night once in a while. If she refuses a bottle it kind of makes it impossible for me to leave her side for very long.

N and E had another successful morning while I was left to catch up on some sleep. I guess N took her down to the nursery where she took her morning nap in her crib. Crib sleeping is not something that happens often as she’s still pretty attached to swing sleeping.

N said after her nap in the crib she took a bottle with hardly any fuss, she even smiled at him while he was giving her it. This is a great change from the frantic screaming she was doing during bottle time days before.

It appears N and Everly are geared up for tomorrow and this makes me pretty happy. I love her to death but it will be nice to go to work and have 2 hands to teach with as opposed to only the one (since I’ve been holding her the entire time I am teaching).

Now I need to get back to my BPA obsessing, I’ll post more about that in a few days though, stay tuned.

The post This mom is flying solo tomorrow. appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Integrated medicine is a mix between alternative medicine and traditional medicine. When there is a health issue things like nutrition, life style and various alternative therapies are often explored first before prescription medications or other more dramatic solutions are used.

We prefer to take the natural route with our health care when possible, I am sure this is no surprise to you considering how Everly was born.

Anyway, back to the updates. Everly weighed in at a whopping 11.8 lbs and had a great checkup with the doc. She’s gaining weight very well and is reaching all the milestones for her age group according to the doctor.

We’ve not started her first vaccinations yet and are doing research on them right now. We know we’ll do some vaccinations. We just want to do them on a delayed schedule and spread them out more than what’s normally done.

We are so happy that Everly is doing so well. It’s a relief to have a good doctor for her too, in case she gets sick or something. Oh, this doctor is actually a family practice doctor so we can all be cared for by her, that is another plus! She’s covered by our insurance too.

That means I’ve got a handle on the baby stuff, for now… Not so much on the pet issues though.

The post Everly's first visit with a doctor, an integrated medicine physician. appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Our darling Everly was born 8 weeks ago and is now a two month old. Can you believe it? I know I sure can’t!

She came in to the world totally new to everything and has come so far in these past 8 weeks. When she was born all she was doing was sleeping and looking around.

At 2 weeks old she had her first bath when her umbilical stump fell off. She’s been to the State Fair and even back to her birth place for a followup appointment with the midwife who delivered her.

She’s learned our scents and has really bonded with us and adjusted to our home (pets and all). She learned breastfeeding and has grown so darn much.

She now smiles and imitates some of the faces we make a her. She is experimenting with different vocalizations and is making many more sounds. She’s even rolling over, holding her head up and trying out standing these days.

She’s getting the hang of playing and really enjoys anything musical. She loves when we sing or play music and she is great when the marching band plays music at my colorguard rehearsals.

It’s been a whirlwind 8 weeks for all of us but now it seems like she’s always been with us and we are comfortably in a groove. It’s like we’ve always been parents.

Happy 2 month birthday sweet Everly!

The post Happy 2 month birthday Everly! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

We had some playtime upon arriving at the cabin. We figured letting Everly stretch out on the bed would be a nice change from being cramped in the carseat all day. E had fun playing as you can see in the above photos.

We learned that an increase in humidity impacts a baby’s bottom. Poor Everly got kind of rashy while we were in Tennessee so we put a potty pad (left over from the birth kit) under her and let her go naked for a bit. She liked being free but was also startling much more without clothes on. The fresh air and sunlight did help with the rash though.

The checkup went well and Pamela was very excited to spend time with Everly as you can see. You can read more about how the checkup went in this post.

We had a great time on our trip, it was a time for us to reflect on Everly’s birth and we also made some good memories while we were there.

The post Wordless Wednesday: E's 6 week checkup with our midwife appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

We read that tired babies are fussy and can often seem gassy or colicky when all they actually need is to sleep more. We’ve learned this the hard way.

We bought Gripe Water, Mylicon gas drops, we made catnip & lemon balm tea for her, gave her digestive enzymes and basically tried everything to cure what seemed like tummy pain that caused her to fuss and cry inconsolably.

Turns out she was awake way more than she probably should be and she was getting so overstimulated and overtired that getting her to relax for sleep was practically impossible by the end of the night.

When we headed home with her everyone was all “babies will tell you what they need when they need it”. I nursed on demand, let her sleep when she wanted to, changed her when she screamed. All that resulted in was a fussy, rashy, unhappy baby that would sleep right through the night and fuss all day.

Once we figured out that babies typically shouldn’t be awake for more than about 2 hours at a time it was easy to see what the problem was…

She was getting overly tired and overtired babies only have more issues going to sleep which is probably why E would only doze off in my arms but would not fully sleep or let us lay her down for a nap. The whole time we were thinking she was fussing and crying in pain, it was just exhaustion though.

We committed a baby signals interpretation fail! Poor E.

Now we have made a few changes to help Everly with falling asleep and staying asleep per our reading.

Things like keeping our bedroom dark, changing her and feeding her in the dark when sleep should follow and building a bed time routine have helped. Also, we are having to swaddle her and also place her in the swing to get her to initially fall asleep at night.

The good news is she is actually napping during the day these days which in turn makes her easier to get back to sleep thought the day and night. A well rested baby fights sleep much less and isn’t as fussy. It is amazing and kind of “duh” all at the same time. This revelation is all thanks to reading, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child

Some parenting books have been very helpful reading material, I’ll admit there is quite a bit of conflicting info out there though. We were lucky enough to find some helpful stuff this time. If you’ve got a parenting book you love please let us know @laurensnellings from twitter recommended the above mentioned book to me and boy are we glad she did.

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