Gotcha

Riley loves her cat, Sam.  Most of the time he's waiting for her by the door when we get home in the evenings.  Don't be fooled.  This is the only time he's waiting around for her.  When Riley catches him off guard this is usually what happens...

Poor cat.  Look at those eyes!  Cats always show their expressions in their eyes.  Even though Sam and I don't always see eye to eye, I do feel a bit sorry for him here!

Riley's Second Valentine's Day

We've been reading Elmo's Valentine the past couple weeks, but it really hasn't helped Riley understand what Valentine's Day really is.  I think she thinks that she just gets to eat chocolate all day and play with new toys! 

Like I said in a previous post, Riley loves chocolate.  We didn't really know this until she shoved a whole piece of chocolate from her heart-shaped chocolates into her mouth!  We thought for sure she'd spit it out, but to our surprise she ate the whole piece all the while keeping her stuffed mouth closed! 

Lesson Learned

We took Riley to Sears to get some 18 month portraits taken.  We've always gone to Portrait Innovations to have pictures of Riley taken and decided to see what Sears had to offer. We learned several things at our visit to Sears:

1. We will never go back to Sears for pictures.
2. 18 month olds do not like sitting still for portraits.
3. Riley can't be bribed...not even with a sucker!
4. Grandma can't even make Riley sit still or quit crying for pictures.
5. We will never go back to Sears for pictures.

Yes, it really was that bad.  First, the rooms were small with intimidating lights and camera filling every corner.  Our "photographer" had one trick to get Riley to laugh, smile, do anything other than cry - a purple monkey that she tried to get to tickle everyone in the room with in her annoying "baby" voice. Then, after an hour of pleading with Riley to smile and quit crying posing we came out with 22 pictures to choose from.  Out of the 22 pictures only 5 (maybe 6) were cute and did not have a sucker in them.  Which should have made it easy to find a portrait package that was reasonable to purchase.  Wrong!  The cheapest option for us was a 20% off package for $144! Yikes.  We felt robbed leaving there with our CD and no pictures in hand.  If we ever do portraits again we will head back to the trusty Portrait Innovations.  We would have spent 50 less dollars and had our pictures (probably double what we purchased from Sears) that day.  Our CD would have at least 50 pictures on it. Oh well.  As much as we huffed and puffed over our crappy Sears experience we definitely left with a lesson learned. Here are a few of our pictures:

Riley Plays In The Snow

Riley played in the snow for the first time this weekend.  She loved it and kept screaming "snow!"  We threw snowballs, ate snow, and made snow angels.  Here are some pictures:

Riley At 18 Months Old

Miss Riley turns 18 months old today.  A year and a half old.  I can't believe it!  She is growing so fast.  I hope the winter flies by as fast as Riley grows because I'm really getting tired of all this snow!  Here is a glimpse into Riley's budding personality and a few things she's learned this month:

• She is wearing all of her 18 month clothes.  I just bought her a 2T(!) shirt for her 18 month pictures (which will be highlighted in another post) and it fit her perfectly.  It's hard to believe my little peanut is now wearing the next size up in clothing.  Slowly but surely she is catching up to her peers.  Although, she doesn't weigh much, she is really starting to grow taller.
• She is still wearing size 4 shoes.  Size 4 1/2 would fit even better, but I'm holding off as long as I can. 
• Her favorite toys are her play kitchen, puzzles, baby dolls, baby stroller, and tennis balls.
• She has an obsession with stickers, and is never satisfied with just one, two, or three!
• She screams everything she says.  Right now she has been screaming "side" and "snow" repeatedly.
• She is sporting the latest hair trend with her very own super cool rat tail!  I've been debating cutting it, but Brett wants to leave it "just in case the hair in the front all of sudden grows really fast!" Hopefully it will be here when she turns two!
• Still no new teeth.  She has been "teething" terribly bad these past couple weeks and her I-teeth (eye teeth?) should be poking through any day now. 
• She loves to put money into her bank.  She could sit and do this for hours.
• Her left hand seems to be working better than her right, thus Brett has deemed her "left handed."
• She sleeps with two blankets, bunny, piggy, a stuffed tiger, and a stuffed rabbit.  She uses the stuffed rabbit and tiger as pillows.  The stuffed rabbit is very special to me because it's something that my Grandma Lois made for me.  It makes me happy to see Riley loving on it!
• She knows the sounds of about half the alphabet.
• She loves to laugh or cough on command, and usually doesn't quit for several minutes or until she's gagged herself.
• She pulls the kitchen chairs over to the counter and stands on them. 
• New words: side (outside), snow, gama, papa, puppy, cat, Hedy, Addie, bridge, brr... She has really started to pick up on sounds and repeating what we say.  She thinks she's tricky though, and often times just yells "aahh" when we ask her to say something.  She answers "yeah" to everything!
• Favorite animal sounds: Elephant and owl.
• She always eats her veggie first at dinner.  And points to its spot and says "eeee" (AKA please) for more when she is done.  New favorite food: chocolate.  She doesn't have much of a sweet tooth, but loves chocolate!
• She has a mind of her own, and there is no convincing her to do something she doesn't want to. 

And of course, she continues to fill every day with joy! 

Tumble Time

Riley had her first Tiny Tumbling class last night at the Wukee YMCA.  (I tried to get her into the tumbling class at Chow's but every evening and weekend class was full.)  It went pretty well, but we did get quite a few sour faces from her.  She wasn't a fan of one of the teachers and cried or made her sour face every time she tried to talk to her.  Luckily, she was just a fill-in teacher and probably won't be back in the next month. 

The class started off with 5-10 minutes of singing and "getting to know you" games.  Afterward, we were all left to explore the different stations.  Riley's favorite was the trampoline.  But she also loved the balance beam and the "high" bar.  The other half of the gym was being used for basketball and for much of the time Riley took off to see what was going on with all of the balls. 

Here are some hilights from the night:

This pretty much sums it all up.  Riley really did have fun most of the time, but we did still see quite a bit of this face!!

Coloring

(We are definitely in the stage of "scary" smiles!  Wish us luck next week as we get Riley's 18 month pictures taken!)

Dixie Doodle

Riley LOVES my parents' dog, Dixie.  This is what she loves most about Dixie.

She always has a friend to share her snacks with!

When Riley Is Left Home With Daddy...

This is what I might come home to...

A baby dressed in pajama pants and a shirt that is clearly WAY too small!  Also, note the sticker on the cheek. :)  Now, she did spill her milk all over her cute outfit that she had on, and he was thinking that she would have to change again after her bath.  But really?? Hmmm...

So, how did he fix her outfit???....

Just add this cute jacket.  Easy Peasy!

Riley's Temper

Lately, we've been seeing a lot of this from our little Riley:

We want this girl back ALL.THE.TIME:

Heart

Being in the true spirit of Valentine's Day I decided that I wanted to attempt to make a heart shaped wreath that I stole from another blog.  All I needed was a styrofoam heart, felt, and push pins.  What I didn't expect were the many hours of tracing around a plastic cup and cutting out circles!  This is a craft that you should expect to spend many hours on, but the outcome is beautiful!  I worked on it with my mom and my two nieces.  They may have been a bit too young for the lengthy project, but did seem to have fun with it.  Here's what it turned out like:

To start go to your local Hobby Lobby or craft store and find a styrofoam heart similar to this one:

Next, using a pair of GOOD scissors, about 3/4-1 yard of felt (I chose red, my nieces uesd pink and red), cup, and pen trace out as many circles that you can fit on the felt.

Once you have enough circles to begin you fold them into 4 equal pie shapes.  Or, fold the circle in half and then fold the half in half again.  Got it?

Once you've folded your circle use a push pin (located down toward the point of your pie) to attach the felt to the styrofoam.  There isn't a specific way to attach the felt, but we found that the more random you can place the felt the more "flowy" it appears.

Now I'm just debating if it would look nicer on my door, or on my wine cabinet.  For now, it's on my door!

Riley's New Chair

A true sign that Riley is truely growing up.  We went out last week and bought her a booster seat for our kitchen table.  It's a nice one that folds up and can be taken with us wherever we go.  Riley loves her chair and wanted to sit in it the minutes she woke up for a week straight.  Looking back on things, if I could do it all over again, I would forego the big bulky (hard to keep clean) high chair and just do a seat that sits on a chair.  They are much easier!  Anywho, here's our big girl.

Oh, I almost forgot.  We took Riley in to see Dr. Fred yesterday for a physical (for daycare), her last immunization shot, and an H1N1 shot.  Poor kid is TERRIFIED of the doctor's office!  The minute she sees the red door leading into the office the tears start coming!  Overall, she did ok.  Once she was out of the exam room and in the lobby playing she was fine.  We even got her to say bye to Dr. Fred and the nurses.  Riley weighed in at 22 lb 6 oz (around 30%) and measured 32 in (around 60%).