Riley Nicole At 17 Months!

Wow!  Riley is 17 months old today.  This past month flew by with all of the holiday celebrations.  It was definitely one of the most fun months with Riley.  She is really growing into her personality and showing it off plenty!  Here is a glimpse of Riley at 17 months old:

• She knows a few colors.  Red, blue, and yellow are the ones that she gets right most of the time.
• She can identify anything after you tell her what it is once or twice.  She likes to point, and will hardly ever repeat a word if you ask her to.
• She is saying some new words: "Ta Daaaa" (This stands for "look at me" or "hot dog."  Not sure how those two are linked, but in Riley's mind they are the same word). "Go," "hot," "eeeeee" (Please), "Car-der" (her friend, Carter), and lots of babbling.
• She is deathly afraid of the word hot and will most of the time start crying when she hears it.  She burned her little finger on our space heater a couple months ago and still hasn't forgotten it.
• She loves to blow on her food.  She thinks every bit is hot and blows on it.
• She can search and find anything you ask for.  She definitely inherited her looking skills from her mommy!
• She likes to do puzzles.  She does a great job of matching the animals or shapes, but needs some help fitting them into their spot.
• She loves to play with cars.  Sadly, she doesn't have any at home.  While at daycare, she takes the cars from the boys and then gives them back to them like she found them just for them.
• She has a great arm!  She loves to throw anything: balls, magnets, dolls, etc.  She especially likes to throw things down the cat door. 
• We have officially started timeout.  We started with sitting in the corner and counting till 10, but she thought this was fun.  So now we sit in a corner for a minute and talk to Riley about why she is in timeout.  She knows throwing things down the cat door equals a timeout.  She throws something down there with a smile and walks herself right over to timeout. 
• She claps after everything she does.
• She loves to drink from a straw.
• Her hair is growing so fast, and she is very close to sporting a rat tail!  I can't wait to buy more fun hair stuff for her!
• She loves Pablo from the Backyardigans.
• She just started liking pillows to sleep with.  We will find her in her crib with her head on her comforter wadded up at the end of her crib.
• She loves to be chased.
• She loves to play with her dolls.  She carries them around and pats them on the back.
• She is wearing all 18 month clothes.  They are actually fitting her pretty well and some of them are even a bit small.  She's grown so much in the past 5 months! 
• Riley will eat anything if she can dip it in something.
• She is a huge flirt!  She'll flirt with anyone!
• And lastly,  she is only one month away from becoming a star at Chow's Gymnastics and Dance Institute.  Yep, that's right, Riley will be starting tumbling classes in February.  I keep asking her if she wants to do "flips" and she gives me her one swift head nod down, which means YES!

Here are some pictures:

Cheese

Whatchu talkin bout' Willis?