Skuut!

A few posts ago, we put up a video where Riley was "riding" her bicycle (aka her Skuut). In that video you could see how she (expectedly) struggled with her balance as she walked along. She also was scared to be on the bicycle without us and made us hold on to it. Even then, she only lasted about 10 seconds at the most.

Here are two videos that were taken this past weekend. What a huge difference a month makes! Riley is now extremely comfortable getting on the bicycle herself, and while at times she still wants us to hold on, as you can see she can walk along without us for good stretches at time. She can also regain her balance to stop herself from falling! Take a look.

AgFest

This past weekend we took the kids to the agricultural festival here in Salem. The kids could only last a couple of hours, but I could totally see going to this with an older kid. You could spend the entire day there, it was so big!

Here's Riley (and Jacob) on the pony rides. She had a blast! I love her little waves to people as she goes by. :)









Here's Riley (and Tygh and Jacob) checking out and petting some animals. She got to see llamas, goats, bunnies, sheep, cows, horses, pigs, and more! She did really well with all of the animals.









Of course with all there was to do, the kids had the most fun running through an empty alley way behind the back of a building and finding an empty sand lot to play in!

Birthday and a Song

Continuing with the birthday party theme (I know, I know, these are now a month old), here's some videos of her and Tygh at Chuck E. Cheese, riding a car together.





Not two posts ago we were saying how she could get most of the alphabet in any given attempt. Here's a video from just a couple of weeks later where she gleefully gets through the whole thing (and makes a lot of funny faces in the process!).

Happy Birthday, Riley!

Our little girl is 2 years old today!!! She has gotten so big and is talking so much, it's insane!

The theme of Riley's birthday presents this year is transportation. First up we got her a "Skuut" which is a bicycle with no pedals or chains. It moves "Flinstone"-style, where Riley walks the bicycle. The purpose of it is to teach balance which of course is really the hardest part of riding a bike. It'll be some time before she can do it on her own, but the bicycle "grows" as she gets older.




Riley loves it, and looks super cute with her helmet on. She actually just loves to walk around with the helmet on. Here she is with her helmet, my gloves, and her tea set (courtesy of her cousins Kate and Aiden). I think she was on her way to go feed her rocking horse, "Bubba." (You can see it in the picture there with a blanket on. Riley thought that Bubba was tired and had to take a nap.)



Next up is a tricycle. It's still a little hard for Riley to pedal by herself but as you'll see, she doesn't let that stop her.




Of course she loves it best when we just push her!




Finally, we got her some books, one of which is the Dr. Seuss book, "Go, Dog, Go!" Here she is with Cam reading the story for a 2nd straight time. She already knows so much of the story although this was only her 2nd time hearing it!

Some more cute moments

Those of you following Facebook will remember some frantic posts I made about a pizza-making catastrophe. I forgot I had this video of a midpoint in the process. Riley's a complete mess -- the powder you see on her face and hands is not actually powder -- it's rather thick and hard dough that's crusted on. It took a pretty massive effort in the bath to get it all off. :)





Here you see the result of Riley's decision to pretend that the asparagus that she was eating was an airplane. As expected, super cuteness ensued. :)

The Count

We knew that Riley knew how to count up to 3 - she had demonstrated that to us on several occasions. But we were floored when she started counting something last week (raisins, I think) and counted all the way up to 10! We've been trying to capture it on video for an entire week, and finally our determination paid off.

What's interesting is that we haven't spent that much time with her working on numbers. I mean, we've read stories about counting and maybe they do stuff in daycare. But I'd say the majority of our time has been working with her on letters and colors. Who knows - maybe math really does run in the family?

You'll have to really listen to hear Riley in this video - she starts off speaking very softly, but gets a little louder as the video goes on.

My little fashionista

Here's a video right before dinner tonight, which if you couldn't tell, was soup. I absolutely just loved the outfit that Riley had on, and even more so, how she made sure her hat was still on after she got up on her tower.

To summarize, Riley had on her pink hat (which she just absolutely had to have on); a bib with a dog on it (currently her favorite to walk around all day with it on); her nursing necklace which she was wearing Rambo style; and 1 of my slippers (and no, she did *not* want my other slipper, thank you very much).





How cute was her "I love you" at the end? :)

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Yay! We got snow! And not just any snow... good packing snow for snowmen! Woo-hoo! I haven't made a snowman in ages and ages (something to do with living in the desert for the past decade) so it was a lot of fun to make one. It was also a lot of fun to see Riley playing in the snow and trying to help us out with the construction (well at least for a little while).





Here are some cute pics of the event:

Conquering fears

For the longest time now, Riley has had a fear of vacuums. However, she has just recently started to conquer that fear, in part, because we are constantly asking her to help us when we need to use the vacuum. She especially loves to help us push the "big vacuum" while we are cleaning up after dinner (or better yet to take the extension arms and brush to clean off the chairs and couches).

Riley has also taken an interest in cleaning up the floors with our dustbuster (or the "little vacuum"). Here's a video of her hard at work. You'll see at the end her turning off the dustbuster. We're right now learning about opposites, and one set of those is "on/off." I think the video cuts out right before she says, "On! On! On!" about 15 times. :)

Self-sufficiency

Riley's just so proud of herself that we just had to share. It has *nothing* to do with the fact that Riley is the smartest child alive - promise. ;-).

Busy, busy - so much work to do!

So, there's *always* a debate around what parent a child looks most like. And while Riley is no exception, I think we can all agree that Riley is the spitting image of her Dad here.

Hop! Hop!

It's the wrong holiday I know, but Riley found the bunny ears that we had gotten her for Easter. I put them on my head yesterday and showed her how to hop like a bunny. So, this morning she came hopping down the hallway as I was putting her clothes away. How adorable!

Homemade Pants!

So, I got this wonderful sewing machine last year for Christmas from my in-laws, but haven't ever had any time to use it. Today started out as kind of "blah" day for me, so I thought I would break out my "new" sewing machine.

I didn't have any real aspirations of making anything, but I came across the The Frugal Family Fun blog and this neat idea of making a pair of toddler lounge pants out of a pillowcase. So, I found a pillowcase that reminded me of sweatpants and got to work.

Of course, it took me a while to familiarize myself with the sewing machine. I learned the basics of sewing when I was younger, but have never really done any sewing. So, this was all new to me!

I made the lounge pants (I made them a drawstring) using another pair of Riley's pants as a guide. I had a bit of trouble with the crotch and the stitching is crooked. They're also a tad too short on Riley - I mean they are just long enough. But, all those things aside... I did it! I made pants!!! :D

Here's a close-up of them:


And here's them on Riley:




Riley's been wearing the pants for the last 20 minutes or so, crawling in and out of things while doing so, and they haven't ripped yet. So, I think I can safely say this project has been a success! :D

Playdate Madness!

Yesterday Riley's friend Tygh came over to play and make some playdough. It took them a while to warm up to each other, but after they did, they really started to have fun. It was really neat to see Riley playing with, rather than alongside, another child.

Here's a cute video taken of the two of them. Sorry about the quality in some spots. Something happened with the youtube upload, but since it took forever to upload, I didn't feel like doing it again.




After Tygh left, Riley stood at the door for a few minutes saying, "Tygh? Tygh? Tygh?" We kept answering her (that Tygh had to go home to eat), but she wasn't buying what we were selling. :)

Vocabulary

Recently Riley's language development has really started to take off. She's been able to comprehend the meaning of words for a while now, but has generally seemed to be reluctant to try and say the words. It's like she wanted to be sure of her ability to say the word before she gave it a shot.

So, we're not sure if her recent explosion with trying new words is a result of an increase in confidence in her own ability or perhaps because of the strengthening of certain muscles in her mouth. Probably a little bit of both I'd imagine, among other things.

Here's a video that we took this morning. It's not too long as Riley really wanted to go outside, which by the way is a new word for her (only a day or two old). You'll also hear Riley's use of a 2 word phrase, which is also really new. At the moment she can really only say "Riley's xxx," "Daddy's yyy," or "Mommy's zzz," (where xxx, yyy, and zzz are variables). However, we think it's absolutely amazing. :)

Enjoy!

Spinny McSpinnerton

Baker's Riley

With the colder weather starting to settle in, a lot more baking is being done in the house. But much different from last year at this time, Riley is now very willing and eager to help out, which we just love. She can't do too much just yet, but she loves to pour the ingredients into the mixing bowl and stir them up.

Here's one of our first attempts - we were making cornbread. If you listen closely you'll hear Riley say 'more' and 'all done' while signing both phrases. I love the fact though that she still signs the words even though she can (and frequently does) say the words. Riley's signing is neat because she is constantly evolving her signs. For example, she used to sign 'more' with one hand flat and the other hand hitting it. It has now since become two fists that she bangs together.





Here we were making oatmeal and cranberry bars. Riley poured in all the dry ingredients and the egg... well most of the egg anyway. ;) Also, like a true baker, you'll see Riley pause to eat some of the ingredients (in this case, some of the cranberries). :)





While I was helping Riley stir up the batter for the oatmeal and cranberry bars, I had used her white teaspoon (seen in the video) to scrape some of the batter off of my spatula. Seeing me do this, Riley proceeded to take my spatula and use that to scrape off the batter from her teaspoon. Precious!

Wordless Wednesday

Killing Time

We needed something to do this morning, so when Riley came up to me carrying one of last night's now-defunct-as-a-decorational-device pumpkins, inspiration struck. She was back and forth between thinking the process was the most fun thing ever and completely gross.







Here's the pre-cooked version, half with salt, and half with salt+garlic. Here's hoping!

Trick-or-Treat!

For Halloween this year, we decided to dress Riley up as a witch. We originally were going to have her be a bumblebee. We had the costume from last year; it still fit and she only wore it for about a total of 2 minutes. But... we have this cute little broom that Riley loves to carry with her everywhere. She also has this nice black coat that she got from her cousin Kate, and she's just really started to be able to wear it. So, we went out to Value Village today, got a witch's hat for about $2, and voila! Riley's got a Halloween costume!

This year we decided that Riley could handle going out to a few houses. Cam's folks had come down so they could see Riley in her outfit. So, they gave out candy while we took Riley to some of our neighbors. She went to 5 houses, and she did great! She loved picking out a piece of candy to put in her pumpkin bucket. She also loved walking down the street with her broom between her legs, just like a little witch! We live on a cul-de-sac, so it was nice that we didn't have to worry too much about cars and just let Riley walk home with her broom and bucket.

Apparently Riley loved getting candy so much that when she got home, she found the bowl of candy that we had to give out and started putting some in her own bucket!

As a cap to Riley's exciting evening, we drove over to the director of Riley's day care so she could see Riley. Instead of giving out candy, she gave Riley a new toy! She did this for every one of her day care kids that came by, which was so sweet! It was supposed to be Riley's choice what she got, but Mommy (with Daddy's help) vetoed the choice of a little baby that opened/closed her eyes. I just figured that after about 2 days, Riley would get bored with the doll. So, we got a puzzle with lots of different animals on them.

Here's a slideshow of some of the good pictures of the night. We would have taken a video, but it was getting dark and we weren't really getting good videos that you could see anything in. One of my favorite shots is the last one... you could tell how tired Riley after all the excitement!