What We've Learned...Episode 1

Hello Rylie followers,
I thought I'd start a new "Series" here called "What We've Learned..." These will be mostly light-hearted stories about things that have happened since Rylie was born that taught us a valuable, hilarious, or mildly serious lesson. So without further ado... Episode 1:

It is much better to bite a newborn's finger nails rather than attempt to clip them.

Being a dad who has bitten his fingernails for over 20 years with very few breaks, I decided it was my job to take care of my daughter's fingernails. Logical? No!... But that is irrelevant. I tried to bite them off like the nurses told us to, but I kept feeling as if I was about to bite the tip of her finger off. So instead I attempted to clip them with "safety" clippers. And boy were they safe... Those clippers didn't feel a thing. Rylie, on the other hand, got her first taste of pain. I clipped a good chunk of skin off and she bled hopefully more than she will for quite some time. Actually I think it bothered Christie more than it did Rylie. The cool part of this story is that we got creative and fashioned a baby-sized band-aid from an adult-sized one. It was the cutest band-aid EVER!

Babies have the power to change the fabric of time and space.

It's a fact that we are notoriously late for most things... This is a fact that I haaaaaaaaate... but I live with it, and occasionally its partially my fault too, but that doesn't mean I like it! Well, Rylie must looooooooooove it... because the closest we have been to being on time to anything since she arrived was when we had people over to our house... yes, that's right, OUR HOUSE! I'm pretty sure we were even a little late to that. That 15 minute buffer that we were supposed to always leave ourselves (that we could never really leave ourselves) has turned into and hour buffer. Therefore, Rylie has changed time itself... I know its a stretch, but I thought it was a better title than "Babies make you late"... 

The name Rylie is Spanish for "Poop Bazooka".

The picture to the left is to be used a reference. Janelle from Engaged Studio and I were setting up for this shot. Christie was observing, and we were in the kitchen. I was holding Rylie in the opposite direction than pictured to the left so that Christie could help get her diaper off. Let's just say that Christie effectively took the safety off of the Bazooka! Rylie, being the polite little Bazooka that she is, decided to wait until Janelle was almost clear to release the poop rocket all over the kitchen floor. Janelle was able to dodge the blast, Matrix-style! If you have a hard time picturing this, please do the following: 1. Place plastic wrap on an area of your kitchen. 2: Open a brand new bottle of Frenches yellow mustard. 3. Cut the opening slightly to make it a little bigger. 4. SQUEEZE!!! 5. Be amazed that a baby has that much force behind its... ummm behind.  We then proceeded to take this (and several other) beautiful pictures of my arm... and a Baby Bazooka. I'm not going to lie, I was a little scared of pointing the "wrong" end toward me.

Rylie has launched her "ammo" approximately 5 feet no less than a half a dozen times... I repeat "Poop...Bazooka"!

Poop is no longer Awesome.

This one is really self-explanatory. I commented in an earlier post that "Poop is Awesome" or "Poop is Exciting" or something similarly silly and ridiculous! Now poop is something that I hope doesn't leak onto her various seating/carrying/laying receptacles... let alone on me or Christie. However, the faces that Rylie makes when she is "doing her business" ARE awesome!

Frozen breast milk requires a second refrigerator.

We are in the "breast feeding is better" camp and have been extremely fortunate in the breast milk endeavors. (I would also like it to be known that just because we believe that breast feeding is the way to go, we do understand that sometimes it isn't possible or that everyone has their own opinions and can raise their children the best way they see fit.) Rylie will be going to day care starting in October and we will be sending breast milk with her everyday. Needless to say, Christie will have to pump most of her milk once she goes back to work and we store that in the freezer. After about 3 weeks of pumping we have completely overwhelmed our existing freezer (it didn't have much room left to begin with)... So what is the logical next step? Clean out the freezer, right? WRONG! The correct answer is "Buy another 'fridge"... It's really just a good excuse to buy a drink fridge to eventually put in the garage. So this time next year, we might have to pack the fridge with "beverages" and take a picture... and then drink them. Sounds fun!

I'm sure we will have many more lessons learned and I will attempt to turn them into hilarious anecdotes. If you hate the stories, then here are more pictures from the wonderful Janelle at Engaged Studio LLC.

- DC&R