Riley's 1st Thanksgiving

Well I'm a little late in getting this posted - OBVIOUSLY, but I have a good excuse! I had to go back to work this week! We'll save that for another post once I survive the 1st week! I actually had this written sooner, but when I want to include pictures it always takes me longer to have the time to get the pictures uploaded from my camera then uploaded here, etc!

Let's see what we did for Thanksgiving....we went to GS to my PawPaw's house. It's my favorite holiday and my favorite celebration because it seems like it's the one that everyone still comes for. Now that so many of us have our own kids (everyone else for a while now!), people have to have Christmas at their own houses so Santa knows where to bring the gifts so Thanksgiving seems to be the one holiday that has stayed in tact over the years! And I get to have on of my ALL TIME FAVORITE MEALS! My late Grandmother's cornbread stuffing! My Aunt Char has now mastered the recipe, so it tastes just like MemMaw's!! She even has extra batches made, but not cooked so we can bring it home with us to have even more leftovers!! How GREAT is that?!

Anyway - we planned on being there by lunchtime! Remember that I'm still off work at this time so Riley & I haven't exactly mastered getting out of the house in an efficient manner! Well Murphy's Law was in effect! Our plan was to have Riley ready and fed so his nap time would correlate with our 1.5 hour drive.

As I was getting him dressed, I paused for a second and thought to myself maybe I shouldn't get him dressed now - 2 hours before we're supposed to leave. I mean that would mean we were actually running early on getting ready! So I decided to go ahead and get him dressed! Yeah, you probably see where this is going! So Riley doesn't poop every day now - more like every 3-6 days because breast milk doesn't have a lot of waste. Since it's the perfect food (another shameless breastfeeding plug), Riley's body uses almost all of it leaving little left over (another reason to breastfeed!). BUT when he does go now, it's usually a BLOW OUT! So I had this adorable 'My 1st Thanksgiving' onesie for Riley to wear with a matching turkey bib...yep! You guessed it!

I'm upstairs getting ready, and Kelly comes around the corner and says - only our son! I was lost at 1st then I was able to finish his sentence before he did! Yep! He had a blow out in his 'My 1st Thanksgiving' outfit! On the ONE day of the YEAR he could wear it!! Well luckily we were running 'early' so I had time to 'quick wash' it and dry it!

Of course, after that our entire morning plan to have Riley ready for nap time when we got in the car went out the window!! I ended up having to feed him a bottle in the car on the way, then we had to pull over to burp him halfway there!


Dad burping Riley half way to GS - see his cute turkey bib!

I was worried he'd be in a bad mood once we got there because we were going to arrive at the EXACT time he should have been going down for a nap! BUT he was the main attraction...and he loved every minute of it! He didn't get tired, cranky or upset ONCE! He did sleep the ENTIRE ride home though!


Showing off his talking and laughing skills with Dad. See his cute 'My First Thanksgiving' onesie? (That had already been washed and dried this morning!) He had on pants and shoes too, but he had already gotten rid of those by this time! My PawPaw's house has a tendency to be HOT HOT HOT!

Oh yeah! And he 'found his thumb' while we were there! He's more chewing on it than sucking it, but I guess it's just a matter of time! I was hoping I could keep him from being a thumb sucker! As my pediatrician says - you can take the paci away! But the thumb can be more difficult to break! Right now he only takes his paci at nap and bedtime, so I was thinking we wouldn't have an uphill battle! Like I've said before though - Riley has already taught me that what I think I 'know' can quickly change!


Hmm, what is this thing that just flipped into my mouth? I think I like it!

So that was my celebration with my Dad's side of the family, then my sister came home with us and we celebrated with my Mom - who had been at my house cooking all day! So we got to eat another meal - YUMMY! More cornbread stuffing - see everyone knows it's my FAVORITE!! And Kelly and I had more than enough leftovers for the rest of the weekend!

Then Friday morning we took Riley to his 2nd in studio photo shoot to get pictures made for our Christmas card. He did great - was a total champ through wardrobe changes and all the adults trying to get him to look up at the camera and smile! I'm starting to think he may be a little shy! He never shuts up at home, but when we take him places he's a lot quieter! Then as soon as we get him home - motor mouth and all smiles again! Kelly and I were both shy when we were younger, so it could happen! No SERIOUSLY - we were both EXTREMELY shy! I know it's hard to believe now!


"The Village" aka Kelly & my Mom trying to get Riley to smile AND look somewhere in the vicinity of the camera at the same time!

Then my Mom and sister helped me put up our Christmas tree Friday evening before they went home. I say helped loosely because my Mom pretty much did it! She has that talent! Riley sat in his bouncy seat watching...and he is totally mesmerized by the Christmas tree lights now!

And Saturday we went to see my Aunt Jenny's family while Brady & Tiffany were in town from college. I think Riley is getting accustomed to being the center of attention and he likes it! :)


Riley & Tiffany - I couldn't help but notice the Digital TV conversion message in the background - oh how I'm sure that will seem 'ancient' to Riley one day when we're perusing through all these pictures!

Jumping in a Jumperoo!!!

I think I mentioned in a previous post that Riley seems to be getting more and more frustrated with viewing the world from a horizontal position. Earlier this week, I decided to get a door jumper out that I had received at my shower so he could be more vertical with the world. Well let's just say I didn't think about the fact that all the doors in our house are REALLY tall! Kelly and I put the door jumper in Riley's door and it hung down to my waist! Not sure how much jumping Riley would be able to do in that!

Then we had his 4 month checkup this week, and the dr's office clearly states NO WALKERS! Just another thing we all survived, but they have decided is no longer good for kids! The main reasons are injuries (rolling down the stairs or into table ends, etc) and that it can delay your childs' development because if they are on the floor and have to crawl or walk to get across the room to see something they are curious about it's better than if they hop in the walker and zoom across! I can see that...plus, let's face it we're all way too reliant on instant gratification already! Present company INCLUDED!

So this all led to yet another online quest for me! Yippee! After reading several articles about 3-5 month old developmental phases, I decided the best solution for us would be a jumperoo! It's basically a walker with a jumper inside, so it's contained in one area. Once I decided what, I had to decide which one. Can I just say - I LOVE Amazon!! Not only for the shopping, but for the customer reviews! I find them SOOOO helpful when I'm trying to make a final decision on a purchase! And I joined Amazon Prime, which is where you pay a fee once per year and all of your shipping is 2-3 days and included in every order! Totally worth it when you have a new baby! Amazon is your friend! Free shipping makes it your best friend! Customer reviews make it your BFF!

I quickly narrowed my jumperoo search down to the Fisher-Price Rainforest and the Baby Einstein models. Then I let the reviews speak for themselves! On Amazon the Fisher-Price model had 466 reviews averaging a 4.5 star rating and on BabiesRUs.com it had 1129 reviews averaging 5 stars!! Then when I began to read the reviews it was as if I had written them myself based on Riley's developmental stage!

Now comes the instant gratification part with my justification - I coudn't possibly...I mean Riley coudn't possibly wait the 2-3 days it would take to get it from Amazon even though it was $20 cheaper! No! Plus, it would have been 4 days with Thanksgiving! So I jetted right on down to BabiesRUs less than a mile from my house and purchased it Tuesday night! We set it up Wednesday and he loved it from the moment I put him in it! The funny thing is that he would just stare at the fabric covered springs more than the toys it comes with! Again...it's all about the simple things! He's still a little too short for it, so I put a pillow under it so he can achieve full launch capabilities!


Riley staring at the fabric cover on the springs. He literally stared at them for minutes on end!

He LOVES it! A lot of people said their younger children were overwhelmed by it a bit until they were closer to 5-6 months old, but not Riley! I think I could have put him in it a month ago!

It's funny how they are able to let you know they are bored or over a certain stage/toy/game even though they can't talk! Just another amazing discovery in parenthood.


Riley preparing for launch! Look at those boy legs!!! Mine were chunkier than that when I was BORN! ha! See the rosy cheeks from all Mom's kisses! Oops!

Those Cheeks....

Okay! Okay! I know you're sick of hearing about Riley's cheeks! This time I'm not only talking about Riley's! There's actually another set of adorable cheeks in the world too! And I have a picture of them together!!! Meet Timothy aka Timmy (spoken the way they do on Southpark) "Rosy Cheeks" Muttitt!

I've known Tim for over a year now. We met when he interned at American last year before returning to England for his final year at university. Let's just say Tim and I bonded immediately! And I nicknamed him Timmy Rosy Cheeks way back then - you can see why right here!



He surprised Riley & I with a call for lunch on Monday. It just so worked out that it was a day when we were already dressed and ready to go because Riley had his 4 month dr appointment at 930 that morning! Lucky us!

He brought lunch over and visited with us, so I was sure I didn't let this Kodak moment pass me by again! ;) After all, it's not often you have 2 sets of adorable cheeks in the same room! I'm talking about face cheeks people! Get your minds out of the gutter!! ;)

Week 16 in The Life of Riley

Hmm, so this week was a low key week for us. I think I knew it was my last full normal week at home with Riley so I wanted to relish every moment, smile, giggle, etc! This coming week we have his 4 month checkup, then Thanksgiving so I won't be able to just stay in my pj's all day and hang out with Riley! Oops...did I just admit that publicly?! Yes! There are still days when I stay in my pj's and we just hang out ALL day! And I LOVE them! Kelly gets home from work, and we're like Hey! We've been having fun all day! No time to bother with getting dressed! Haven't I said this before - I STILL don't know how I'm going to go to work!!

One of our big treats this week was having my friend Doug come over to take some at home photos of Riley! He's taken up photography as a hobby, so he wanted to do it as practice and of course - I can never have enough pics of my boy! I swear my picture folder on my pc is 15GB! I keep saying I need to back them up to an external hard drive because I will FREAK if I lose all my pics!!

Anyway, I couldn't be more happy with the shots Doug captured! OMG! It was a Mother's dream! I feel like he totally captured the Riley I spend every day with! Those cheeks and that drool and those funny looks! I know...things only a mother could love! But that's the thing you miss with studio portraits - it's hard to capture the essence of who Riley really is in that setting. But at home, Doug could take pictures during his nap then when he woke up again so we got an entire feed, wake, sleep cycle of a day in the life of Riley! It was AWESOME! I just keep looking at them over and over again! Here's a couple of my favorites!


Riley & Dad talking and laughing like they do every day!


OMG! Those CHEEKS!! See why I can't stop kissing them?!

And how do you know you're a 1st child?? When your Mom has pictures of you getting your picture made! I couldn't resist!


Doug taking Riley's picture

Kelly's 35th birthday was Thursday, so Riley and I did take a trip to Central Market to get a birthday cake and nice dinner for his birthday. Then GiGi came Saturday and babysat so we could go out with friends and celebrate Kelly's birthday. And I only text messaged home ONCE!! It was a record!! Mainly because my Mom said he was already asleep, so there was no need for me to text again! We had a great time out with friends, but let's just say we both felt 35 the next day! We're WAY out of practice!!


Dinner @ Baja - l to r Kelly, Grace, Doug, Kelly, Me & Scott


The boys - Kelly, Scott & Doug


Me & Kelly

The girls - Nancy, Talana & Me


The boys II - Scott, Josh & Kelly

Your Baby Can Read!

So anyone that knows me pretty much knows that I'm a marketer's DREAM! Combine that fact with postpartum hormones, a dash of boredom then throw in a perfectly timed infomercial and you have a lethal combination!

Anyway, one day a couple of months ago I was channel surfing and saw Your Baby Can Read! Of course, I had to check it out since I had a new baby! It was so cool. I think the thing that made the biggest impression on me was a video of an 8 month old baby who couldn't talk, but as they would hold up word cards - she would touch her 'nose', start 'kicking', etc! She couldn't even talk, but she was reading the cards and doing something physical associated with the word!

The day care I chose does baby signing as part of their curriculum, so I was already all about this sort of thing before I got sucked into the infomercial!

Anyway, I had to tivo the infomercial so Kelly could see it later and he was all about it too! And it just so happens that his parents had asked a day or so before what they could get for Riley! So you see...it was meant to be! (I'm also good at rationalizing things! )

So about a week later, a box of dvds, books and flash cards arrive! The way I see it - it won't hurt anything to give it a whirl, and it gives Kelly and I 20 minutes morning and night which we usually use to eat breakfast and dinner. The only problem so far is that Kelly and I walk around ALL DAY singing Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, Knees and Toes or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in our heads!!! Seriously, it almost freaks me out like subliminal mind control because you CANNOT get it out of your head!!

But Riley LOVES it! As soon as the intro music starts to play, he gets this HUGE grin on his face like he used to get for his letters and immediately looks at the tv! Then he jabbers back and forth with the tv for the entire time! Along with getting excited and almost bouncing out of his bouncy seat during the songs. He LOVES the tigers too! And when I sing the same songs to him as on the video, he gets excited and smiles like it's something familiar he recognizes.

The theory behind the system is to use an interactive and multi-sensory approach to learning. When using the Your Baby Can Read system, children are allowed to see the words at the same time that they hear the words. Then they do something physical associated with the word. Since children learn language faster and easier during infancy than any other time, it takes advantage of this natural window of opportunity to teach the written language as well as spoken language. Sounds simple enough, and it makes sense. It's sort of the same concept as learning another language during this same time.

Rather than copying everything here - you can check it out yourself at http://www.yourbabycanread.com/

I'll keep you posted on how things progress. I could read by around the age of 3, and I still LOVE to read so I figure that's a gift that keeps on giving for the rest of Riley's life!

Dad is the Swaddle Master!

This is one of my favorite pics from Riley's 1st Photo session at 7 days old! But the reason I chose it for this post is to show the mastery of Kelly's swaddle!! A picture is worth a thousand words for those of you that may not know what swaddling is, like I didn't before Riley!

We learned of swaddling from the Happiest Baby on the Block dvd. Kelly and I watched it in desperation one afternoon when Riley was completely inconsolable! And it was AWESOME! It worked!! The dvd talks about the 5 S's of soothing a newborn. Dr. Harvey Karp produced the video based on his book of the same name. His theory is that the 1st 3 months of a baby's life are like the 4th trimester. They aren't really prepared to be out yet, but they have to be born because humans have such large brains. He talks about how animals are born able to walk for survival, but humans are born totally dependent on their parents. So the trick to helping them acclimate to life outside the womb is to recreate the womb environment as much as you can the 1st 3 months. To do that you do swaddling (makes them feel confined like the womb), shhshing (white noise like the womb), swinging & gentle shaking (very gently like they used to get jostled in the womb)...I can't for the life of me remember the other S's now. But the swaddling, shhshing and swinging worked best for us!

Swaddling is funny looking...people have called him wrapped up like a burrito, taco, tator tot, etc. But as funny looking as it may be, it's totally effective. We're STILL swaddling Riley at night although he's outgrown all his blankets, so we have now progressed to the kiddapotamus swaddle blanket with velcro! Velcro is your friend as they get older and stronger! My sister said it looks like a straight jacket! It's not like that! They love it - it reminds them of the womb and it keeps them warm and snuggled all night without having any loose blankets in the crib. You can't have loose blankets due to the risk of suffocation. I think I may have talked about this in a previous post, but little babies don't know how to breath out of their mouths, so if something obstructs their nasal passages (a blanket or the crib bumper) they will actually suffocate before they breath out of their mouths! Scary! I guess it's like that so they can still breath while they are nursing without choking.

The swaddling also helps keep them from waking themselves up with all their baby reflexes! If you just watch a baby sleep without a swaddle - you'll see how they accidentally hit themselves in the face and flail their arms around like crazy! It's no wonder they can't stay asleep at that age. As soon as we started swaddling, Riley immediately started sleeping longer at night.

And Dad's are MUCH better at it than Mom's! Kelly is definitely the swaddle master! The main reason is that Dad's aren't tentative about how tight to make the swaddle so it'll actually stay all night! Whereas, Riley would bust out of mine in about 2 seconds!

I've read that you should stop swaddling around 4-5 months of age so they are able to do their crib acrobatics which help them develop their gross motor skills for crawling, walking, etc. Gosh, do I dread the 1st few nights I have to wean myself from the swaddle! Notice I say I rather than Riley! ;)


Here's another early swaddle pic. He was around 6 weeks old in this pic because I remember it was when Kelly's parents were in town. And he feel asleep on our bed and we couldn't stop staring at him and marveling at how he looked like a complete ANGEL! Of course, during this time we knew Hell Boy would be arriving later so we had to capture it in a photo!

Candy Man

So....I can't seem to resist kissing Riley's adorable cheeks! And when I say kissing I mean KISSING! And ALL THE TIME! Sometimes they even get chapped a bit from all the kisses, so I have to watch myself!


Those cheeks at 7 days old! (These pics were taken with our camera phones, so not the best quality!)


Those cheeks at 16 weeks! The more things change...the more they stay the same! Oh so kissable!!

Where I want to kiss Riley to death, Kelly has visions of 'eating him up'! But only in the most affectionate way of course! The weirdest thing is that Kelly has discussed this with some of his guy friends, and they felt the same way about their kids!! Must be a testosterone thing! Thank goodness we're not still cavemen!

With that desire, Kelly started calling Riley a warm gummi bear every time he would take him from me after nursing. If I'm a furnace, Riley is an incinerator! So we're BOTH warm after he finishes nursing! Anyway, eventually Kelly progressed from calling him a gummi bear to naming each body part a type of candy! Here's just a few of his most used:
Cotton Candy Cheeks - Maybe that's why I can't stop kissing them!
Tootsie Roll Legs
Gum Drop Nose
Thin Mint Ears

As you can probably tell, Riley is REALLY starved for attention & affection! First children really do have it bad! :)

Not...that is the answer!

So if you're wondering what the question was - it was to gDiaper or Not? Kelly and I were going to try that as a better choice for the environment because they are fully biodegradable whereas disposable diapers take up to 550 years to break down. However, we're going to have to contribute to the environment in a different way! The diapers work - no leaks or anything. But it just adds that much more to the diaper changing process. Every time I put a gDiaper on him, as soon as Kelly changed him he went right back to a Pampers! And considering Kelly changes diapers more than I do when he's home, I figured I'd better be accomodating and thankful that I have a wonderful husband that changes diapers in the 1st place!! Maybe if I had enough gDiaper liners pre-filled, it would be easier. But once I thought about the fact that day care won't use anything but disposable, I just figured I might as well throw the towel in now!

Week 15 in the Life of Riley

Yeah...I still haven't come up with a creative name! Feel free to make some suggestions if you can think of something!

The big thing that happened this week was Riley getting his tongue clipped, but I already did an entire post about that. He also met a few new people this week. On Tuesday, my friend Bobby from work came over to have lunch with us. Then Saturday night we had dinner with our friends Rusty & Paula Hale.


Bobby & Riley


Rusty, Riley & Paula

I also learned it's FUN to dress up boys too!!! I was worried there wouldn't be as many cute clothes for boys because there is definitely a much smaller selection to chose from! I guess that never really changes, BUT have no fear! There are still plenty of cute boy clothes!! Kelly doesn't approve of some of them by saying "My son isn't wearing that!", but I can still play the baby card and sneak some of them in! ;)

Here are just a few of his outfit changes this week! The other problem is that since he still spends most of his life horizontal - it's hard to get him into a cute pose, and if you do it's even more difficult to keep him there AND capture it in a picture while trying to get him to stop eating his hands and look at the camera! So sometimes you just gotta take what you can get!


In his soccer outfit, lying on a Steelers blanket watching the Steelers game with Dad! (Even though he's not supposed to be watching tv!)


In his baby blue cargo pants and adorable sweater vest from Children's Place - see it's hard to get him propped up and posed!


You can't see it, but he has on a cool thermal shirt that says My Mom Rocks - because he knows I rock while playing Rock Band! Check out the shoes! They are like mini diesels! And these are his FAVORITE 2 toys!


In his cool Gap cargo pants and polo shirt with thermal sleeves with his favorite Ducky!! Once again wondering WHY Mommy keeps putting this silver thing that makes him BLIND in front of his face! I should probably google whether you can harm your child with flash burn this early on! I think all 1st children suffer from that though!

He's still enjoying rolling his RRRRRRRs with Dad and he started shrieking this week too! But he still looks surprised like he can't believe that high pitched noise just came from him! He and Dad still sit on the sofa and "chat" back and forth in their own special language for hours! It's like Riley has an entire new repertoire of sounds now that his tongue has been clipped!


Riley & Dad "chatting" on the sofa. You can tell by the smile on Riley's face this is one of his FAVORITE things to do!

Oh yeah...he's been laughing out loud for a while now, but starting this week - he literally starts cracking up at HIMSELF! And he'll just laugh and laugh and gasp for air and laugh and laugh some more at nothing at all! At first Kelly thought he was laughing at him, then he was like I'm not even doing anything! He's just cracking himself up!

He also tries to sit up and stand EVERY time you hold him! And now that he's seen the world from a vertical perspective, he'll cry when you try to lie him back down! It's like he's saying "No! Now that I've seen the world this way, I can't go back to lying down all the time!" We joke that he's going to have a 6 pack like Kelly with all this trying to sit up he's doing! He's constantly working those abs!

And as you saw in the pictures above, his favorite toys are his links (see keep it simple once again!) and a little Ducky his Great Aunt Shireen got him before he was even born! Oh yeah....and his hands! He's still trying to eat them every chance he gets!

I think that's about it for week 15! Oh yeah, I keep thinking how am I EVER going to walk out the door to go back to work! Kelly may have to take me and pick me up the 1st few days so I can see Riley as long as possible! I can see how 12 weeks is the magic time to return to work! That's just before they start interacting with you all the time, smiling at you, laughing and showing their little personalities! Now that he's doing all that, I find myself not wanting to even walk out of the room for a minute for fear I'm going to miss something so cute it's picture or video worthy! Maybe I need to get a web cam set up for my Mom and Kelly to have while I'm at work so they can run him over to the web cam when he does something new or cute! But that means they would just have to sit there in front of the web cam all day because he's always doing something cute! :) And I'm guessing that wouldn't be the best thing for my productivity level at work either!

Mom's Instincts are Grrrrrrrrrrreat!

So I've quickly (in 3.5 months) come to know, that your motherly instinct kicks in either while you are pregnant (you become protective of your belly) or as soon as your child is born! And that we should trust them because they are usually right even when the dr's, friends and family say otherwise! It's the same as the 'you're the only one that knows your body' thing.

As most of you know, I've definitely had an uphill struggle with breastfeeding pretty much the entire time! But I have also been 1000% committed to breastfeeding. Here's 101 Reason's Why I've been committed to it from the day I found out I was pregnant. I realize it's not for everyone, so I'm not a breastfeeding bigot - I just knew that it was the right decision for me!

Anyway, it seems like every time we've thought we were over the hump with breastfeeding something else would come up. Finally, my lactation consultant aka "The Boob Whisperer" - Judy Eastburn - came back last week so she could see what issues Riley and I were having and help address them. As she watched what I was doing, she told me everything was right - position, latch, etc. But when we weighed Riley to see how much milk he had consumed it was almost nothing! She was at a loss! Then Riley had one of his infamous meltdowns. This time I believe it was divine intervention! As he was screaming, she noticed that his tongue was not touching the roof of his mouth. This is something known as being tongue tied. Extreme cases of being tongue tied don't even allow the child to stick their tongue out or their tongue looks heart shaped when they do. She said Riley's wasn't that severe, but she wanted to send me literature on the topic. Then Kelly and I could discuss it and decide what to do. She also said based on her 35 years of experience, this was her hunch and best educated guess as to why Riley wasn't able to get milk out because everything else we were doing was technically fine!

After reading the literature, Kelly and I felt like it was worth looking into. Our approach was that if the ENT (Ear, Nose & Throat) Dr was sure he was tongue tied and could do the procedure in his office locally without anesthesia, we'd have it done. Otherwise, I'd just resolve to pumping from here on out. So Tuesday, Riley, GiGi and I went to see the ENT. He literally looked in Riley's mouth for a millisecond and said - yes, he's tongue tied. Then we discussed the options. I ended up having him clip Riley's tongue right then and there. When children are under 4 months old, they can just do it in the office, and there are no nerve endings in that area so they really get more upset about being held than anything else! Thank goodness GiGi was here to go with us because she held him! Mom was a wuss and didn't want to! I just wanted to cuddle him after it was over! And he literally was over it within a couple of minutes. It was like he was still crying, then all of the sudden he couldn't remember what he was crying about so he just went to sleep in my arms!

As soon as we got home from the dr's office, Riley stuck his tongue out at Kelly. Kelly couldn't believe the difference, so he started calling him Gene Simmons (the guy from Kiss with his tongue clipped to stick out really far!) When it was time for Riley to nurse - OMG! Nirvana!! Seriously, I could tell the difference IMMEDIATELY! And so could he! He was calm and nursed without fussing at all! It was more in line with what I thought breastfeeding would be all along! It's still not perfect but we're practicing! He's learning how to use his new tongue now so we have to give it a few days! And now he actually takes so much milk, I can't keep up so we have to give my body a few days to adjust to his new demand too! But it's amazing what the difference is! And the dr actually told me there is NO PROOF that clipping a tongue tied baby will have a positive impact on breastfeeding! Is he crazy? Have you ever tried to swallow without touching the roof of your mouth? Not very easy, is it? The main piece of literature that convinced Kelly and I to give this a shot was from Australia. They are WAY ahead of us in their studies of breastfeeding, and they just released a study that does show (via sonogram) that tongue tied babies do have difficulty breastfeeding. This is also something that is more prevalent in boys than girls! Go figure! Man, do I wish we had figured this out back in August! But more than anything I'm thankful to have figured it out now before I return to work in December! Hopefully this will give us time to get things all lined out before we have to cross that bridge!

And once again, it has been confirmed that when my motherly instinct tells me something just isn't right - it's NOT! Almost every time I have 2nd guessed myself on something with Riley because I'm a 1st time Mom, I've ended up being right in the end! And every time it happens, I tell myself to trust my instinct the next time...and I don't until the end! I'll get it eventually!

On another note, this has also given Riley a new talent! He can roll his RRRRRRRRs like CRAZY now! And his favorite thing is to say Grrrrrrr back and forth with Dad for as long as Dad will do it! I guess that's what you get when you combine a released tongue with all that slobber!! Gurgly Grrrrrsss! And of course, I think it's the cutest thing EVER! At least until he does something next week that's even cuter! :)

Week 14 in The Life of Riley

I'm struggling to come up with a 'creative' name for the posts where I just do a brain dump of Riley's week! Sometimes there are just too many cute things to ever be able to create a separate post for each one!

Luckily, we didn't have much of a Halloween hang over! I was worried he might be a little overwhelmed with so much action 2 days in a row! But it was all just another day for Riley! Probably because he didn't have to stay up until 1am putting the final touches on his props!

Last Saturday, my godson's Mom and her other son - Mona & Nikhil - came to visit us from Washington State. Nikhil is ADORABLE! He fell in love with Riley's Halloween book that had a loud vampire laugh and lights on the last page so we decided he would get more use out of it than Riley right now! Mona said when they went to see other friends for a couple of days that Nikhil would tell his friends "The baby had my book." And when I say he loved it, I mean he LOVED it! He carried it with him everywhere we went! To every store, etc! He even loved my magazines with pumpkins on the front of them, and all he wanted to talk about was Halloween! He was a skeleton and his brother was a cop! I think he might actually fit into our household! I told Mona she can send him to spend Halloween with us next year, and he'd probably come home totally over Halloween! :)


Mona, Riley & Nikhil


Mona & Riley - Kelly and I LOVED this pic because he's looking right at the camera! That's hard to get with a kid! And look at those cheeks!! Makes me want to kiss them!!


Riley sporting the Puma track jacket Mona bought him. Her 2 boys are the most GQ youngsters I have EVER seen! Sporting their Joe Jeans and Ed Hardy t-shirts!

They spent the night with us on Tuesday too. Then on Friday, Riley and I took a trip out to Heath on Lake Ray Hubbard to see my friends Nigel & Kim. They have 2 girls Jessica & Emma that are just adorable! Riley LOVED them! He would just stare and smile at them! Emma would say "He smiled at me 5 times! He smiled at me 6 times!" Then Jessica said "He's staring at me!" Which lead to a conversation about how boys staring at girls turns into boys chasing girls at recess (Jess is 7, so she knows all about this!). We finally had a good car trip where Riley slept all the way there and most of the way back! So he didn't WAIL the entire drive! Thank God! Because I'm not sure I could handle that for 45 minutes each way!

It was cool to see Kim. She, Nigel and I worked together 10...OMG! Yes 10 years ago!..as consultants on the AT&T project that brought them into offering local phone service instead of just long distance! So she and I are both 'tech chicks', but we also learned that we share many of the same philosophies on parenting! She actually had her 1st daughter in Australia (where Nigel is from), and it was amazing to hear what support they have available to EVERY new Mom there! And they are definitely advocates of breastfeeding and all it's benefits! Her peditrician there wrote the book Baby on Board, which seems to very much have the same concepts as Baby Wise here. And Baby Wise is the book I had recommended and sworn by to me the most when I was pregnant. Every Mom that told me about it (Emily, Nancy & Molly) all said - just do it! It works! It's all about doing a feed, wake then sleep cycle instead of a feed, sleep wake cycle. It sounds simple, but it makes such a HUGE difference! Riley was sleeping through the night by 6 weeks, and I can put him to bed after our night time routine now and he soothes himself to sleep. He can also soothe himself back to sleep if he wakes up during the night. So now I'm one of those mother's that swears by it! It was cool to compare notes on swaddling, over stimulation, the importance of a routine and doing the feed, wake, sleep cycle with Kim now that I've actually lived it! Reading it in a book is one thing...living it - something entirely different!


Riley & Emma - Riley LOVED her little lamb! And Emma went and put on her dance recital outfit that matched her lamb for the picture! So CUTE!


Riley, Jess & Emma - Both of the girls put on their dance recital outfits for the pictures!

Other than that Riley and I hung out all week doing our normal routine including our daily walks because the weather is SO nice right now! The highs were in the 70's most of the week I think. We're experiencing our 2 weeks of fall before it's too cold to take Riley for walks! Our walks are becoming more fun and interactive - not just me walking while he takes a nap! He's so much more aware of his surroundings now - he wants to look around and take it all in.

For those of you like me that don't know - newborns sort of panic when they are in the wind because they only know how to breath out of their nose. My pediatrician said if you hold a newborn's nose, they'll turn blue because they don't know how to breath out of their mouths! Anyway, Riley overcame that hurdle this week and he LOVES the wind now! And he was cracking me up this week on one of our walks on a windy day! Every time the wind would blow what is left of his hair and faux hawk...he would scrunch his shoulders up and giggle out loud! It was SO funny! Then he would look around to try to figure out who was tickling him! He's definitely more ticklish now too - so Kelly and I are always kissing his neck and tummy and he just laughs! Anyway...again it's the little things! But it was so funny! He's laughing out loud all the time about almost everything now! There's not many things cuter than a baby's laugh for sure!

And now his smiles are mostly deliberate! He had a tummy ache a couple of nights this week, and I walked in his room TIRED because I had only gotten a couple of hours a sleep before he woke up. And when I got over to where he could see me, he would flash the BIGGEST smile! He does it EVERY morning when you go in to get him too! OMG! Talk about a smile that can melt away all your tiredness!

Kelly and Riley started a few new things too! They literally have their own special Ewok language! Riley will 'talk' back and forth with Kelly forEVER if you let them! And he just loves it! Kicking and smiling the entire time! He also LOVES to swing or fly in Daddy's arms! The flying of course started with the Superman costume last week, but he smiles like crazy just loving it! It's so sweet! I find myself imagining all the things these 2 will enjoy together over the years, and it brings a smile to my face!

I think that's most of what we did this week! I'm on my countdown to my return to work on Dec 1st! Only 3 more weeks left! :( I have NO idea how I'm going to go to work!! Kelly says I'll do it like almost every other Mom has to, but I'm sure it'll be a Kleenex day for sure! I'm thinking about working from home the 1st couple of days to ease the transition back! It's going to be harder for me than Riley, but at least he'll be staying with GiGi (my Mom) and Kelly for the 1st month or so. We are waiting for a little boy in the class above Riley's to walk, and he hasn't even taken a step yet!! Thank goodness I was an anal retentive Mom that got on the day care list in MARCH!!

Oh yeah, today we went shopping with Nancy & Ethan at Grapevine Mills! To be honest, I haven't bought Riley very many clothes up to this point because he already had so many, but OMG! today I found the greatness of The Children's Place for cute clothes! I was thinking there weren't as many cute things for boys like there are for girls! Oh was I wrong! Wait until you see his adorable Thanksgiving outfit! Let's just hope Riley likes it as much as I do! Hopefully it will still fit in a few weeks! He's already in 6 month old clothes and socks, and he just turned 3 months last week! He's LONG and LEAN like his Daddy though! He outgrows them in length WAY before he outgrows them in width!

Well I think that about covers it for this week....til I find the time again!

Riley's 1st Halloween

Here comes Superman! Up Up and Away!


In his capsule with his "green crystal".

I have to admit we have set the precedence HIGH for every Halloween from here on out! Riley was 3 months old on the 29th, and he had a more elaborate Halloween costume and props than I EVER had! But that has more to do with who his Dad is than anything else!

First, Riley had several Halloween costumes or outfits because everyone knows that it's Kelly's favorite holiday! After all, it's the only time he can wear short shorts or tights and get away with it! ha! GiGi bought Riley a monkey suit back in August, but it was still a little too big. Kelly and I were going to be the bananas if Riley had gone with the monkey suit. Then his Sterne Grandparents bought him a cute pumpkin outfit and socks, and Jason Brown bought him a pumpkin hat and cat shoes. He's decided he hates hats, so we weren't able to pull those off! Therefore, he ended up being Superman! Kelly got him a Superman costume with a built in cape. Sounds simple enough, right? Not in our household!

It started out with Kelly coming up with the idea to trick the stroller out to look like the capsule that Kal-el (Superman before he was Superman for those of you who don't know like I used to not know!) was sent to earth in when he was a baby. Basically, it looks like a star. Kelly made his yearly Halloween trek to Hobby Lobby and found some styrofoam cones and covered them with foil. It worked, but then my anal retentiveness kicked in, and I said we couldn't just put those things on a orange and brown stroller! There was no way anyone would know what that was! Plus, it looked like some medieval torture device! So we decided we'd get silver fabric to cover the colors of the stroller, which is a great idea if you can sew! I can't! So then we had to call GiGi in for her seamstress skills! Kelly didn't leave one stone unturned - we also had a green glow stick in the stroller with Riley to represent the green crystal Kal-el was sent to earth with. And Kelly and I had silver capes made out of the same material because we were Superman's parents - in the movie they dress in all silver. Oh yeah, and we even had the 'computer' from Krypton represented in the cup holders of the stroller as well! Then at the visit to my office, someone said all you need is the theme song playing now! (Actually Kelly and I had already discussed this, but ran out of time doing all the stroller and cape stuff.) So Halloween day, I downloaded the theme song to my iPod and used my external speakers to play the theme song as we strolled Riley around! I've decided Kelly's the creative one, I am good at coming up with how to execute the creative theme, then we have to bring my Mom-GiGi in to tie it all together and fill in the gaps! She's pretty creative too! The teamwork definitely paid off! And did I mention that I felt like we were already pulling an all nighter to get some school project done??!! Me, Kelly and my Mom up until after 1am working on Riley's Halloween props, and he's 3 MONTHS OLD! Yes...we need help! No, he's not spoiled at all! :)

Superman's Capsule pictured below.



As far as Trick or Treating, we went to my office on Thursday afternoon. Mainly, so I could take Riley to meet everyone! We left there with a REAL Hershey's bar from Darcy that Kelly and I enjoyed today! :) Then we went Trick or Treating with Ethan, Josh and Nancy on Halloween night in their neighborhood. Ethan was Bob the Builder, and oh so cute!!

Bob the Builder aka Ethan.


First, Nancy cooked us chicken enchiladas for dinner - YUMMY! Then Halloween turned out to be a bitter sweet night! Josh was flying back in from a business trip in Atlanta, and his flight kept getting delayed. So Nancy and I had the boys, and Kelly was going to pick Josh up at the airport and come meet us. During the time when we were waiting for Josh & Kelly - Nancy, Ethan, Riley and I sat in their front yard handing out candy and taking pictures. Eventually, Ethan got antsy and wanted to go next door to trick or treat.

So......THANK GOD! Nancy put our video cameras in her house, but left her phone and digital camera in the cup holder of her chair with the bowl of candy there for people to grab from. After all, we were just going to the house next door! And all her neighbors were sitting out in their front yards, so there were plenty of people around! You probably know where this is going now - after we got started Trick or Treating - Ethan was loving it and ready to go more, so Nancy said she was going to run home and get her phone so we'd know when Josh & Kelly were there - as she turned around she saw a guy and HIS CHILD! Walking off really fast away from her house...she yelled out did you take my phone and camera and they just kept walking! They had taken her phone, camera and almost the entire bowl of candy to boot!! I didn't realize what was going on at the time, but there wasn't much we could do with 2 kids in tow! That's really sad! Stealing with your child, and the guy's kid was probably 3 years old. I called her phone within a minute or two of it happening, and they had already turned her phone off, so I guess the guy is a seasoned veteran at taking other people's things! How pathetic is that?!

But we didn't let it put a damper on our night! Nancy handled it very well! Her thought was the guy obviously needs it worse than we do! Although, we aren't sure how he plans on charging or uploading the pictures from the camera! Luckily, she had already uploaded the pictures of Ethan at school earlier in the day to send out to family! If that had been my camera, I always have anywhere from 200-500 pictures on it! And my video camera literally has EVERY video we've taken of Riley since he was born so I'm very thankful she thought to put those in the house.

Soon after, Kelly and Josh arrived and we all went Trick or Treating together. Ethan loved it! He was so cute saying Trick or Treat, Happy Halloween!

Kelly's already tossed around a couple of ideas for Riley's Halloween costume and props next year! I keep picturing Kelly and Riley having a conversation in a couple of years with Riley saying something like, "But Dad, I just want a store bought costume and no props like everyone else!" And God help us all the year Riley decides he's too old to dress up!!!

If you'd like to see all of Riley's outfits and "the making of" Superman's capsule. Check out the rest of the photos on Flickr @ Riley's 1st Halloween Photos.

Riley also got a piggy bank from his Grandpa & Grandma Sterne and money from them and his Great Aunt Shireen! I'm sure that will get spent on Star Wars figures (just like his Dad) as soon as he's old enough!