A Week of Boo-Boos and Take Out Toys!

So our little rumbling stumbling man is earning his stripes with boo-boo after boo-boo! Right now he has a bruise in the middle of his cheek - I have NO idea how he even got that one! And one on his forehead. That one wasn't a very hard boo-boo, but it must have hit perfectly on a vein or something b/c it bruised almost immediately. He also still has a little bruise under his chin from when my Dad & Shelia were here. He's our little bruiser!! I'd say we average a spill at least once every hour-ish all day every day. Kelly's much better at "distracting" him out of his meltdown from a boo-boo than I am! But we've seen our fair share of crocodile tears since the walking began!

For the take out toys....it just goes to show you never know what he's going to be drawn to. It's always the most random things! This week it was a Taco Bell side of rice bowl and lid. He literally carried it around the house holding it over his head, then dropping it and laughing hysterically for over an hour!! Then today it was a to go cup, lid and straw from Firehouse. First he just wanted to mimic me and "drink" from the straw - which meant him biting on it. Once I drank it all, I showed him how to take the straw out and put it back in, so he sat by me on the sofa for again over an hour which is UNHEARD of and played with the cup, lid and straw!! He never sits still for more than the blink of an eye! If that!

He's also learning body parts - mainly nose, ear, etc. He'll point to yours and grab or touch his own.

He's also going crazy with the sign language! It was HILARIOUS today! We were at the grocery store, and when the cashier picked the milk up out of the basket - he did the sign for milk then more! We were cracking up! I need to expand the sign language while he's "in the zone" with it right now! And he's SUCH a flirt! The cashier at the grocery store was like he's working me over talking to me with those eyes and flashing those rosy cheeks at me!

For 2 weeks, we have a new weekend routine (while the weather cooperates - 75 degrees and sunny). We've been meeting my friend Darcy at Lake Grapevine with her dog Rocky to go for a 4.5 mile walk. I think since I've walked with him in the stroller since he was literally 1 week old - he still loves it. It's like his "zen" time to just hang and enjoy the ride. I better enjoy it while I can. I know eventually he'll want to be walking everywhere on his own.

He's still jibber jabbering like crazy too! But now more and more, he actually says words or at least "parts of words". Like today when I said, here's your cheese - he said "eese". At the grocery store, he was looking at the apples, so Kelly said "apple" and he actually repeated it back. The other day he was watching his "Your Baby Can Read" video, and the video said say "No" and he did! It was so funny b/c Kelly and I were standing in the kitchen and we both snapped our heads and looked at each and said at the same time - "Did you hear that?! He said NO!". Of course, I'm cool with him not learning the meaning of that word for a really long time! :)

I've been really surprised he isn't saying more words that we use every day like milk, more, kiss, etc but who am I to speculate how a new little mind forms?! It's like his 1st word besides Mama and Dada being bubbles of all things!!! Which he still says at least every few nights in the bathtub when he wants me to blow bubbles.

Well...I think that's about it for this week!

Another Week in the Life of Riley

What Riley's up to these days....this weekend he's been fighting yet another cold! Ugh! No fever, but he's got a constant runny nose and cough. I keep thinking he's going to wake up each night sick, but he hasn't yet. I'm taking a vacation day tomorrow, so I hope he doesn't end up ill on our day off together! Right now with all the illness he's had in the last month, I can't imagine day care being much worse! It seems like every time he gets over something, the next thing moves in! I guess it's just a right of passage.

One of his new things this week is finger pointing. He's constantly pointing and jabbering like you understand what he's saying. If there's a lack of an object to point at, he just points to the sky and jabbers along. I can now anticipate the phase of him becoming frustrated that he can't communication what he wants/needs to you. There's already a hint of it.

His 1st sign and most frequently used is the sign for milk, and now it is becoming the "go to" sign. If he's excited about something - sign for milk. If he's drinking his milk, he'll be making the sign for milk with his other hand. If he's "all done", he'll make the sign for milk...then it will slowly transition into the "all done" sign. It's like he knows we understand that sign, so he wants to use it for everything! We need to start working on more signs now that he's more receptive. I was teaching him to point at the yogurt bites then give me the sign for "more" the other day, and he got that pretty quickly. But I don't know if he would do it again on his own.

Walking Walking & More Walking...now that he's taken those first 2 steps...that's all he does. He just walks around and around our house - lugging our shoes, his balls, a book - whatever. But he'll continuously do laps around our kitchen bar. It never gets old.

He's also started to learn how to get off the sofa. I showed him how to back off by putting his feet down, and to my surprise - I caught him getting one of his balls off the sofa and "backing" off of it. But if he's focused on something else - he'll still just walk right off it you don't watch him!

He's also started mimicking us more and more this week. If he picks up my iPhone, he puts it to the back of his head and starts jabbering as if he's talking on it. The other night I was fixing his hair, and he picked up his comb and started combing his hair. And he's all about drinking out of whatever "big person" glass you are drinking out of. He'll walk up and smack his lips, lick them then open his mouth for a drink.

I can't remember what he did the other morning, but I remember saying to him - you may be a little OCD after all. We'll have to train your Daddy to be like us! ha! ;) Then 2 days later Emily told me that he was exhibiting the same behavior at her house. She said she noticed him shutting her pantry doors, so she went behind him and opened one of them - and he circled right back behind her and closed it. Then he was in Rowan & Camden's room, and he closed their closet door and pushed some of their drawers closed too. It's probably just more of his mimicking us, but it's cute! And it gives me hope, he'll be trainable! ha! Just kidding! I was telling Kelly we need to start letting him be part of picking up his toys each night. Right now we just pick them all up after he goes to bed, so our house is "straightened up" from about 8pm to 9am every day. The rest of the time, it looks like a 15 month old child lives here. I'm all about it being his domain and him having the freedom to explore and do what he wants within reason. It's his house too! We just try to make it as child friendly as possible.

Rumbling Stumbling!!!

So as of Wed, Oct 21st Riley is officially walking! Well...he's still rumbling stumbling but close enough!!

Kelly got this video of his 1st pass almost all the way from the living room to kitchen! He....could....go....all...the....way....as Chris Berman on ESPN would say!



Notice the 2 drawers pulled open, those are Riley's favorite toys right now! He pulls things out of them and puts things in them ALL DAY LONG! If you can't find something, that's the 1st place you look!

Playing catch up once again!

Wow! It's been soooooo long I'm not even sure where to begin to try to catch up with this post! My work life has been sooooo crazy that only people in the tech field can begin to understand the crazy stress and hours I've been having to put in lately! We're talking 20ish hour days - literally I was working with a team from Brazil until 6am almost every day for a couple of weeks straight, a couple of 40 - yes - you read that correctly 40 straight hour days! I wan't working all 40 hours, but I was awake all of them! The good news in all of this is that we only do a project this complex once a decade! And we pulled it off! We delivered the project without having to rollback to the old system! And to be honest, with minimal issues. We had some craziness last weekend, but hopefully that won't happen again! And my life will probably be a little unpredictible for the next couple of months until everyone gets accustomed to the new system and it stabilizes. Needless to say, that's why I haven't even had a chance to blog in my head lately...much less actually blog!

I'll just do a brain dump of all the things I can recall from the last month or so:

• Riley's still only taking a few steps at a time, and sometimes a few days apart. The funny thing is that he does it the hardest way possible. He'll be walking on his knees, then stand up in the middle of the floor (which is HARD) without the assistance of any furniture or anything. Take a few steps. Then we get excited and he realizes what he's doing and plops down! I keep thinking any day now, but I've been thinking that for a while! It's all good though! Kelly and I literally have to RUN after him because he crawls so fast - I can't imagine what it'll be like once he gets walking/running down!
  
• He can also do full squats! Seriously...like REAL squats without assistance! And sometimes like 3-5 in a row before he loses his balance.
  
• He STILL dances! OMG! It's so funny! And he'll dance to me snapping my fingers and Kelly beat boxing! It doesn't even have to be "real" music!
  
• He still has these favorite songs on his Kindermusik cd's, and when they come on in the car - he gets the BIGGEST smile on his face as if he's saying OMG! It's my favorite song! And I mean EVERY time! Like even if I just replay the song immediately again - still the same smile as if it's the 1st time he's heard it in a long time.
  
• He FINALLY mastered putting a ball in the "rain spout" on his play house, and he turns to us claps and dances every time he does it! This one took a while! He'd try to put the ball in every slot exept the one that was big enough. But once he finally figured it out, GAME ON!
  
• His FAVORITE pasttime currently is emptying out the cabinets, drawers and pantry door shelves in the kitchen. There will be plastic bowls, his own sippy cups and our protein bars lying all over our floor at any given moment! Kelly joked the other day - like who runs this place?! Obviously not us anymore!
  
• He LOVES books! It started out with me reading his nighttime books mainly, and we progessed to him "closing the book" at the end, then him turning each page as we read it. And now he has a book in his crib he "reads" on his own when he wakes up in the am, and he has books out on the coffee table that he "reads" often throughout the day. I brought a new Halloween book home last Monday - Five Little Pumpkins - and it's already WORN out! He LOVES that book! It was ALL he played with for 2 days! And if you say "Five Little Pumpkins", he'll run to it and start turning the pages. I know it by heart now after reading it so many times, so if I say what's on one of the pages - he'll open it to that page.
• He's still a little HOSS! He pushes all sorts of things all over our house! Around and around and around the kitchen island. His push car, boxes, a dump truck he has, a music table, plastic bowls and lids around and around, a Little People airplane - whatever he can find.
  
• He's the opposite of me. He has a puzzle Josh, Nancy & Ethan got him for his birthday. I'll put the pieces in the puzzle...and it will bother him until he gets them all out! He HATES for them to be in the puzzle! Same thing with these wooden blocks Gigi got him. I'll put them all in their little holder, and he will grab it and dump them out! Cracks me up!
  
• Riley's 1st weekend trip to Gigi's went well. She kept him while Kelly and I went to Pittsburgh for the Steelers game. He didn't even miss us until the last night when my Mom brought him back to our house. It was so cute one night when Kelly and I called. I could hear my Mom, sister and Grandmother laughing so hard at him their stomachs were hurting. My thought as I heard that was - that's how it's supposed to be! Children are supposed to bring joy into everyone's life that they touch! It was so sweet! He got to see my Grandpa, Aunts and Uncles that weekend as well as his Grandpa. Actually..I'm not sure I know what my Dad wants to be called. I guess I need to ask him that! Some of them hadn't seen him since his birthday....I can't imagine how different he seems when you go that long! Kelly and I could tell he had changed and grown just over the 3 days we were gone!
  
• He's definitely got the baby sign for "milk" down, and he lets you know when he wants some while you're feeding him or at bed time. Emily and I KNOW the other signs are in there...just don't know when he'll break them out and start using them! I guess when he needs them.
  
• Emily said as of last week when she takes a toy away from him because it's lunch or nap time, he starts screaming! I believe it! That boy has some LUNGS! OMG! Sometimes I know dogs walking outside are just dropping left and right when he gets going exercising those lungs! It's PAINFUL!
• He can climb on the sofa in 2 steps. Hasn't quite mastered getting off the sofa though!
  
• He started this thing where he chews his food up then spits it out...YUCK! But I think that was like a week long phase that appears to be over now. The only time he does it now is when he's "all done" and he usually waves his arms back and forth at the same time to indicate he's all done.
• He's been cutting his back molars the last month, so that's no fun! At least he can strategically place his own fingers in there as teethers now, so that helps a little.
  
• One of his FAVORITE games is "I'm gonna get you". He loves for you to say you're gonna get him (tickle him), and he'll scream and move like he's trying to get away even though he's not going anywhere. Or he'll crawl away from you as fast as he can! He plays it even when you don't mean to play it!! If Kelly or I are walking up/down the stairs with him, and the other one of us is behind - Riley will almost "run" out of your arms thinking the other person is going to "get him". The other day the dr was trying to put her stethoscope to his back and he was trying to get away from her and screaming like we were playing that game. I don't think she She didn't know what to think about that.
  
• Speaking of Dr....that one deserves it's own post, so I'll do that next!
  

Wow! I'm worn out! I think that's at least the highlights of the last month! Hopefully I can get back on my regular blog schedule now!

Two Steps!!

So I get a text from Kelly while I'm at work today...You better hurry home! Your son just took 2 steps! Luckily, he was still doing the "2 step" when I got home!

He almost runs around the house pushing his little car around too! And he finally figured out this week, that if he runs it into something where it won't go forward anymore. He'll walk around to the other side of it and back it out and start going again. Before he would just cry until you came over and got him going again.

So stay tuned to see how long it takes him to get this walking thing down...as fast as he crawls...I have NO idea how Kelly and I are going to keep up with him when he starts walking...and I don't even want to think about running!