Finally Catching Up!

I’ve been out of the blog world for almost 5 months now, and a lot has happened in those 5 months!

First, we had Ryker’s first Christmas, which was awesome! He was able to have both sets of grandparents there when he opened his presents Christmas morning. He thought the whole thing was cool. He got to rip paper, play with new toys, and a box. Although he didn’t like it when I took his new toy away so he could open another one. That is, until he figured out he got to tear open another package. Christmas with a child is so fun!!

Next, Ryker turned 1 on December 29th and we celebrated his birthday the next day. Unfortunately, there was an awful snow storm that day so most of our friends and family were not able to make it to the party. However, we had the Dalton Grandparents and Grandma Stockdale and our friends the Miles Family, so it was still super fun. Since I’m paranoid about letting Ryker have sugar, and he has food allergies, we made him a special banana cake in the shape of a Teddy Bear (thank you Grandma & Grandpa Dalton for helping with that!). Ryker was hesitant to touch it, but then he went face first into it, but then when everyone started making loud noises in response he stopped because he thought he wasn’t supposed to do that. It was pretty funny. Overall he had a fun birthday!

At Ryker’s 1 year doctor appointment he weighed 18 pounds 2 ounces, putting him in the 2 percentile on weight. But his cognitive, social, and emotional development was all right on track or better.

In January Ryker’s communication skills really took off! He really started using sign language. By the end of that month he would sign more, eat, drink, cracker, milk, all done, and dog.

In the beginning/middle of February we found out that Ryker had some food allergies. I suspected something because he was always sick, had slow weight gain, and was getting a sore bottom often. Finally I took him to a doctor that is a licensed MD as well as a natural medicine doctor. His regular pediatrician wasn’t able to help before so I hoped this new doctor could, and he did! He was able to isolate that Ryker was allergic to cow’s milk, goat’s milk, yeast, coconut, eggs, and most strongly to soy. He did some natural allergy treatments and told me to hold off for a couple weeks on allowing him to have any of these things. Then I could add them back into his diet, one at a time, wait a week or two, then add in another one. As soon as I did this, Ryker got better. Basically all of his symptoms went away and he finally started to gain weight!

Now he can have everything except for soy, which is basically in every processed food. So this means I do a lot of cooking from scratch and I have to buy a lot of organic foods to get stuff without soy in it. Although, since I’ve made these changes, he is doing so much better! And, lets face it, without many processed foods in our home, we all eat healthier.

Here we are now at May 1st, and I can’t believe how big Ryker is! He is finally as tall as his cousins the same age as him (although I haven’t weighed him in a while, so I don’t know what he weighs). He is still small weight wise and a skinny boy, but he’s much healthier. Other than a cold and one ear infection, he didn’t get sick after we figured out his allergies, which is a HUGE thing for him! This is the kid that was always sick.

Ryker is now a wonderful communicator now! The only downside to that is he gets really mad at me when he knows I know what he wants and I don’t give it to him. Oh well, kids have to learn they don’t always get what they want. Anyway, now he uses sign language all day long and he talks a bit too. He now signs eat, drink, more, cracker, banana, milk, all done, bird, horse, fish, dog, grandma, hurt (if something like his ears or tummy hurt he can tell me), hat, shoe, please, thank you, car, bike, airplane, he shakes his head yes or no in response to questions and then he also loves to wave hello and good-bye to everyone. He can sign more than he can say, but he says mom (also mama, mommy), dad (also dada), grandma, papa (for grandpa), dog, bird (kinda sounds like bir), that, and his favorite is uh-oh. He is also mister social and loves to wave to everyone. Most of the time he plays well with other kids. He also LOVES music and tries to sing all the time, which is totally adorable! He loves to play the piano (Grandma Dalton’s keyboard) and he turns bowls and boxes into drums. He loves to read books. He loves to go outside. He is a great running and biking companion for Mom and he loves going in the jogging stroller and bike trailer. He walks (mostly runs) holding onto stuff, or someone’s finger, or taking a few steps from one thing to another or when he doesn’t realize he isn’t holding onto anything. Although he sits down and speed crawls if he realizes he isn’t holding onto anything. I think he’s just waiting until he can run without holding onto anything because he crawls so fast that walking is just too slow for him. Overall, he is a very sweet, smart, busy, playful, teasing, boy!

Adam just finished another semester of school, again with all As. Yeah, go Adam. He now only has a year left! He’s coming up on a tough 7 week semester that with his full time work at the VA and full time school schedule, we won’t see us at all 4 days a week. Monday through Thursday he’ll leave at 5:30 a.m. and get home at about 10pm. But then once those 7 weeks are over he’ll get 8 weeks off (we’re counting down!). So in his one week off this week, we just got done spending an awesome weekend together as a family. I’ll do a separate post about that later.

In the last 5 months I (Melissa) have had a lot of things going on too. First, since November 1st I have lost 45 pounds and am now down to 19% body fat. I have also been training hard for triathlon season, which gets started this week. I started by training 5 hours a week and have now worked up to training 12 or 13 hours a week. We (Ryker and I) switched gyms to one with a nursery that gives him tons of attention and one-on-one time. So I run and bike outside with Ryker weather permitting, and when it’s not permitting, we go to the gym and Ryker gets to go play for an hour while I run, bike, or swim. He loves it at the new place! He also takes a mommy and baby swim class there with me once or twice a week and he is becoming quite the little swimmer himself. Then when we come home after our workout each day & he goes down for a nap, I find myself either working out more or getting house work done, or both.

A couple weeks ago I was talking to my triathlon coach and he suggested I was in great shape and there was no reason I shouldn’t be training for a half Ironman (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13.1 mile run), not just an Olympic distance (1500 meter swim, 25 mile bike, 6.2 mile run). He suggested I could be ready for the Boise half Ironman on June 11th, so after talking to Adam, I decided to do it!

I was feeling great and the weather was getting better, so adding to my training with Ryker was no problem. Ryker is always asking to go outside, so he was loving the extra outside time with Mom. Since there was a slight chance I was pregnant, I decided to wait to register until I had my period a couple days later. After over a week of being late, I finally took a test, and then another test, and then double checked my calendar where I had been writing everything down, and sure enough I am pregnant! According to my calendar, I am due December 25th!

I immediately got on the phone with my doctor’s office and then later got a call and had a long discussion with my midwife about what being pregnant means to my training, diet, and triathlon schedule. Since I am feeling great (other than being slightly tired I don’t even feel pregnant!) she said I could continue with what I’m doing. I eat a very healthy, balanced diet, with enough calories to fuel my workouts, so all I needed to do was add 200 calories to my diet and I would be fine. I also closely monitor my heart rate during workouts so I should keep doing that and stay in an aerobic zone and as long as I’m not cramping or bleeding, I can keep up my workouts and keep doing my triathlons and bike events I’m scheduled for. Although right now I’m not planning on doing the half Ironman until next year, after this baby is born. I will however be doing other, shorter distances, throughout the summer as long as I continue to feel good.

That’s a lot of updates for one day, so I will continue updates another day.