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!!

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!