Random Thoughts

This post will be about a few different things as apparently I have a lot to share. It didn't start that way. In fact, I had about 6 pictures and no words, but then it just started flowing. Hopefully, it won't seem too scattered.

1. Saturday - Riley has been moving right along developmentally, but in this last week she seems to have made some big jumps in her mobility and language skills. First off, I feel like my husband, Jesse, and I have been saying "I think she is going to walk any day now" for months. I think she first started taking steps around the 12 month mark. Most of the time she would do so when she thought we weren't looking (this is sooo something I would do). After a while it just seemed she wasn't willing to let go of crawling because she could get to her destination faster even though it was clear she could walk. It was also clear that she would get quite excited when she walked. It was like she was thinking "OMG, do you see what I am doing with these legs!". One day last week she just started walking way more than she was crawling and now I can officially say she is walking. Yeah!

She also has a number of words under her belt (and various animal noises), but this week she has started saying more. Actually, she seems to be mirroring our actions and what we say. Until this past week some of her words were: oh-oh, da (for dad), momma (which usually is momma..momma..momma) boo (which depending on how it is said can mean boom, peek-a-boo, or moo), no (which often means yes), and hello (sometimes 'hi', but she usually says this word when picking up the play phone or our cell phones). She was also really good at making the following animal noises: cat, duck. cow, dog, and my personal favorite the monkey (if we are lucky she also does monkey movements). Ooh ooh ah ah.

On Saturday she dropped something on the floor and said "oh-oh". I imitated her, but then said "oh-oh, spaghetti o", which I have never said to her before. She proceeded to pick up and drop the same item a couple times and each time I said "oh-oh, spaghetti o". Next thing I know I hear "oh-oh lalleli o". Same thing, right? I was impressed. 

We have two cats, Lucy and Diablo, and Riley is quite fascinated with them. She talks to them and kisses them... and occasionally gets a little aggressive with them in her excitement. I think they probably get more kisses than daddy and I do. Whatever. I know who she loves.

Diablo

Lucy

At any rate Diablo and Lucy each have their own cat food that they eat. The food is kept in different places and they each have their own bowl they eat out of. Obviously, Riley has seen us feed the cats plenty of times, but I hadn't really realized how much she picked up on it. Saturday I saw her open the cabinet where we keep Lucy's food. She then picked up the cat scoop, opened the cat food bucket, tried to scoop up food (it was too low in the bucket for her to reach), and then walked the scoop across the room and put the imaginary food into the appropriate cat food dish. She did this about five times in a row. Again, I was quite impressed.

2. Sunday - We spent most of Sunday outside, but had a little play time inside. Grandma Suzie and Grandpa Michael gave Riley this Adirondack chair. She loves getting into the chair and hanging out in the chair, but has not mastered the skill of getting out of the chair. She just starts screaming until someone comes over to help her. Sometimes she only lasts about two seconds before she starts screaming. I am looking forward to her figuring out how to get out of the chair. Here she is using her spoons as drumsticks to kick a little music out.

A little later in the day Grandma Suzie and Grandpa Michael came over for a visit. Riley was a little ham-bone and had us all laughing. Here she is playing with grandma. Unfortunately, my flash battery died as I took this picture so I had to crank up the exposure in Photoshop which causes all the graininess, but it was well worth it because it is such a fun picture.

I love my grandma

Ok, new battery in the flash and ready to go. As I said, Riley was having a good ol' time except for the ball/eyeball thing grandpa did. Boy, did that freak her out. No worries though grandpa, she still digs you and has gotten over the incident.

Before the incident

Helping mommy clap

3. Monday - My husband's mom has been sick recently and discovered that her illness was more serious than anyone expected. She had surgery Monday which, thankfully, went well. Jesse went to visit her once I got home from work so Riley and I were on our own. I decided I would try and capture what her bedtime ritual looks like by taking some pictures of our evening. I usually get home from work at 5:15 so the moment I walk in the door we are really on the path to bed time since she goes to sleep between 6:30 and 7:00 pm. After some food, and a little playtime she had her bath. I used to dry her off and put on a diaper while she was still in the bathroom, but she would scream like she was being tortured. We changed our ritual so I now basically do a quick dry down and I carry her upstairs wrapped in her towel. My husband thinks I am taking a big risk by not putting a diaper on her right away, but I think we don't have far to go and we'll be fine. And really, what's the big deal if she does pee. At least we don't have to deal with a crying baby, right?  And now we have a much happier post bath kid.

Lately she has been really into crawling up the stairs herself and I decided "what the heck, I'll let her crawl upstairs naked". I had the camera in one hand and snapped off a picture while following up behind her. Check out that beautiful hair.

Moments before...

Moments after I take the above picture I look up at her and hear her laugh while she pees all over the stairs... and then starts booking up the stairs... and tracking pee up with her. Quickly I put the camera down, throw the towel on the peed on stairs and grab the kid. I rush up the stairs with her, clean her up, slap a diaper on her and return to the stairs to clean up the mess. Jesse is going to be so delighted to read this as I neglected to tell him this when he returned home. To my husband: The stairs are so clean you'd never know it happened.

After cleaning up the mess I walked back upstairs to find Nick Nolte waiting for me.

We then put our jammies on, take our vitamins, and brush our teeth. Riley loves 'brushing' her teeth even if most the time she is just chomping on the toothbrush.

The best part of bedtime is getting to read books. Here she tries to select a book to read.

Hmm, I can always count on Goodnight Gorilla.

 

4. More Monday Stuff - Today I came home to a kitchen that had some new cabinets. You will learn more about this in a later post. But more importantly I came home to a late Mother's Day gift from my kid. Our daycare lady, Char, had the kids start a plant from seed. Apparently, each kid was given one type of seed, but somehow my kid planted two - chives and marigolds... it's because she's brilliant, I'm sure.

Anyhoo, I was pretty impressed and touched. Thanks Char and Riley!