Spectacular Sunset

I love the wide open spaces of Western Wyoming.  It sure does give us some spectacular sunsets!

Buckets of Fun!

I decided to change it up a little bit and give Wyokiddo some water time without setting up the sprinkler.  I set her up with her stacking buckets and a few toys borrowed from the sandbox and bath bag and found a nice sunny spot in the driveway.  She had buckets of fun, literally!  She spent almost an hour dunking toys, dumping water and generally making a big, wet mess.  She eventually figured out I was refilling buckets from the faucet on the side of the house.  When a bucket was empty, she'd toddle to the side of the house, stick her bucket under the faucet and beg for more water.  Even the dogs got in on some of the water fun, draining a bucket or two when Wyokiddo dropped her guard!

Setup and clean up was simple...gather up the buckets and let everything air dry!  If you don't have buckets, storage containers of any size would work.

Fun with Foil

I bought a new photography book and was eager to practice using my camera, so I wanted  to set up Wyokiddo with a quick activity.  She's been into exploring new textures lately, so I cut up some squares of wax paper and tin foil and let her explore!  She had fun crumpling the tin foil and combining crumpled balls into bigger crumpled balls of tin foil.  I made some strips that I wrapped around her wrists and legs like bracelets, which Wyokiddo thought was a hoot.  I didn't get much done with my camera, because I was too busy enjoying the time playing with her!  She definitely liked the tin foil better than the wax paper, and I only had to reminder her once not to put it in her mouth.  This was so simple to set up and clean up.  I might even cut up some squares and keep them in an old travel wipes container to use next time we are stuck in the doctor's office!

Pompom Fun

Wyokiddo decided she didn't want to nap after we got home from a trip to town and the park.  But she was cranky and not interested in any of her toys, so I needed something new to keep her attention and get her smiling again.  I broke out the pack of rainbow colored pompoms I bought at the dollar store to make a discover bottle with, and handed Emily the bag of pompoms and muffin tin.  I had seen something like this with cotton balls and an egg carton on Pinterest and figured, close enough!

It was a hit!  She played for about half an hour, putting the pompoms in the muffin tin or the empty wipes container she found in a drawer.  When that got boring, she looked for other balls to put in the muffin tin...soon we had pompoms, a tennis ball, a hackey sack and balls confiscated from the ball popper in our tin.  That led to her experimenting with shoving the pompoms into the trunk of the ball popping elephant.  What to do you know, the ball popper can shoot out a handful of pompoms like confetti.  What fun!  This was a great activity for a cranky toddler that required about a minute of setup and clean up.  I had to remind Wyokiddo not to put the pompoms in her mouth a few times, so this is not and independent play activity.  But I highly recommend it as a boredom buster!

This Kid Cracks Me Up

Somewhere along the way, my baby has grown into a little person.  In the last few weeks, Emily (now 10 months old) has grown mentally leaps and bounds.  I'm constantly amazed at the amount of information she is retaining and learning.  A few examples:

• While playing in the bathroom drawers (a favorite pastime of the 10-month old set), she located my hair comb and brush and set them aside to find the next treasure that awaited her at the bottom of the drawer.  I looked a the pair on the floor and said, "Look Em, it's a comb and a brush, now all we need is a bowl full of mush, like in Good Night Moon."  (Good Night Moon is one of about 10 books we rotate through reading, which are kept in our living room.)  Emily stopped pulling out my curling iron, dropped to her hands and knees and promptly crawled to the living room where we keep her books.  She dug through the stack, located Good Night Moon and held it up to me.  I tried to pass it off as coincidence, but I'm pretty sure my kid is a genius.  Outdoor Dad's response to this act of intellectual acumen?  "We better start watching our language around her."  
• Our dogs used to have the run of our house.  Oh who am I kidding?  As far as I was concerned, they had the run of our lives.  Now, because Emily makes them nervous when she's on the floor, the dogs spend quite a bit of their day outside.  I noticed now that when I ask the dogs if they need to go outside, Emily will crawl around to the kitchen and the backdoor to "help me put the puppies outside."

Emily knows my redneck sign language sign for all done.  She'll crawl to the backdoor when she hears the garage door open because she knows that means DaDa is home from work.  She nickers like a horse when prompted.  If you hear her nickering and there isn't a horse in sight, chances are good she's pooping.  Somewhere along the way, she's also developed the beginnings of a sense of humor.  Emily loves to be chased.  She also thinks it's funny to put her binky in my mouth (the handle, not the sucky part, that would be  an overshare).  

Lately, she's taken to cracking herself up with her ball popping elephant and stacking cups.  I shot some video of her playing with the cups and squealing in delight.  I myself laugh every time I watch this video.

It's truly amazing to see how much her little mind has grown in just a few short months.  I can't wait to see what developments the coming weeks and months bring as we approach her first birthday.

Better Change the Population Sign

Boulder, Wyoming, got a new resident last week. Ben and I welcomed Emily Catherine Milner to our world at 8:53 p.m. on June 12, 2012. She weighed 7 pounds and measured 20 1/2 inches in length. While she came into this world without much fanfare or drama, she has since turned the world of her mama and daddy absolutely upside down. But in a wonderful, awe-inspiring way. Who knew something so tiny could hold your whole world in her hands?

Inspired by my friend Lucy, author of Bronco Babies Blog, I thought I'd capture our own journey as our baby daughter grows and Ben and I navigate our way through parenthood. As my life generally holds its share of hilarity and ridiculousness, I can only imagine how the edition of a new tiny human will affect our sleepy little world. And so, friends and family, the story of Emily C. Milner begins...

The Labor
I woke up around 3 a.m. the morning of June 12 with contractions. They are right about real contractions...you know them when they hit. The contractions started at about 12 minutes apart, and got closer together as they night wore on. I woke Ben up at 5 a.m. He asked how far apart the contractions were and if he needed to pack the car. I told him they were still eight minutes apart and not to worry. He fell back asleep until his alarm clock went off at 6:30 a.m.

Ben called from work at 10 a.m. My contractions were 5 to 7 minutes apart, but the doctor told us not to head to Jackson until they were 5 minutes apart for an hour. Poor Ben was so worried and distracted, he couldn't concentrate. I called Gros Ventre, and they said to pack our bags and head up to get checked out.
The drive to Jackson was uneventful. We didn't have to speed or race around roadblocks and we didn't even get caught in construction. Around Bondurant, we did find ourselves in the middle of a cattle drive. Only in Wyoming can you get caught in a stampeede on the way to have a baby!

We got to the clinic about noon and they checked me out. Despite nine hours of contractions, I hadn't really made any progress from my exam the week before. Discouraged, Ben and I left the clinic to eat some lunch and walk around. We had an awesome sandwhich at Pearl Street Market, then walked the trail at the elk refuge. By then I couldn't talk during contractions, which were about 2-3 minutes apart. Ben tried his best to distract me and make me comfortable. His only mistake was making me laugh at just the wrong moment. Turns out laughter isn't the best medicine for labor.

At 4 p.m. we headed back to the clinic. I had made some progress, so it was time to be admitted to the hospital. I think the nurse was disappointed I didn't need a ride to the hospital in a wheelchair! In the hospital, we found out the baby was face up, meaning her face was facing my belly instead of my back. The nurses warned me that would make labor and deliver more intense. I discovered that intense was code for painful.

Dr. Roberts examined me at 5:30 and broke my water at 5:45. Her parting words were "Your contractions will get a little more intense without that bag of water as a cushion."

Or sure, now she tells me. And there was that word again...intense. Two contractions after she broke my water, I had a whole new definition of painful. It felt as if my back was being ripped in half, and I felt the pain clear into my knees. It was so bad I ended up throwing up the entirety of my lunch and asking for an epidural ten or fifteen minutes later.

The process of getting the epidural was a little traumatic. It felt as if the doctor bumbled his way around my back for hours before finding the right spot and getting the needle inserted. I had to sit on the side of the bed, hunched over and not moving through the horrible contractions. It took the doctor so long I thought Ben was going to reach across the bed and strangle the guy with a catheter. But once it was in and flowing, I had so much relief I felt like sleeping.

The Delivery
Once I was settled and dozing, Ben decided to go to the car and get our bags. While he was out, Dr. Roberts came back in to check me. To my surprise, I was dilated to 10 cm and told it was time to start pushing.

"Wait! Ben's not here!" I panicked. The nurse and Dr. Roberts laughed and said we wouldn't start without him. Ten minutes later, Ben was holding one leg, Nurse Irene was holding the other and I started pushing. Irene had warned me because the baby was face up, I could be pushing for up to two hours. But after two sets of contractions, Irene told me to stop pushing so she could get the doctor. About 10 minutes after that, Emily joined the world.

"It's a girl!" Ben exclaimed. We hadn't found out the sex, but I had it in my head that we were having a boy, so it came as a bit of a surprise that he was actually a she. Irene laid Emily on my chest for a few minutes before they took her for weighing, measuring and a good clean up. Ben kept a watchful eye on our daughter while Dr. Roberts finished up with me. Before long, Emily was dry and swaddled in a bassinet at my side.

A lot of my friends have described having epic battles with their spouse over naming their child. Ben and I must be the exception, because the naming process was fairly simple. Emily is a family name on Ben's side, and a name I liked. We discussed other names, but kept coming back to Emily. Catherine was my contribution to the name game. It was the name of my godmother, Catherine Mooney. Aunt Kate, as I always called her, was a wonderfully kind woman that loved me as if I were her own niece. She was sassy, funny, kind and loved animals, writing and watching birds. I couldn't ask for a better namesake for my daughter than Aunt Kate. I wish she were still alive to see our beautiful little monkey, but I know she'd approve with all her heart.

And so my pregnancy ended. It was nine long months, the first half of which I spent sick as a dog, throwing up as much as twenty times a day sometimes. I got to do two stints in the hospital, a month of home IV therapy and learned the hard way there are some foods that are really, REALLY bad to throw up. But in the end, it was all worth it to hold this tiny, perfect person in my arms at last.

If you can't do the time, don't do the crime

It's not every day a girl gets presented with a mink by her husband!

Outdoor Guy had been matching wits all weekend with this little bugger. The mink had gotten into one of the outside circular raceways and had been munching on Yellowstone cutthroat trout.

Mink are carnivores. A mink will kill its prey by biting it on the back of the neck. They eat muskrats, rabbits, mice, chipmunks, snakes, frogs, birds and fish. And a few hundred fish in a relatively small, enclosed space was simply more temptation than this juvenile mink could stand. I'm pretty sure he stuck his head into the covered circular, saw the swarm of fish and thought "All-you-can-eat buffet here I come!"

Outdoor Guy noticed him swimming with the younger brood fish, and almost managed to catch him in a net. But the mink ducked and dodged and escaped the encounter unscathed. He left a few dead fish in his wake, however. Round one goes to the mink.

The mink doesn't know that my husband is a lean, mean, trapping machine. Outdoor Guy figured out where the mink was getting into the circular and set his trap there. He baited it with one of the dead fish, complete with mink teeth marks and a missing hunk of flesh. Outdoor Guy checked the trap the next morning and no mink. No fish either. It had stolen the bait. Round two goes to the mink.

Not to be outsmarted by a mustelid (member of the weasel family), Ben adjusted the trap and baited it again. Yesterday afternoon as I was gardening, he came up to the house and asked if I wanted to meet his nemesis. There in the trap, the mink seemed pretty innocent. He was just a little over a foot long with sleek, dark brown hair and a bushy tail. I read somewhere that when a mink is happy, it makes a purring sound like a cat. This mink was definitely not happy. And he stunk. Outdoor guy said mink spray like skunks and use their scent to mark territory.

Sure, he's just doing what a mink does, eating fish. Ben pointed out three or four fish with bite marks on their backs swimming in the circular, and that was in addition to several dead fish he'd already removed. No matter how cute, critters who eat fish simply aren't tolerated at a fish hatchery. Round three and the match went to Outdoor Guy. As the old saying goes, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime.