Thanksgiving in Reno

We embarked on another adventure... flying with an infant. Riley was such a trooper. We checked the car seat and I carried him in the front carrier. He started to fuss a little on the shuttle and we couldn't get to the pacifier so I gave him my thumb to suck on. Because he was in the carrier, his face was against my chest so getting my thumb in his mouth required some odd positioning of my arm. Riley sucked on my thumb from the shuttle, through security and all the way until we got to our gate. He fell asleep shortly after take off and slept the entire flight.

It was so wonderful to introduce Riley to my family and friends. We are very lucky to now have four generations on both Nate and my sides of the family. My uncle Ron and his partner Dan came up from LA and we had 11 people at the table for Thanksgiving. Like most, we spent a lot of time eating and relaxing over the weekend.

Riley turns 1 month old

I can't believe that Riley has been a part of our life for a month now. What an amazing blessing he is. He is such a great baby and I'm loving being a mom. We (well Nate) introduced a bottle to Riley a couple days ago and he took it without hesitation. Now that Nate and others are able to feed him, I better start pumping more so we have a surplus.
I've gotten use to my new sleeping schedule and I'm starting to get the hang of outings with the Baby. I went to the grocery store yesterday for the first time. Luckily I only had a short list because Riley started crying half way through my shopping. I ended up getting everything I needed and made it out of the store with only a few concerned looks from other shoppers.

Babies, Babies everywhere...

It has been the year of the baby and it's bleeding into 2008. This past weekend we had two baby showers to attend. Our friends Rick and Allena and Jon and Cassie are both due in January. Allena's shower was the first get together since Riley arrived, completing the 2007 babies. We had to take a picture.

More adventures for Riley!

Leanne's parents left on Tuesday the 30th, it was sad to see them go, but we also knew it was time for us to establish our new routine with just the three of us. I decided to take Monday and Tuesday off to spend some more time with Leanne's family, but Wednesday it was finally time to go back to work for real, no more time off to hang out with the kid. Leanne was a rockstar spending her first day alone with the baby without any help. It was a little tough to go from having three helpers to none, but she handled it like a pro. On Friday, November 2nd, we had another doctors appointment to recheck Riley's weight. This time he weighed 7 lbs 14.5 oz, a 9.5 oz gain in 7 days!! Everything was now on track in regards to his feeding. We can expect for him to gain about 1 oz per day for a while. He has to start packing on the baby fat!

Friday night we had our first big group dinner since having Riley, it was a lot of fun to be social with all of our friends again. There were 8 of us, well 10 including the little ones. Chris, Tara & Koben, Betsy & Lee, Ari & Jared, and Leanne, Riley and me. We better take advantage of being social while Riley still sleeps all the time, as we have seen with many of our friends, the social time seems to dwindle as the kid gets older and more active.

Saturday it was time for Riley's biggest adventure yet, we got in the car and drove up to Estes Park to visit my Mom and Stepdad. Riley handled the hour long car ride great, he didn't even seem to be bothered by the elevation changes. My Grandparents came up as well. It was really neat to have 4 generations all in one room. We went and had a quick lunch before heading back down the mountain. All in all a good trip.

More Photos

World Series 2007

With Leanne's good computer luck we kept 3 tickets to Game 4 of the World Series so that I could take my Grandparents. They are both big baseball fans and have never been to a game of this magnitude. It took a lot of planning to get there early for special parking and time to get to our seats. It was a great game even though the Rockies got swept, it was fun to see the Champions celebrating on the field. The whole evening went really smooth other than briefly losing my Grandparents as we were heading back to the car, luckily they knew where they were going and we caught up to them quickly. More photos here.

Halloween Party

Our friend Laney had a "Texas Bling" Halloween Party on Saturday the 27th, so we thought this would be a good first adventure for Riley's first real outing (other than the doctor). We dressed Riley up as a burrito wrapped in foil, and put on the closest things we could for western wear. Laney had her Wii set up so we got some good video game time in as well. We had a good time and Riley cooperated nicely. I even won the "Git-R-Done" prize which included a bottle of bourbon with two glasses and a flask.

Check out the photos here.

Blog Slackers!

So I realize that we have been slacking on updating the blog the last few weeks, but that is the beauty of the internet, in a few minutes I can bring everyone up to date. On Sunday, October 21st, I took my Stepdad, Dave, to the Broncos-Steelers game. He is a HUGE Steelers fan and we both just hoped it would be a good game, it turned out to be a great game with Elam saving the day again for the Denver Donkeys. I made sure to rub it in a little even though Denver wasn't really having a good season.

Riley celebrated is 1st week of life by doing the same old thing, eating, sleeping, peeing and pooping. We also got to enjoy another week with Leanne's Mom in town. With the extra help still around I decided I should go back to work for a few days, so I went in on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I have to admit I didn't get a whole lot accomplished on Tuesday since World Series tickets were going on sale. Everyone in my office was trying to get in to buy tickets without any success so I called Leanne at home to see if she could try as well. It turns out we had some amazing luck getting in to the screwed up online system. Leanne was able to get in to the system 8 separate times and successfully purchased 18 tickets including 8 tickets to one game which theoretically wasn't possible. We kept a few tickets for ourselves and sold the rest to various friends that wanted to go.

On Friday the 26th we had another pediatrician appointment to check Riley's weight. He weighed in at a whopping 7 pounds 5 ounces, that was a 7 oz gain from our discharge weight! Straight from the pediatrician we went to the airport to pick up Leanne's dad, Tim, who was flying in for a long weekend.

As usual check out more photos here