Updates from the Daltons

The last couple of weeks have been mostly great with a few trials thrown in (doesn't that just sound like the description of life!). Here's a list of some of the interesting things that have happened.

First we had Ryker's baby blessing on March 28th. He looked so handsome in his little white baby tuxedo! My lovely sister-in-law Maria took the pictures so I'll post them as soon as I get them. Anyway, we elected to do this blessing at home rather than in church. We just felt like it was more of a family and close friend event and we didn't want anyone to have to miss their own church to come. Ryker was so peaceful and calm all day. I don't even think he cried at all the entire day. One funny thing is toward the end of the night Ryker was still in his baby tux and I thought I better take him out before he has a blowout or spits up on it, and sure enough as I was walking to the changing table he had a blowout! Oh well, I quickly put stain remover on it and it came out just fine. :)

On April 5th Adam started a new job working for the Veteren's Benefit Administration in downtown Salt Lake. He works with veteran's insurance claim files. Not exactly his dream job, but he likes it okay. The best thing is they work with his school schedule, he gets paid pretty well, he gets great government benefits, and it's a foot in the door for a better job there when he graduates next year.

Since the end of March I've been training for a triathlon. I workout at least one to two sometimes even three hours a day, six days a week. I love it! And I joined Life Time Fitness in South Jordan and joined their triathlon team so it's been super fun training with a team. I found that I'm not as bad as I thought because I never come in last place during workouts. Yeah go me!

Ryker has started talking a ton this month! He's my little jabber box, definitely my son! It's so completely adorable to see my tiny baby just talking away to me. He especially likes to talk while I'm trying to feed him. But best of all, on Saturday, April 17th he started laughing hysterically. No, not just giggling, full on laughter. We were eating dinner with Adam's parents and grandmas and I was holding him. He was just looking up at me and smiling so I was of course smiling back. Then suddenly he just busted out into laughter for like 5 minutes straight. He got all six adults at the table to start laughing as well. Now that was the cutest thing I've ever experienced in my life! Even Grandma Grace thought so. She told me the other day she woke up in the middle of the night hearing his laughter. It was so memorable she dreams about it! My only regret is we didn't get it on video. Adam tried, but by the time he started recording Ryker was done laughing. He does still giggle from time to time, but I have never to this day heard him laugh like that since.

And finally, I had a scary/funny experience yesterday. I was on the way to the gym for my triathlon class and I ran out of gas. I was driving our 1998 Mitsubishi Montero and Ryker was in the back seat asleep. I was at an intersection when the SUV ran out of gas. I kind of freaked out because cars started speeding around me giving me dirty looks and I was afraid we were going to get hit. The protective mother in me and adrenaline kicked in and completely by myself (where was the good Samaritan when I needed him?) I pushed this 5,000 pound vehicle (according to google that's how much this SUV weighs) out of the intersection and managed to turn the wheel at the same time (I was in the left turning lane). At first I was on a flat, but then once I turned it started going down hill. Then the vehicle started going really fast and I had to run to keep up with it and jump in the moving vehicle so I could steer and hit the brakes so I didn't hit anyone else. Then I finished pushing it uphill into a bank parking lot. Once I got into the parking lot a nice man ran to help me push it into a parking space. He said he saw me pushing it by myself from inside the bank so he ran out to help, but by then I already made it in the parking lot. When he started helping me we had a hard time pushing it into a spot. He said, "dang this is a big car. How the heck did you push this by yourself?" I don't know. All I can say is my baby was in danger and I wasn't about to let 5,000 pounds stop me from helping him. So I am really glad I've been working out!

Anyway, about 5 minutes later Adam's mom got there to give me some gas and I hurried on to the gym to do my hour and a half bike ride with my team. Surprisingly I'm not sore today.

And finally, Ryker, Adam, and I (and Grandma Arlene, Grandpa Doug, and Grandma Grace) all got sick with a nasty cold and cough thing. But inspite of the cold, Ryker has been such a happy baby. I love having such a happy kid! Anyway, because of his cough I took Ryker to the doctor last week. He weighed in at 11 pounds 9 ounzes. I was thinking that was great, but then the doctor told me Ryker had slowed down on his weight gain again and went from the 10th percentile to the 7th percentile and I needed to start putting human milk fortifier in every bottle of breast milk that I give him. So I tried to do that for the following week (although I didn't always remember) and when I took him in for a follow-up visit yesterday he was up to 12 pounds even and back to the 10th percentile. His head was also in the 10th percentile, but his height was not. He's only 22 inches, which is in the 3 percentile. So I have a little shorty pants baby. That's okay, I love my baby tiny. It kind of makes it more fun for me. He's almost 4 months old (in a week) and he still wears 0 to 3 months clothes and size 1 diapers perfectly.

Anyway, I have a couple pictures from this week, but I'm having a hard time uploading them to the computer. I'll post the pics as soon as I can.