They say you can sleep when you're dead....

I feel I've been on a roller coaster the last several weeks/months (I've lost count), and wanted to share with you a little about the ride.

I think that the real force behind this roller coaster is sleep deprivation.  In all reality, it is a miracle that Joe and I get up every morning and figure out a way to do all of the things that everyone expects from us…because usually we're doing it on about 5 hours of interrupted sleep.  I do thank God for the ability to continue functioning.  I also thank hormones - but have no explanation for Joe's supernatural endurance.  We aren't complaining, but this is the reality that we live with and/or created.

But then you roll over and see Rory (yes, often he is in our bed) and you remember that you wouldn't trade even a winter's hibernation for his little snuggly butt.

So we are kind of trudging through the weeks these days in hopes of getting some rest on the weekend - which you can imagine is incredibly frustrating since Rory's sleep habits don't change just because our work schedule did.  To Joe's credit - he often let's me sleep in.

So Rory isn't a sleeper.  But he is a whole lot of other things that are just totally awesome.  For one, he is on the go!  Any day now I feel like he's just going to walk over to me and start speaking full sentences.  He's cruising around our furniture and has no problem transitioning from standing to crawling or vice versa.  In fact, most of the time we're holding our breath (thinking it should have hurt but maybe he won't notice if we don't say anything) but he continues on without even a pause.  

As for the talking thing, well, he talks ALL THE TIME.  He feels especially chatty between the hours of 6:40 and 9:00 - at which point he's ready for a nap just in time for me to have to leave for work.  It's so thoughtful of him to want to hang out with us in the mornings!  (hahaha, I do love it though.  And hate it.)  But with all of the babbles, he's still only consistent with Da-Da and had about 3 days where I swore he was saying duck.  No signs of that in months, however.

We're also excited because it seems he's going to have really strong, clean baby teeth…because none of them have arrived yet.  I attribute this to the fact that I was still losing baby teeth in high school, and feel like it must be a good thing.  We can see the teeth behind his gums (totally creepy) so at least we know he has them.

And he's definitely an eater.  As proven in our recent trip to St. Louis, the kid will eat anything.  In fact, I'm often left with cold food because I'm busy feeding him during our entire meal!  There hasn't been a solid food that he won't eat - but forget the baby food.

So, Rory keeps us busy.

We recently were in St. Louis for a week-long visit with family.  There were two motivators for the trip - to celebrate our beautiful cousin Caitlin's wedding and to soak in all of the love and wisdom from Grandma Jean.  The week was really too emotionally exhausting to express in a blog post, but to sum it up - every wonderful characteristic (funny, stubborn, strong, driven, persistent) of her wonderful personality shined that trip. Against all odds, she was looking beautiful in the second row at Caitlin's wedding - something that touched the deepest part of our family.  And I think my Grandma said it best when she turned around to us after communion and said "I do it my way".  I will hold onto that.

Caitlin's wedding, and having Grandma there, was the best way to end our trip to St. Louis.  It was just FUN.  We were all there, relaxed, happy, thankful, dolled up, and we danced the night away!  Caitlin and Austin looked stunning of course, and they radiated with joy and kindness as they always do.  It was just so happy, and we all needed that!  We were celebrating life!

Of course it is hard to say goodbye on a trip like that.  I continue to do what my Grandma taught me and thank God for everything - even the things that don't make sense right now.  So as I am thankful for her, I am thankful for each of you who keep us going when we're soooooo tired.  We love you all!

Robyn

PS - you definitely do not want to see the 1,700 pictures I've taken since I last wrote, so I'll just leave you with two.

This is just the best.