Half a Year!!

A quick photo taken at 6:30 a.m. today.

Morning snuggles are the best!

What a memorable six months this has been! It's unbelievable how the time has flown. (Once they're on the outside it goes MUCH faster! Why can't pregnancy be like that?) We've got such a fun handsome baby on our hands and are so blessed to be Sawyer's parents! To celebrate we cut Sawyer's hair for the first time. He had some serious long wisps over his ears, and a nice tuft on the back of his head. George has been wanting to cut his hair for a couple months now, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. It seemed like once we cut his hair he wouldn't be a baby anymore, so I was putting it off.

Can you see his hair in front of his ear? Haha, so cute!

Sawyer also got to try some yummy? rice cereal. Oh yea we party big time around here :)

The verdict?

Delicious!

But really it's not, I tried it...can't wait for him to be able to try some real delicious food!

This is him saying "da-da-da" while eating and spitting everywhere. I can tell it's going to be messy around here for the next while!

6-month-old stats

Weight: 19 lbs 14 oz - 86%

Height: 29 1/4" - 99%

Head: 18" - 96%

He rolls tummy to back and back to tummy. He sits up on his own, and although he sits pretty well, he still takes the occasional face dive. He prefers to stand and if you give him your fingers or shirt or something to grab he'll pull himself to a sitting position and then to his feet. He loves the high chair. He's not a crazy slobber machine, but slips out his fair share (we can still make it on one bib/day just fine). He'll jibber-jabber to himself if no one is entertaining him. His latest is sticking his tongue out while saying "da-da-da". When you lay him on the floor he scoots backwards. He's trying real hard to crawl and gets up on his knees. He likes to bang his hands on the table. He goes nuts in his jumper. He still blows out of his diapers almost every day. (We've tried bigger diapers, but that doesn't seem to be the issue.) When he's sitting in your lap he rocks back and forth and belly bumps anything in his way. He is such a smiley, happy baby. We're so thankful for Sawyer and absolutely adore him!

Happy Easter!

Sara had the brilliant idea to dye eggs this year with natural dyes (see cutting board in pic) The dyes consisted of red and yellow onions, beets, coffee grinds, red cabbage, turmeric, hot peppers, and carrots. The coffee grinds made the eggs look exactly like natural brown eggs. The onions and red cabbage were our favorites and yielded the deepest hues. Mom also had a fun idea to put rubber bands on while dying to make some sweet stripes.

A sampling of our naturally-dyed eggs

After the 'hunting'

A favorite painting that hangs in our home.

{Painted by local artist, Jared Barnes entitled The First}

It's incredible to think of our resurrected Savior. How grateful we are that He is Risen.

Happy Easter!

Sweet Baby Soy

Helping Mom with the laundry this morning :)

Aunt Alethea surprised us with a visit yesterday and is here for a week, woohoo!

Great Grandma High and Great Grandma June LOVED butterflies. This mobile used to be June's {a present from Abbie} and now my mom has it, much to Sawyer's glee :)

Baby Sawyer getting a lesson on the Baby Grand by Grandma Louisa.

Sawyer likes his high chair! We're getting ready for solids starting next week.

Basement Apt

One of George's latest projects is finishing my parent's basement. Guess who will be moving in at the end of April? So far he has completed the framing, wiring, plumbing, insulation, and today will finish hanging the sheet rock. After taping/mudding we'll be able to texture, paint and put in the carpet and kitchen cabinets. It's coming together quite nicely!

This is a bullet hammer. Not really, but really. It fires nails into concrete using a shell.

George had to make his own 'helper' (that is what the tall T is) to hang dry wall on the ceiling by himself, since I'm an unreliable helper. Don't blame me, talk to Sawyer! I'm just impressed George can do it all alone!

Dang I snagged a good one! :) ._

We Survived

Sawyer experienced the inevitable...he got sick. He caught a cough from Sadie at the end of March. It wasn't too bad, but the poor guy had a runny/stuffy nose so nursing was hard. Luckily that only lasted a few days until the cough moved to his chest. In total it lasted a week and half, but it didn't seem to bother him a bit. He'd cough and sound terrible and then go right back to giving big smiles. He has such a wonderful temperament. We just cranked the humidifier at night and survived fine. We almost made it through the entire winter without getting sick. It snowed last Sunday, but we've had two days in a row of BEAUTIFUL weather, so hopefully the sunshine is here to stay.

Side note: Right now we're enjoying 19 lbs. 6 oz. of Sawyer goodness. (Stats from his 5 1/2-month appointment)

Aquatic Center

Cedar City has been looong overdue for a nice community pool. It finally came this year! It has a fabulous play area for children. Sawyer was very relaxed in the water. We did a few practice 'dunkings' where I would blow on his face so he'd hold his breath and then dive him head first through the water. He did great and wasn't upset at all. All the swimming practice wore him out though, he fell asleep in Grandma's arms in the pool. It's so fun to have my parent's live so close!

Kyson & Kaden - these two have SO much fun together!

Sleepin' Sawyer :)

Is Sawyer Vain?

Sawyer LOVES to look at himself in the mirror. It probably doesn't help that his parents tell him he's the cutest baby in the whole wide world. Mmmm he's SO delicious!

CO Bear Den

I'm not sure where to start on what a neat weekend we had in Colorado. My brother, David, works for Colorado State University and is on the research team for the Aspen Black Bear Project. He's been doing black bear research for 3 years now. I've been wanting to join him on a bear den, and this past weekend it finally happened!

Here is a video David had to make explaining the master's program he'll finish up this year:

So on Monday morning we drug ourselves out of bed at 5 am and drove the 2.5 hours just outside of Carbondale, Colorado where we met up with David and the rest of the crew, consisting of a vet, biologist, DOW big wigs, techies, and trainees. There were 24 in all...13 of them part of the crazy Lewis bunch. We hiked up the side of a mountain about 2 miles. Grandpa hiked up most of the way, but the last little stretch involved some serious post holing that was hard on his knees so he turned back. We're sad he didn't get to meet the black bears, but took lots of photos to make up for it.

After bush whacking and post-holing we hung back a ways from the den waiting for the research team to put the bear to sleep. Once they had Mama Bear darted (using a dissociative) and asleep we got to approach the den. While they worked on mama, our main job was to snuggle and help keep her two bear cubs warm. Such a fun assignment!

Can you imagine, going to sleep for the winter with no eating, drinking, defecating, or urinating and during that time giving birth to twins as well as lactating and nursing?! Bears might be onto something... :) There's actually been a doctor at Mayo Clinic studying the hibernation physiology of bears to see if it can be applied to humans. Come spring time when black bears emerge from hibernation, they don't suffer from muscle and bone mass loss, they solely live off fat stores during hibernation. Humans physiologically can't do that yet - the research is aimed at showing how to reduce metabolic rates and oxygen demands in human tissues which could possibly save people during traumatic injuries, or aid in space travel. Anyway it was very interesting to spend time with such knowledgeable people and I learned a lot!

So the main goal of the project David's been working on is to help reduce conflict between humans and black bears. Their research determines how human development affects the ecology of black bears and is determining how urban areas influence bear populations and how bears use urban environments. Via radio collars they collect activity patterns on bears in urban areas trying to identify specific attractants and understand the feeding behavior of the bears. Another side of the project is also evaluating the effectiveness of education to reduce human food sources in urban settings. All of this research will hopefully reduce bear-human conflicts!

Man Cub vs. Bear Cub

See there is nothing to fight about!

The bear cubs were both boys and weighed in at 6 lbs. each. They were born in Jan at only 8 oz. and can gain 100 lbs in their first year. Sawyer definitely had some healthy competition for cuteness and rapid weight gain :)

The newest Lewis, look how cute! They PITed (passive integrated transponder - like an ID tag of sorts) the cubs to be able to track them as they get older.

The above two pictures show how they weigh the bear...you gotta know your knots. David created this scale contraption. Mama Bear weighed in at 208 lbs!

This shows Mama Bear's neck wound - it actually wasn't too bad, and they patched her up good. It turned out this was her second den of the winter, which is somewhat unusual.

Here is the research team - they know how to have fun while working :)

Sawyer did fantastic. It made for some interesting nursing and diaper changing in the falling snow on our hike up :)

The above photos show us en route to the den - Kaden did awesome and hiked most of the way and only got carried the last stretch where snow would have been over his head. Unfortunately Sadie was sick and Sara carried her the whole way up, and Joe the whole way down...good thing they're so tough! Besides our feeding/changing stop, Sawyer slept most of the time in his backpack carrier.

So happy :)

What adorable bear cubs!

After they had finished collecting data we got a group shot with Mama Bear and her cubs.

Check out those claws! They are well developed and help the cubs out while nursing, yikes!

Sawyer did wake up for a bit to play with the bears...too bad he won't remember this day, but at least he has pictures to prove it!

Everyone was so happy!

Thank you Duncle Dave for allowing the fam in on your awesome job, it was SOOO neat to literally get a 'hands on' look at a black bear with her cubs...definitely one of those once-in-a-lifetime amazing opportunities!