Riley's 8 Months Old!!

I didn't get a chance to blog this weekend because we had a lot going on. My Mom was here, so that allowed Kelly and I the chance to get a lot of errands ran, etc. And we had a spring photo session at the arboretum yesterday, which also happened to be Riley's 8 month birthday!!

You can check them out on the Bella Designs Studio Blog!

Riley wasn't even himself and Jessica still managed to get some great shots! I can't believe how fast he's growing up!! I want to hit the S-L-O-W button!!

I'll blog more later....

Still Growing Like A Weed!!

Let me see....what all has Riley been up to the last week or so! Growing for SURE! We woke up one day and he had all of the sudden outgrown EVERYTHING in his closet! So Mommy had to go on a couple of shopping sprees for him! ;) But I think I'm going to exchange half of it for the NEXT size up! He's already in 12-18 months! All the 9-12/6-12 month stuff is already at the size where he'll wear it once and it'll be too small! I've quickly learned that at least for Riley when the size is 6-12 months, that means it is a 6 month size for him - not 12!

This week was spring break for school kids, so Ms. Emily kept Riley at her house this week! OMG! Did we ever realize how spoiled we are!! GiGi was here on Sunday and Monday so Emily had that day off with her boys. Then we planned on me meeting her half way between our houses to do the Riley exchange on my way to work! We ended up only being able to do that 1 day! I literally had 9am meetings EVERY day this week! And if you know me at all...9am was difficult for me BEFORE Riley! Add trying to nurse him, feed him his solid food, get him dressed and out the door to that equation and it's darn near impossible! We have settled into a pretty good morning routine, but Riley will sleep REALLY late if you let him! He slept til 10am last Sunday!! Yes! You read that correctly! My 7 month old slept until 10am! I know! I'm lucky! But during the week, I have to wake him up to nurse him so I won't be super late to work! BUT that had more to do with the time change and us visiting my friend Ellen (who was in from Boston) late last Saturday night. OMG! Speaking of nursing him in the am! His new thing is that while he's nursing, he puts his thumb in my mouth! So as to say, keep this warm for me Mommy! It is the funniest thing! He'll even do it at night when I'm singing Twinkle Twinkle to him, and he thinks it's so funny!

Anyway...we've settled into a morning routine of me bringing him to our bed to nurse while Kelly gets ready, then we he's done nursing Kelly takes him downstairs for his oatmeal & bananas, then he watches his Your Baby Can Read dvd, then he's pretty much ready for his am nap. So I'm able to get to work at a decent time with that routine, but this week it was a different story! It definitely drove home to us how lucky we are to have Ms. Emily!! She just magically shows up at our house right when Kelly needs to leave for work, then when we get home we magically have less dirty dishes and clothes! It's AWESOME! And have I mentioned - Riley LOVES her too!

So I think I talked about KinderMusik last week and how we are doing that so Riley has some social interaction with other people/kids. There is the CUTEST little girl in his KinderMusik class! Her name is Calista, and she's 5 months older than Riley. BUT it looks like Riley could eat her in ONE bite! She's in the lowest 10% of weight, and Riley's in the highest 90% of height! It is so funny to see them side by side! She has these 2 little bottom teeth and she just smiles at you! Then there's Jorge! I hope I never become friends with Jorge's Mom and she reads this one day!! But the very 1st session, we got teamed with Jorge for one of the songs...and when he turned around he had a huge stream of green snot running down his face! You know me! I was mortified! Then the 1st thing he did was take his hand out of his mouth and touch Riley in the face! Hello! I'm not used to this! He's not in day care!! I held my composure though! Then last week - out of NO WHERE! Jorge comes crawling over to Riley - I mean he crawled ACROSS THE ROOM directly up to Riley - and grabs his hair and yanks! My Mom instinct kicked in before I 'thought' and I spatted his hand! Then I quickly looked up thinking Jorge's Mom was going to be coming after me, but she didn't see! What the H*##?! Riley does still have his faux hawk, but it doesn't scream PULL ME! I couldn't believe it! Once again - it made me so thankful for Ms. Emily!! Other than that, Riley LOVES KinderMusik! He gets excited and starts screaming and banging his hands on the floor and playing their little baby instruments! He's the youngest one in the class - besides he and Calista most of them are close to 20 months old so they are all mobile and crawling and walking up to him.

Speaking of being mobile, you can tell Riley's starting to get frustrated that he's not mobile. His favorite toys/jumper/etc don't entertain him nearly as long as they used to! He still doesn't do a whole lot in terms of 'pre-crawling' actions, but 2 weeks is a lifetime at his age so we'll have to wait and see!

A new thing he just started a couple of days ago is clapping with his feet. He LOVES grabbing, sucking, yanking on his feet! They are like built in toys! At first I thought the clapping was just 'yanking', but Kelly and I both realized he's consistently clapping them last night.

He also has nightly Cirque Du Soleil events in his crib! We go in there and he's turned from his back to stomach and done a full 180 with his feet facing the opposite direction. I'd love to spy on him and see what he's doing, but Mommy's gotta sleep! Kelly and I have to go in each night and look at him before we go to bed! STILL! I think we always will....we call it 'checking on him', but it's just our way of getting one MORE glance at our little Smoochie! Sometimes we just look at each other and go OMG! We love him so MUCH!

OMG! This is one new 'event' (he's probably going to hate me later in life for sharing this one!), but I can't help it! If anyone has any tips, I'll surely take them! He has this new thing...it's so gross..so prepare yourself! He keeps pooping in the bathtub!! OMG! &*#$#(! At first I thought it was because I was letting him lie in there and play too long, but the other night he did it before I even got the soap out to wash him! Ugh! It doesn't happen every night! Thank God! Because it basically results in 2 baths! One of my friends at work has a 3 yr old and twins, and he said that only happened to him ONCE! How lucky am I?! I hope this passes (no pun intended) soon! I have to admit the 1st time he was farting and I thought it was funny, I made a joke about him making his own bubble bath (Chris Rock stand up reference), then all of the sudden the joke was on me!

Speaking a bad manly habits (of course he only poops in the tub b/c he's a guy!), he's totally obsessed with the remote! He'll sit on the sofa by Kelly and play with it and study it for a REALLY long time! As long as Kelly will let him! It's funny! It's like he's his Dad in training! Gotta get a pic of that!

Oh yeah, I found some new baby food I'm going to try. I've been doing Gerber & Earth's Best Organics, but I found Sprout Organic baby food. It was co-founded by Executive Chef Tyler Florence. He roasts bananas and potatoes, etc to try to bring out the natural flavor of things without additives. It comes in eco friendly packaging too. I'm trying to finish up the Gerber & Earth's Best we have now, but we'll be trying this in the next few weeks so I'll let you know how Riley likes it. I'm just trying to stick with organic as much as I can. Kelly and I eat mostly organic fruit & veggies too, but it's even more important with baby food because it's concentrated, so the pesticides and stuff are concentrated too! Eww! You can check it out Sprout Baby Food.

Okay! It's taken me part of 2 naps to get this done, so I'm calling it a post so I can actually get some stuff done around my house today!!

Playing Catch Up!

Yes! I'm playing catch up on blogging again! Sorry! I still haven't found a routine time to schedule this in!

I'm trying to think of all the things to catch everyone up on! Riley's 7 months old now! I can't believe it! It seriously just seems like yesterday that Kelly and I were bringing the new little man home with us! He grows and changes EVERY single day! It's so amazing to experience and witness it! He will literally try something for the 1st time one day and master it 3-4 days later! Now if we adults still got that kind of ROI, we'd be a lot more productive too! I know I would!

He's sitting up all by himself these days. Sometimes he'll 'accidentally' get up on all fours in the crawling position, but then he freaks out and drops back down to his tummy! I'm starting to feel a little like he may skip crawling and go straight to walking, but I know it's still early so we'll have to wait and see. He's just much more comfortable standing. He still doesn't really like 'tummy time' all that much.


Random shot of him playing in his activity center.

He's eating like a champ! There's not much he doesn't like anymore. I threw in the towel on making my own baby food before I even started! Let's face it! I'm struggling to get things done as it is! Why make it harder on myself?! Plus, now they have all organic baby food so we just get that. Between Kelly and I, we've tasted them all and they are actually good!

Riley also started drinking from a cup. I'm totally finding myself taking it back old school on things for him lately! I bought him a retro jack in the box a couple of weeks ago. He loves it! He's already trying to turn the handle. I also got him the old school activity center that goes in his crib (pictured below). He'll wake up and play with it in the mornings before we go in to get him. And just yesterday I ordered the old school tupperware cups that I grew up on. Sippy cups these days are crazy! They put these valves in them to keep them from spilling, but it makes it difficult for a beginner to figure out. I've been taking the valves out, but I thought what the heck! I'm going to get the little cups I learned to drink out of! It worked for me! And it doesn't have BPA in it either!


His old school activity center - no batteries required! All manual fun!

I signed Riley up for KinderMusik (Thanks for the suggestion Susan Smith!). It's basically a class for 6-20 month olds, and we sing and dance and play little baby instruments. It sounds corny because it sort of is, but Riley is getting into it more and more. Kelly even went with us this past Saturday. I did it mainly for the socialization aspect. I do worry that since he's home with Emily all day, he may become a little recluse. The 1st class he was a little overwhelmed in the beginning because we walked in a couple of minutes late and everyone was already singing, then as soon as the teacher said we were going to have a couple of minutes of quiet time - Riley let it all hang out! He was just getting his vocals warmed up! He gets his arms and legs going when everyone is singing, and he even notices all the other little kids in there. He's the youngest one, so they all walk and crawl up to him. There's a little girl Calista in his class. She's 5 months older than Riley, and I swear it looks like he could EAT her in ONE bite! It is so funny! She is so adorable with her 2 little bottom teeth smile!

Speaking of, still no teeth! He seems to have adjusted to the discomfort though because it doesn't seem to bother him anymore. BUT he is CONSTANTLY "chewing" on his thumb(s). YES! That is my way of rationalizeding it! I SWEAR he's still "chewing" not 'sucking' - at least not yet! I think he knows it's going to be the death of me if he sucks his thumb, so he will literally put BOTH thumbs in his mouth at the same time! So as to say 'Nah-nah!'!


It's hard to tell, but he's "double thumbing" it! Ugh!

OMG! How could I forget this part?! My house is now ScreamFest 2009! OMG! Seriously! Riley has definitely 'found his voice', but he's only found it on LOUD volume! Now he and Kelly have scream-offs on the sofa! I know as soon as I walk in the door whether he's awake or not these days! It is HILARIOUS! And for some reason, his most talkative time is when you're trying to feed him! Then he just wants to tell you ALL about his day!!

He and Ms. Emily are still getting along like champs! Emily is such a blessing to our ENTIRE family! Seriously! She does stuff for ALL of us every day! And she's so good with Riley! It's so nice to have someone you trust staying with your child every day! It makes my work day that much easier!

We still read 2 stories every night before he goes to bed, then sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star & say a prayer. My Aunt & Grandpa got him a little stuff animal that says a prayer, so that's how we say his prayer every night It's so cute! We read Sweet Dreams (a little 3 page soft book) and we alternate between Good Night Moon & It's Pajama Time! And I mean we read them EVERY night! If he's tired and falls asleep during his last bottle and you try to put him right to bed, he will let you know that you are trying to circumvent the routine! And on the other hand, if he's still crazy wide awake - once we start reading he starts to calm down and get ready for bed.


Reading his bedtime stories.

His hair still sticks STRAIGHT up! As you can tell in the pictures! There's NO way around it! We just have to go with it! Mine was just like that, but I was a girl! At least he can sport a faux hawk and it's cool!

Oh yeah, and his eyes have started changing colors a little bit. They are getting yellow right around the pupils like Kelly's. I have green hazel and Kelly has blue hazel, so it's looking like they may be like Kelly's. Stay tuned and we shall see!