Riley's Rearranged Room

We rearranged Riley's room the other day. We used to have her changing table in front of the window. It was nice to be able to look outside, but not fun when Riley pulled the curtains or cord to the blinds. Here is her new and improved room:

View from the door:

Curtains open. Don't mind Riley rolling around on the floor :):

Curtains closed:

Crib and dresser:

Please Pray For Kayleigh

As most of you know I have been diligently following the story of Kayleigh Freeman. I just went to her blog this morning and they desperately need prayers. Kayleigh was recovering from a surgery and all of a sudden quit "waking up." A brain scan shows that part of Kayleigh's brain is not functioning and doctors are calling her "brain dead." If any of you follow her story you will know that she has overcome many obstacles in her short life. Please pray for the Freeman family and for sweet baby Kayleigh. If you are interested in following her story her link is under Blogs I Follow.

8 Months Old And...

Still no teeth or crawling. So Riley turned 8 months old on the 15Th (I know, I'm a bit late). We took her to the doctor on Friday because she needed to get her flu booster shot. When we took her in before she had an ear infection so they waited to do the booster until she was healthy. She weighed in at 16 pounds 9 ounces and was 25 inches long. She is growing like a weed! He said that she looked great. He kept asking us if she was saying any words yet. She's not, but now we sure are trying to get her to say "mamamamama" and "dadadadadada." Should she be talking at 8 months old? Or is he just looking for a genius baby? Oh well.

Riley is starting to pick up on lots of things going on around her. For example, out of the blue she started shaking her head from left to right...kind of like "no,no,no,no." The first couple of times we laughed because it really does look funny. But after the 20Th time in one day we started to think "what is this crazy child of ours doing??" Being the over reactive mother that I am I automatically thought "crap, she's autistic." I see the signs of autism all too often in my line of work. Then I thought about it a minute and she obviously isn't autistic...she looks at people, likes many toys, focuses on people speaking to her, smiles...Seriously Jenny. I asked Hedy about it on Monday and turns out all the boys will sometimes shake their heads and scream when they are at the table for lunch. Crazy kids. She's just trying to be one of the boys.

We finally lowered Riley's crib a notch and put the bumper back on. She's never slept in her crib with a bumper until now. I wish we would have put it in sooner because she sleep so well with it in there. She's finally sleeping through the night consistently!!! Yay, for sleep. Oddly, I find myself yawning more now that I'm actually getting sleep. Brett is constantly yawning because he's the nervous parent that checks on her 4-5 times a night because he "can't hear her." More power to him; I'll sleep.

Riley will be crawling soon. She is brave enough to move herself from sitting to all fours. She still hasn't quite figured out what to do next. She's really good at pushing herself backward. Soon enough she'll be crawling all over the place and we'll be chasing her! Now we have to get all of the safety stuff set up and Brett has a new deadline to finish some of the projects at home!
We had Riley's last waterbabies class. We decided not to sign her up for the next session. It's almost summertime and we can sing songs to her and sprinkle her with water. She will miss all of the attention that she receives, I'm sure. Seriously, every night that we are there someone is saying "she's really good at that" or "she's always smiling." Now, I know she is a smiler, but seriously how can an 8 month old be "good" at swimming. She just loves it really.

Now that the weather is getting nicer we have so many upcoming activities:

• Softball on Fridays (this I am indifferent about - every Friday is a bit much and most of the games are after Riley's bedtime)
• The Circus
• Walks
• A night out for Mom and Dad with friends (Sadly, we are celebrating our friends Mike and Amy's last week in DM - they leave to travel the county as Mike does his rotations for med school - we will miss them!)
• Our 2 year anniversary

Now, here are a couple extra pictures to enjoy!

"Whoa! So that's what a fan does!":

Helping Mom with laundry:

Waterbabies Update

We took Riley to swim lessons again last night. She was loving it last night. To our surprise she was intentionally dipping her nose and mouth into the water. She didn't inhale water or choke on water at all last night! It was so funny to see her little head bobbing into the water. We are debating signing her up for waterbabies again. If we do, it'll be the same class as she is still too little for waterbabies II. She just loves the water too much not to take her!

Riley's First Easter

Riley had such a fun filled and exhausting weekend! Friday night we went to the Coppola's for pizza with them and the August's. It was a relaxing night. Riley LOVED Maddie, Cary and Ali's dog! She would giggle and tense with excitement whenever she saw her. We thought that Riley would fall asleep and allow us a fun night with our friends...we were wrong. We tried to put her to bed downstairs in Carter's pack and play. Riley just rolled around and laughed. What a stinker. We brought her upstairs and she continued to smile, laugh and rub her eyes. We ended up leaving around 8:30-9 and she was fast asleep in the car.

Saturday morning Riley was up at her regular 7:15 am time! She took her morning nap and Grandma and Grandpa Murphy came to visit when she woke up. Then we ran errands in the afternoon. She fell asleep in the car for some much needed catch-up sleep! Brett and I didn't want to go home and sit in the house all afternoon while she slept so we drove around West Des Moines for almost 2 hours! It was kind of fun. We drove to random places like Hungry Hobo for lunch, looking at houses that we had looked at when we were looking to move, looking at some of the HUGE houses that are all around WDM. Around 5:00 we went to Grandma and Grandpa Burch's to dye Easter Eggs. Riley had a lot of fun seeing Dixie, her aunt rat terrier, and her cousins. She loves to see her cousins! She could have cared less about Easter Eggs, but did watch as they were dyed. Riley fell asleep around 7:30 and we took her home around 9 again.

Riley playing with Grandpa Denny:

Riley with Daddy, Grandma Sheryl, and her cousins dying eggs:

Easter morning Riley slept in until 8:15 am! She let Mom and Dad sleep in an extra hour (much needed!). We took her downstairs to see what the Easter Bunny brought her and to feed her breakfast. She was too cute looking into her basket like "what the heck is this stuff??" In her basket she found two new sippy cups, one new outfit, a pair of new shoes, puffs, bath toys, empty eggs, and sidewalk chalk. So she won't be able to use the sidewalk chalk anytime soon but the Easter Bunny couldn't pass up the $1 bin find at Target! Riley wore her cute pink and orange polka dot Easter dress. So cute! We went to church and she mesmerized the entire choir. Thankfully we sat right next to the choir because she was exhausted through the entire service. But, she did wonderful and hardly made a peep! When the service was over all the women were oohing and ahhing over our sweet little girl. Riley just put on her signature smile for all the women! After church Riley took a much needed nap while we ate at Grandpa and Grandma Burch's. She slept through the Easter egg hunt. Next year she'll be able to enjoy the hunt! Grandma and Grandpa Burch gave Riley an Easter basket filled with puffs, a book of bedtime stories, a dress, another outfit, bubbles, and candy for Mom and Dad. We headed over to Grandma and Grandpa Murphy's for our final Easter celebration. Grandma and Grandpa Murphy got Riley a new highchair for their house, a stacking toy, a stuffed bunny, and some diapers (Mom and Dad appreciate this one). Overall, it was a great first Easter for Riley.

What's all this???

Oh, It's all for me???

Riley in her Easter dress:

Riley with her cousins:

Ear Infection

Well, we decided to take Riley to the doctor on Monday. Sunday night she started coughing in her sleep. It was the worst sound - like a bark. We had an appointment already scheduled for Tuesday, but thought that we should move it up. Turns out she had an ear infection. I thought that her ears were bothering her because she had started grabbing them. This may be why she wasn't wanting to bathe - I'm sure water in the ears doesn't sit well with ear infections. She hasn't had the cough since Sunday night so that's good. Dr. Fred thought that the cough and runny nose was from the weather change and being exposed to other sick kids. After one day of medicine her runny nose is starting to clear up.

Riley is now 16 lbs 7 oz and 25 inches long. That's a whole two pounds and 1/2 inch in a month. I think she's caught up now!

Updates Updates Updates

I never posted how Riley did with crying it out. Well, she did great. She really only cried for one or two nights. Then she was out within 5 minutes of "talking" to herself. We are so glad that she is putting herself to sleep. We are able to enjoy more time together in the evenings, instead of trying to put Riley to sleep for an hour. It wasn't fun listening to her crying, but it was so worth it!

Riley has had some more firsts:

• She is rolling all over the place. She finally started rolling from back to front! Now she rolls from tummy to back and back to tummy over and over.
• She is starting to scoot herself all over. She would much rather be on the move than sitting still. She'll be crawling before we know it.
• Riley tried yogurt and loved it. However, she had a reaction to it and we can no longer feed it to her. :( Riley has dry skin, but her eczema flared up and she had little red dots on her back and tummy. We bought the YoBaby yogurt that is made with whole milk fat so now we have that sitting in our fridge. Brett won't let me buy anymore adult yogurt because we "have a ton already in the fridge". Looks like I'll be eating YoBaby for the next week or so.
• Oatmeal. Riley didn't do so hot when trying the rice cereal so we tried oatmeal instead. With the cereal Riley almost immediately broke out in little red dots - almost like a heat rash. We stopped the oatmeal when we stopped the yogurt just to make sure that it wasn't contributing to the break outs. We reintroduced it and she did just fine and loved it all over again.
• PUFFS! Riley loves puffs. Being the paranoid mom that I am she was only allowed 1/2 a puff at a time. Just this weekend did I let her have a WHOLE one at a time. She loves them. Surprising how she can actually pick them up and feed them to herself when mom doesn't make them microscopic! So far she's tried the apple strawberry flavor at home. It's so cute to watch her sit in her highchair chomping away.
• Rolling away when changing her diaper. It is harder than ever to keep her still when changing her diaper. I'm sure it will only get worse in the next couple months!
• New foods: Mango, blueberries, ham (jarred - yuck), pork chop, beef (jarred - yuck), kiwi, zucchini. Blueberries=lots of black poopy diapers! We now have to just mix a little in with another fruit. Riley loves everything except the jarred meats. I don't blame her - they are horrible. We bought jarred just for her to try and make sure there weren't any allergies. I only made her take a couple bites before throwing it out. Now that I know she can handle the meat we will make it ourselves.
• Fake laughing - Riley is constantly going "huh,huh" and looking for your reaction. I always play into it and mock her noises. It a fun little game that is never ending. She truly is a laugher and it doesn't take much for her to get going! I hope that she is always this cheerful!
• Swimming. I know this isn't new but she is such a good little waterbaby. This week she wasn't the only baby loving the water so that was refreshing. She is such a kicker (as soon as she gets over the shock of the cold water). The instructor told us this week that she was a future swim teamer. Ever since we started swimming lessons Riley hasn't liked her baths as much. I'm not too sure why, but I think she'd rather take a bath in the pool.

So, as you can see Riley has been changing and growing so much. She's had a clogged runny nose for a week and a half now. I thought that this might be related to an allergy, but it still didn't go away after stopping the yogurt. Riley has a doctor's appointment on Tuesday so I'm going to ask about allergy testing. When we called we were told that she was too young for testing. Oh, and still no teeth. How torturing. I could have sworn they were going to come in last week. Looks like they are giving her a break so that she can have a clogged runny nose for awhile. Ugh! Lastly, here are some pictures of Daddy reading to Riley at bedtime.