San Tan Flats

Last night we went out to San Tan Flat for my brother, Jeff's, 30th birthday. It is such a fun place to have a party! Rylie loved sitting on the saddles and crawling around in the dirt (yes, she wanted down so bad so we let her just crawl :) )and she loved dancing to the music. The food isn't half bad either. :) We love this place and it was fun to get to take Rylie for the first time.


My little cowgirl :)




She loves to walk everywhere!


Crawling in the dirt :)


Rylie and Cayden staying warm by the fire.




Rylie loves Tatum! :)

Valentines Day

So our Valentines Day did not start exactly how we had planned. For starters, it began a whole lot earlier than we thought it would...like 2am early. Rylie woke up at 2 very unhappy and wouldn't go back to sleep for the rest of the night. She would doze off for like 20 minutes but would jerk back awake and start crying again. So needless to say, it was a long night! Brandon didn't feel good by the morning and stayed home sick. I took Rylie to my Mom's and left her there so I could go to work. She pretty much slept on my mom's lap the entire day. I think this is all due to the fact that her second tooth is ready to pop through any day.

My mom gave Rylie the cutest little tea set for Valentines. When you open the tea pot, it sings (in a British accent, which I think is so funny). As sick as Rylie was, she still started dancing when the tea pot was singing. No smiles, but she still got her groove on!


Rylie modeling her Valentines outfit. I also had cute little jeans, red converse and a big red bow...but sick baby = comfort over cuteness! :)

I got the best Valentines gift ever when I got home...after Brandon had slept, he felt better so he cleaned! The house was spotless! He then went out and picked up dinner for us and we all sat down and ate as a family. Rylie was finally feeling a little better, so she loved opening her gift from us and giving Daddy her Valentines gift. She got him a "Kisses for Daddy" book and a Daddy's Little Valentine bib so she could tell everyone that Daddy was her Valentine (and hopefully will be for the next, oh I don't know, 25 years?!). It really turned out to be such a great Valentines Day...even after the less than perfect start!






She adores her Daddy!


Did I mention that she loves to tear apart paper? Pretty much the highlight of her life right now. :)

9 Months

So I am very behind with what has been going on with Rylie...and she has done a ton of new stuff lately. She turned 9 months on Feb. 2 and has had the biggest month developmentally that she has had in a long time! This is what Rylie is up to now:

*She crawls all over the place and she is into everything. She is pretty cute when she gets caught though!

*She got her first tooth on the same day that she started crawling. It came in with no warning and no symptoms. Her second one is on it's way in and is a totally different story!

*She says Mama (that was her first word!), Dada, Baba (bottle) and makes a ton of different noises (the race is on for Uncle Jeff or Aunt LoLo next!). She also seems to recognize Brandon and I as Mama and Dada and says it to us all the time.

*She dances constantly! It is the cutest thing! Whenever music starts or she does something that makes her happy she shakes her shoulders.



*She pulls up to a stand whenever she can. It didn't take long for me to find her standing in her crib when I go into get her after naps now.

*She waves and claps. That also happened on the same day. :)


*She weights 18 lbs. 12 oz and is 28 inches long (puts her in the 50% for weight and 50%-75% for height). Her head has stopped growing at an abnormal rate and is now on the chart (97%).

Crazy that in 3 short months we will be celebrating her first birthday! She is so much fun and we love her more and more everyday!

Swim Lessons

Rylie started swim lessons last week! We decided she needs a little bit of water awareness since she has no concept that she can't breathe in the water. We took her swimming a few times last summer, but she was so little so I had no idea if she would like it now. Boy was I wrong! She is quite the little fish! The instructor was amazed at how relaxed she was and how great she did when we put her under water. By the end, she was coming out of the water with a smile on her face! She kicked all over the place, started learning how to climb out of the pool and how to monkey walk along the side. This is going to be so fun every Friday morning!


Kicking around the pool with Coach Melanie




Practicing her monkey walks on the side of the pool

Into Everything!

Well, since Rylie has started crawling, she is into everything! We did childproof our house, so she has a little more freedom and I don't have to follow her around to make sure she doesn't fall down our stairs. Now she just crawls up to the gate and gets up on her knees and shakes it like she is in prison! She currently is obsessed with Wrigley's toys (which is not fair since we don't let Wrigley touch Rylie's toys!) and we are really trying to teach her that those are off limits...but so far she doesn't get it! :) I have to admit, she is pretty cute when I find her into someting.

Baby Food

So I have been asked a few times why I am choosing to make Rylie's baby food instead of just buying it. First of all, I am not a crazy health food person (I love my Taco Bell!) so no, I do not think that store bought baby food is terrible or anything like that. I just always thought that making your own baby food sounded, well, fun! And that is crazy if you know me at all because I really don't love to cook or bake or do anything in the kitchen just for fun.

So yes, I make all of Rylie's food. Some of the reasons that I am still doing it is because I love that I can give her new and different foods to try that are not very common or never found in store bought baby food (ex. avocados, blueberries, honeydew to name a few). She will eat anything right now, so it is fun to give her as many different flavors as I can. Second of all, I believe it is substantially less expensive than store bought food (more on that in a minute). It really doesn't take me very long, and yes, I do like that I am actually seeing exactly what is going into her mouth (it is amazing how much I watch what food I am feeding her when I really didn't watch that closely when it was just Brandon and I). So here is what it looks like for me to make Rylie's food!


I found this great farmer's market that is always open (Superstition Ranch Market for anyone in the East Valley) and is actually in a building so it is open even in the summer. Minus the frozen green beans and peas (which I got at Wal-Mart) everything else is from there. And it is probably some of the best produce that I have ever tasted! Everything is so delicious! My grand total, including my Wal-Mart purchases, was only $14.45! This will last Rylie about a month.


Peeling and chopping the pears.


Yellow squash is a new one for her this time, so we will see how she likes it! All I had to do is wash it, cut it into chunks so it could be steamed, and then I pureed it in a blender.


Pears in the blender. I was going to get a food processer, but so far my blender has worked great!


I pour the blended food into ice cube trays to freeze. Each cube is approx. 1 oz so it makes it very easy to keep track. When they are frozen, I put them in marked freezer bags and just take out as many cubes as Rylie needs per day.


Rylie enjoying some frozen honeydew while I made the rest of her food. :)

Places to go and people to see!

So Rylie has had a few major accomplishments in the last few days. She started crawling and she got her first tooth! We have thought she was teething so many times since she was like 3 months old and nothing ever happened. Well, I just happened to notice something looked a little bit different in her mouth when I was feeding her lunch today, and what do you know! A tooth! No symptoms, nothing different, just poof! There's a tooth! :)