"Mummy, Sit DOWN."

Yep, that is a common order I receive from my not quite 2-year-old. He is getting better at self-entertaining and playing by himself (which is priceless to sneak up and spy on), but as always, he loves having us play with him, so if he's doing something and he wants us to participate, he'll tell us where we should be...
"Mummy, DOWNstairs."
"No no, Daddy, light ON"
"Berkie, come HERE."
and my FAVORITE:
"mummy, sit DOWN."

He also likes to be "Helping!"... He likes to help me take the garbage out every Friday, especially on recycling weeks. He also likes to help close and start the dishwasher "mummy, MY turn" (oh yeah, that's another favorite phrase now... "MY turn".) But his FAVORITE chore is feeding the cats! I put the two bowls down on the floor, with the big bin of cat food, and he scoops a portion into each bowl, closes the bin and puts it back into the cabinet! Wow! Thanks, buddy! :) ... then he goes to find the cats to let them know that he fed them...

The best, was this past Friday, November 18th, Riley said his first full sentence, and it was... drumroll please...

"Daddy!!!! It's garbage truck day!!!!!"

Just like that.

We both doubled over laughing. What a ham.

Riley-isms...

Okay, so now that Riley is walking and talking, it's occurred to me that I really do need to start recording all the funny little things he says and does more regularly, or I will truly be upset with myself later. Here are a few Riley-isms to date:

"Bad Guy":
Monday was Halloween, and as usual, Ryan dressed up to scare the bajesus out of the neighbor children going door to door... he becomes this terrifying Oger, and remains mute while doling out the candy. Some kids try to make conversation, some parents, but he says nothing. Some smaller children run away crying without even taking candy... funny, but kinda sad, too. Anyways, each year, both Milo and Berkie (our beloved kitties) run up and hide under our bed when Ryan dons his costume, with a hiss and their hair standing on end... this year, our toddler was added to the traumatized bunch. Though he didn't run up and hide under the bed, he wouldn't let me put him down, he wouldn't let the "Bad Guy" near him, and he clasped his chest saying "no no daddy, no no"... He woke up in the middle of the night screaming "Bad Guy!... Bad Guy!..." Nice, Ryan. HA! Sheesh. When we came to OUR house for trick or treating, Riley walked up, looked up at Ryan, and then turned around and ran screaming without taking candy... yup, he fell into that category. Needless to say, today is Wednesday the 2nd, and he is still asking to see "Daddy costume" and "Bad Guy" pictures on my camera. He inspects them, scowls at Daddy, and continues back and forth between the two. He's not so convinced Daddy's not a Bad Guy. HA!

Garbage Trucks:
Yes, it's true. We are OBSESSED with Garbage trucks and everything to do with them... the garbage cans, the garbage men, the garbage itself, even! He'll help me put the garbage out each week, particularly exciting are the recycling weeks when there is that much more to put out there. Also, every other Friday is an off-Friday for Ryan and me, so we are home to enjoy all of the trucks that go up and down our street all day (and there are a lot of them, at least 3 different companies go each direction, plus recycling trucks!). When he hears one coming, he RUNS to the front door, and smooshes his face against the glass and yells "GARBAGE TRUCK!!!!"... so we go outside, watch and wave while he points and goes "ooohhhhhhaaahhhhhhhh". It's HILARIOUS. And Awesome. And don't be surprised, people, when your birthday party invitations come, and they are garbage truck themed. ;) By the way, did you know YouTube has endless Garbage truck videos? Some are 10 minutes in length... and our little Garbage Lover can watch them endlessly. Here's a couple favorites: Garbage Truck Song and Garbage Truck Types. Enjoy.

"Go Riley!":
Lately, Riley loves to "dance" to his new Mickey Mouse Clubhouse CD (Thank you, Lucy & Emilia!). His dancing is hilarious, and then it quickly transitions from dancing to running in circles in the playroom saying "Go Riley, Go Riley, Go Riley" and then when I join in he says "Go Mummy, Go Mummy, Go Mummy"!!! It's a riot! He also cheers himself on when he plays sports... if he hits a good ball with the bat, he runs in a circle (presumedly the bases?) and says "HOME RUN!" and then if he shoots a basket he says "COUNT IT!"...

Other things he loves to do is "draw", play "hides" (hide and go seek, with Daddy), "helping" with whatever it is that we're doing, "come?" to wherever it is that we're going... he continues to love giving Berkie "hugs". He loves kisses and hugs from mumma and daddy. And he's very manipulative! If he wants something, he knows just how to snuggle in with you and give you just enough loves that you totally cave. :)

I'll continue to post Riley-isms as he churns out new ones :)

Love,
Alli

Can I keep up with this now? Doubtful, but here we go!!...

So, yet again I get a big FAIL for keeping up with the blog... Let's try again, shall we? :)

What's the latest? Well, our BABY is now a walkin' and talkin' LITTLE BOY (insert "how can this be" sob here)... here is the proof!


He also loves to play with all his different balls... bouncy balls, baseballs, squishy nerf balls... you name it, if he can throw it, it's awesome. He likes carrying around his bat, too... and yep, my old cell phone is probably his favorite toy. Per the previous videos! HA!

He still doesn't care much for naptime or bedtime, but we're improving! I got a video monitor which helps us to decide whether he needs help falling back to sleep, or if he's got it in the bag himself... :)

Not too much else new going on! I think we're going to attempt some gym classes for Riley in the near future... if that's the case I'll upload some pictures of that fun! And we're also going to offer to pay for Mahin (our childcare provider) to take Riley to the Rec Center up the street starting in March, for toddler music classes on Wednesdays mid-morning. We wish we could take him, but since we can't, and he's the only child she has right now, why not send them?! So that'll be fun for him this spring!

We got a new camera for Christmas and have taken some fabulous pics... so I will pull some pictures off of that and post them to this blog and to shutterfly later this week. I will FORCE myself to sit down and spend 15 minutes blogging once or twice a week. Good grief, you'd think this was hard! HA! Maybe I'll set a reminder on my phone... that'd be smart. Hold on, I'll do that now... there: Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:15-8:45... grab a glass of wine and update your blog. :) HA! Excellent.

I hope everyone is doing as well as we are!
Best, The 3 Ws.

Crawling and Babbling and Standing, OH MY!

Well well well... look who decided to blog. DOH! I am SO sorry that I haven't posted anything in over 2 months! Bad Mummy!!!

Well, let's see... so Riley is 10 months now, and in the last 2 months lots has happened! Our little baby is now a little boy, I swear it. He has 6 teeth (with more coming!), he's been truly crawling since August 10th, and he's been pulling himself up and furniture surfing since about August 15th, and he's also efficiently pushing walker toys, chairs, etc... I think he'll be walking before he's a year!!??! He's going up stairs very well, and downstairs too, but a lot less gracefully. HA! He babbles a lot, has LOTS to say (not sure where he gets that from... heh heh) and often times he says "Da Da" and "Maaaama", but we're not sure he associates those sounds with us yet or not. Sometimes I think so, but others, not so much. He LOVES to clap... if you say "yayyy", he claps! And we're working on waving and high-fives... those need some work. Although, this past weekend, he started high-fiving a lot more readily! He also "fetches"... ha! Thanks Ryan. :)

He's still not sleeping through the night... or even close, really. He wakes up at least once per night, but usually, twice. Argh. I'm sure it's mostly my fault, since though I should be weaning him from night feedings, it's hard when I'm a zombie too, to deal with an upset baby, when I can basically nurse him in my sleep while rocking in the chair, and he generally falls back asleep that way too. So, this month, that's my challenge. Wean nighttime feedings. Eek!

So, a few pictures...
This summer we went to LOTS of softball games/tournaments...


Early in August, my parents (Grammy & Granda) and the McKennas came out for a visit, and Riley summitted his first 14er, Mt Evans!


We met up with Madison & Haley at Monkey Bizness, and despite catching other kids' germies and getting sick, Riley had an AWESOME time... SO FUN! :)


And we also visited the Chatfield pumpkin patch on October 15th!... This is the pumpkin we bought... Rilers picked it out :)


Riley LOVES other kids... here he's made a friend at the Let it Fly 4v4 Flag Football tournament! This other little boy's name was Riley, too!!


Tonight we went up to watch Ryan play softball and it was COLD! So I decided to put Riley's halloween costume to good use since it's size 12 mos and big enough to fit lots of layers underneath... here's our tubby little dinosaur :) More pictures to come after this weekend's ACTUAL Halloween festivities!


I'll try to be better about updates, but this busy mumma promises nothing. :)

IOU...

Well! Sorry for the lapse in posts! Busy Busy Mumma! IOU some good updates! However, today is Ryan's birthday, so I'm going to take him out to lunch and mini-golfing, so I will post more about our visit with Grammy & Granda Edwards and Kevin & Nancy McKenna another time... lots of great pictures from that visit! Including Riley's "1st 14er"!! Mt. Evans! So I will get on that post shortly... however, for now I have a couple of cutie flip-videos to share of Riley. (Also, from now on, I'm going to add flip videos to our Shutterfly site on a new tab called: "Riley Videos"... some will be duplicates of what's here, but I'll also post others.)

Here he is gnawing on Berkie's tail (one of his favorite activities, and oddly enough, Berkie just sits there purring... weirdo cat):


And here's another of Riley crawling around and tackling Berkie WWE-style (his other favorite activity... seriously, weird cat.):


Say some prayers for Ryan and the Williams' family (especially Grandma Ethel), as his Grandfather, Warren Sterling Williams passed away yesterday morning in his sleep. He was 89 years young and was in home hospice care as of last Thursday. All my love to my husband and his family as they remember a wonderful man's life.

Love to all,
Alli

As promised...

... more pictures!

Susannah sent us a CD with all the photos she snapped of Riley at 6 months, so I posted them on our Shutterfly site. Take a look!! Here is the album specifically: http://ryanandalli.shutterfly.com/1747

I also created a new tab on our Shutterfly page for Riley's Videos :) I'll try to keep that up to date with all his movin' and groovin'.

Tonight was a rough night... Day 1 of Sleep Training using "The Baby Sleep Solution" by Suzy Giordano. She has you use the limited crying method, where you put him to bed awake, and then leave him, if he cries, you return in 3-5 mins (I did 3 mins), soothe him until he calms a bit, then leave... wash, rinse, repeat... I did this for about an hour and then he finally fell asleep. It was traumatic for both of us, I think. He was SO upset!! There were boogars EVERYWHERE. :( But, that little boy has been SOOOO tired lately, his eyes looked like 2 piss-holes in the snow. :( No little one should look THAT tired. So he needed our help to learn how to self soothe and we had to show him some tough love to get him to sleep. Now it's anybody's guess how long he'll sleep and when I'll get to re-live that limited crying method tonight... I just keep telling myself it's for his health, and mine. :)

Wish us luck!

My parents and our dear family friends, Nancy & Kevin McKenna, are flying out tomorrow to visit for a week! They'll be staying at the condo and we have many fun activities planned :) Can't WAIT to see them all!!!!

Well, time to get some shut-eye while the little man is sleeping!
Dream Sweet...
~Alli

Crawling is Immanent...

Uh-oh... :)



This is one VERY effective inchworm!!!