One, two, three, JUMP!

Riley's new favorite game! She can say the number one and now anytime she wants you to count to three so she can jump she comes up to and says "One.........". Man, she's cute!!

Sneaking a Grape

In the previous post you'll see that there are grapes on Riley's highchair. Riley thinks it's hilarious to throw food at the dogs. Especially Callie who catches it. We usually put the dogs outside when she eats but occasionally weather doesn't permit that or we just forget. The previous pictures was taken (in the highchair) right after Daddy told Riley to quit throwing the grapes. That's why she was smiling the way she was. She always smiles like that with her fingers to her mouth in an effort to make us weak. It works. Daddy was busy taking her picture to send to me and he didn't notice Brown sneak off under a table. When he finally found her he snapped a picture of her too.

Update- We do know that grapes are very bad for dogs and will do our best to keep those away from the puppies. I know they've eaten a few because we sometimes don't see where the food has landed. Riley loves grapes so it's pretty rare that she shares them with the dogs.

20 Months Old!

Where did the time go??? Baby is 20 months old today. She has learned so many new things....it's really depressing for Mommy and Daddy. She says cheese, shoes, bubbles, ball, bye-bye, juice, night night, all done, Barney and many more words that I can't even think of right now. When she's hungry she stands by her highchair, when she's thirsty she helps her self to items in the fridge, when she feels like playing she yanks Brown's ears and when she's ready for bed she says "Go night night" and goes to her crib. It's all too much!!! Just this week she started walking down the steps facing forward like a normal little girl. What's that all about? I preferred her sliding down on her tummy. For one, it's much safer and two, she's just a baby!! I must say that even though it's hard to watch her growing so fast...she is so much fun right now. Our favorite thing to do is watch her when she doesn't know we are. She's so curious and inspects everything with great detail. She moves things all around and then back again. She dances and claps her hands to music (which is my favorite) and we will hide behind corners to watch her at work when she doesn't know we're there. I can understand why it takes a while to want another one once you've had your first child. It goes by so fast that you feel like you need another one so you can see it all over again.

Most Fun Day EVER!

Drinking out of a bottle like a big girl

Braving the elements

Following Taylor into the water

She did this every time she went under the sprayers

At the picnic

Riley probably had the best day she has ever had on Saturday! We went to a park in Northtown and had a picnic while Riley played in a little spray park. My Mom, my sister, Leslie, and Taylor all went with the Baby. She loved the picnic and spent most of the time pushing her stroller with her baby around the grass. After that we went to the Gladstone pool which was a Baby's dream land for Riley! She ran through all the sprayers and had a blast watching Taylor play in the water. There was a zero entry pool so she could walk around in the water all by herself. She had so much fun walking back and forth between Grammi and I in the shallow water. She liked to step up on the steps and jump off. She is not afraid at all of the water. She fell in the water several times and went completely under. She would just bounce right back up and keep playing. After about an hour she was brave enough to follow Taylor into the sprayers. She figured out that she could turn around and back into them and not get the water all in her face. She doesn't mind the water but she doesn't know to hold her breath yet so she came up with her own way to get under or in the water without getting her face sprayed too much. I was so proud of her! We stayed for over 2 hours before I started seeing the signs that it was time to call it a day. Needless to say, the Baby had no trouble going down for a nap!

Yes, I'm a HUGE Michael Jackson fan!

I'm sure this post will likely open me up to some ridicule, but I don't care. This is completely unrelated to Riley, but I feel obligated to say that I am deeply saddened by the loss of Micheal Jackson. My first cassette tape was MJ's "Off the Wall" and I spent hours sitting in my room singing every single song. I listened to it so many times I had to ask for it again for a birthday gift because I had warped the first copy. One of my fondest memories as a child was getting to watch the making of "Thriller". It didn't come on until midnight and my Mom made my sister and I go to bed and then woke us up at 11:50 so we could watch it. I thought it was the single best creation of a song I had ever heard. I asked for the album for my birthday...again and listened to it nonstop. From then on I was a a die hard MJ fan. I watched all his videos and bought all his tapes/albums/CD's. I sat glued to the TV when he preformed is famous moon walk on the Music Awards to Billie Jean. My very first concert was the "Bad" tour when I was 10 years old. I saw it at Kemper Arena and I'll never forget that night. It was hysteria at the show but it was so AMAZING!!! I still remember being so shocked that my Mom spent $25 on tickets. We had the 19th row!!! She bought four tickets and my sister and I couldn't believe that she spent so much money for us to see it. Little did we know that we would never see those kind of ticket prices again!! I will always enjoy his music and I will continue to be a fan forever. I can't wait to dance in the living room with Riley to his "Greatest Hits" CD! Riley clearly has music and dance in her blood and I know that she will also appreciate Michael for his amazing music.

Happy 4th of July

We had a great 4th of July this year. We went to my Mom and Don's house and had a cook out. Riley had a great time. She pushed her baby around for the first half of the evening and spent the 2nd half eating junk food. She must have eaten her weight in chips and crackers! The fireworks didn't scare her at all. In fact, she barely even noticed them. Every once in a while when one was really loud she would look up from her stroller or chips and that was it. She didn't seem to care much. She stayed up late and hung out with the big kids for as long as she could. We finally called it a night a 10 o'clock. She crashed without a peep. Luckily it didn't rain and we were able to shoot off all the fireworks.

We hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July! Thanks Mom and Don for preparing us all a good meal and giving us a comfortable place to sleep!