My Little Star!

Riley was Mr. Big Boy Independent this morning, so he insisted on carrying his star all by himself. Even down the stairs at our house despite the fact that he couldn't see over it!

Kelly dropped him off this am bc I had an all day offsite mtg with IBM. I'm assuming Riley had to carry his star into school since he refused to have it anywhere in the car where he couldn't see it! Kelly said when he walked in all his friends were like Hi Riley! Riley's Star! I guess they've figured out what it means by this time of year! In fact, Riley couldn't stop looking and pointing to his Star once he saw it last night either like he knew what it meant.

Anyway, Kelly said Ms. Dina's reaction was OF COURSE it's only fitting it has a fwag theme! :) She's told me before he points out flags at the school she's never noticed in her 14 years there! So Kelly said when he left, all the kids were gathered around and Riley was pointing and saying all his favorite things on the star!

Sounds like Talana and I knocked it out of the park with the star! :)

I can't wait to hear his rambling answer to did you have a good day when I pick him up today. I'm sure it'll be something like and I outSIDE, and Ms Dina, and my STAR, and blah blah! And Matwoo and pushing and time OUT. :) I don't know if he gets put in time out for pushing Matwoo every day or if he's just retelling me the same story over and over again!

Either way! Riley's the Star of the Week!

So I didn't get this posted before I picked Riley up...the usual conversation on the way home went something like this:

Mommy - "Did you have a good day at school?" 

Riley -"Chess (Yes)" while he also shakes his head up and down. 

Mommy - "What did you do?" 

Riley - "OutSIDE and star and Mommy and Daddy and Eledent and Monkey and Ms Dina and star and blah blah blah" 

Mommy - "Did everyone like your star?" 

Riley - BIG SMILE "CHESS" head shaking up and down. 

Riley - "Mena Mena Mommy Pack Pack I reach it!" which means give me the banana out of my backpack I'm trying to reach from my car seat that I usually eat on the way home because I'm STARVING MARVIN b/c we just got finished playing outside 10 minutes before you picked me up! :)   

Then as if it were meant to be, I found iced star sugar cookies to take for his special snack. They are really supposed to be snowflakes, but they look just like stars!

A few pics from Reese's 4th Birthday Party!

I'm impressed we got them all pretty much smiling!

Michelle helping Riley with his juice!

The Birthday Girl!

We went to my friend Michelle's daughter's 4th birthday party at a WOGA gymnastics gym today! Riley LOVED it! We may have to sign him up! The ones near us don't offer it under 3 years old, but this one does. It's actually where Nastia??? and some other gymnastic gold medal winners trained.

Anyway - Riley jumped right in and had fun! I have some video of him jumping on the trampoline. That was his favorite thing!

It was so cute. I was standing behind him, and I could hear him continuing to sing the Happy Birthday song LONG after it had been sung, but I guess it was stuck in his head. The little boy next to him just looked at him like he was crazy! Too funny and cute! All at once!

Speaking of, now no matter what happens if he sees cupcakes or cake - he starts singing Happy Birthday!

Doritos & Bananas

If I got caught eating this combination of food, people would accuse me of being pregnant! ha!

Riley, Ethan and Emily enjoyed a nice Doritos & Bananas binge just before dinner Saturday night...and we wondered why he wasn't hungry! :)

Star of the Week!

At Sloan each child gets to be the "Star of the Week" during the school year, and it just so happens Riley is "Star of the Week" this week. That means we (as in I until I called for backup!) get to do a star to represent all Riley's favorite things that will hang in his classroom all week, and I can take a special snack for his class one day! When he's older we'll do it together, and he'll be able to speak to each of them. But since he's so young, I wanted to mainly do pictures of the things he likes that he can point out and say by himself.

Of course, they give me the Star on Thursday before we're supposed to have it done by Monday! Ugh! Hello! I'm a much bigger planner than that! Needless to say, I felt behind the ball before I even got started! Even so, it turned out great and it captures all of Riley's Current Favorite things!!

Many thanks to Talana for coming over to help me do the star at the last possible moment on Saturday. I spent Friday evening shopping for scrapbooking stickers, then Saturday morning uploading pictures from all our cameras and going through them to pick out ones to be printed at Walgreens. I'm ashamed to even admit that our nice Nikon camera had not been uploaded from since JANUARY! Hello Misty! Not good! I told Talana my suggestion for the school was going to be to NOT have a Star of the Week during December! OMG! We already have enough to do!! The good news is that as I was going through all our pictures for this, I already came up with some themes for pages in his memory book I make for family each year.

Anyway, I had a very loose vision, bought a bunch of stickers and went through and printed out pictures of his current favorite things, but Talana totally executed on the vision! She's a Master Certified Scrapbooker (if there were such a thing)! :) Once again - she comes through for us like family! She's babysat for us only 2nd to GiGi and is always there to lend a hand and help us out with any crazy thing we may have going on! That's true friendship! Love you Talana Banana!!

Of course, we had to make the background "flagish" considering they are one of his top 3 favorite things! :) I intended to have more basketball on the star too so as to represent the order of his favorite things, but that just didn't work once we started lying things out.

Anyway - here's the Star! The top leg is Zoo - with pictures of Riley and a gorilla and me and Riley in front of eledents (elephants - his #3 favorite thing). The left leg is swimming with Daddy in a pool and lake, splashing Mommy with water while we were in Cozumel, and a picture of the ocean from our room in Cozumel. The middle picture is obviously a family pic from our Christmas card last year because I realized I don't have any other family pics! ugh! The bottom left leg includes from bottom to top, bicycle, basketball or "shoot it" as Riley says, pancakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse from Cozumel - cake cakes as he calls them, and an airplane up in the sky! The bottom right leg includes from bottom to top - Riley as Buzz Year going down a slide, Buzz Year!, another basketball, Lightening McQueen from Cars and of course BARNEY!! The picture in the middle of the bottom legs is 5 flags hanging on our hotel in Cozumel that Riley wanted to "Reach it" every time we walked by them! Then the right leg is Mommy, Daddy, B - his bear he sleeps with and his teacher Dina who he regularly calls me! :) But I'm not jealous because I want him to love his teacher that much!

Anyway - you can't see the details in these pictures, but you get the idea!

Now I just gotta figure out that special snack.....I'm thinking animal crackers or something "Toy Story" to go with his favorite things! I guess I have til Friday, so plenty of time! ha!

Speaking of - his favorites we'd would rank them in the following order:
#1 - BASKETBALL~ I was thinking the other day - there has not been ONE day go by that Riley has not dunked on that basketball goal since he got it for Christmas last year! Seriously! Not one day! And he still gets just as excited EVERY single day! There's a lot more commentary now though like ew, almost Mommy, missed it, made it, yea, shoot it, pass it, dunk it, etc. And if anyone is playing at the park, they always crack up that he says ew or awe when they miss it too.
#2 - Barney ~ He will grab the remotes and ask for Barney by name, and that's the ONLY 30 minutes of the day that he sits still! What more can you say?! Santa *may* bring Riley tickets to Barney Live in his stocking, so I can only imagine how exciting that outing will be!! Especially for Mom and Dad too! :)
#3 - Gotta be FWAGS! MOMMY! FWAGS! WOW! ~ Which is what I hear almost EVERY morning and afternoon the the way to and from school.

#4 - Eledents (followed by a trumpet eledent sound now)  ~ Elephants- LOVES them!
#5 - Monkeys ~ They are quickly moving in on the eledents!

I coming! I coming! Thank you!

Now when Kelly or I are driving home with Riley and the other parent is already home - Riley starts saying "Daddy/Mommy I coming!" to the parent at home! It's so sweet!

And now he's starting to understand "right back", so when I leave the room he says "Mommy back". 

And he says Thank you to you when you are supposed to stay Thank you to him! I guess b/c that's how his teacher's teach him.

He also covered his mouth the other day when he coughed, so obviously they are teaching him LOTS of things at school! It's so awesome to see them come to realization!

Oh yeah, the other day Kelly was driving Riley home and all of the sudden he counted to 13! I know our friend Nicolas was counting to 20 in both English and Chinese at his 2nd birthday, but neither Kelly or I have really worked on counting with Riley out side of how many flags do you see, or balls or this or that - one...two..three.., etc! So I feel bad for selling him so short! Ha!

He also all of the sudden sang his ABCs the other day, and Kelly and I just looked at each other like where did that come from?!

And he has to get a hug and a kiss anytime we hear the Barney I love you song! He gets really frustrated in the car when he's strapped into the car seat and can't give you one right then!

He is definitely talking up a STORM! Sometimes he still gets on a roll, and it all runs together. But I notice that when we watch videos of him, and he's talking in them - he talks back to himself on screen - so he knows exactly what he's saying! 

Ew! Ew! Ew! I'm really really mad!

OMG! All of the sudden Riley started singing this song from Barney today and marching around! Which is cool because that's what Barney teaches you - it's ok to be mad, but march or run around or do whatever you need to do to feel better. Then get over it! Kelly and I have no idea if he was "really really" mad or not, but it was adorable as usual!