January 2009

Fun Facts about Riley:

1.) Riley still loves her some slides. I remember putting her on one when she was around 12 months and the look of excitement & adrenaline. I also remember her walking right off the slide (not understanding the part of sitting down) around that same time. The fear I felt as she fell forward and hit her head on the side of the slide. I was so mad at Chris for not catching her. He always gives her so much room to try things...I hope he never stops. He said to me "That's how she will learn" as he stood next to the sign that read "For Children Ages 5-12 years". He's the dad and I'm the mom. I always want to be close enough to catch her and he always knows she will be fine. Anyway, at 26 months she still loves the slide.

2.) Riley's second love right now is the potty. Yes, I guess you could say we are potty training her. Or she is potty training us. I'm not sure which. From about May until December Riley liked the potty. She was very fascinated with it and would like to go on pretty much everyday, sometimes multiple times. She didn't do anything on it, but enjoyed hanging out there, reading a book or even singing a song. We didn't want to discourage this, though sometimes we had better things to do than spend 20 minutes sitting in the bathroom (I'm sure this is hard for all the men out there to understand). Anyway, in December Riley got the flu and she and I were home together one Friday. I had to go to the bathroom and when I came out she said "I have to go potty too." I started to say "yeah, right" and then thought..."ok, what's the harm? Take the kid to the potty if that's what she wants." So we go over there and what do you know she pees on the potty. I will admit I jumped up and down and quickly called Chris with my amazing story. She had gone once before earlier in the month, but I'm pretty sure that was an accident on her part and good timing on mine. But this time it was very intentional (I won't go into specifics b/c that would be going overboard I think) So after the flu incident we threw it out there as an option for her (to go on the potty), but continued to let it be her call. Then we left for vacation. After returning from vacation we had one more joyous event like the flu one while I was making dinner on a Monday night. And then nothing for a while. The story can drag on forever, but basically she learned to pull her diaper on and off like underwear and loved this. She would like nothing better than to go into the bathroom 100 times a day, take off her pants, pull down her diaper (calling it underwear) and climb onto the potty, ask for privacy, declare herself done, flush, wash her hands and repeat. Which at home is sometimes fine, but was driving her daycare teacher a little insane. So...we decided to give underwear a try on the weekend. We let her know it came with a big responsibility that she had to pee on the potty. She was motivated. So over the weekend she started peeing on the potty. A lot. At our house, at our friends house, with the babysitter. But don't ask her about pooping on the potty...she is appalled by the suggestion. Instead, she'd rather get up, run to a corner in an unoccupied room and yell "Privacy, Privacy". Then ask you to change her diaper. Seems logical and efficient to me.

3.) Riley keeps growing up. Profound I know. She keeps changing never to go back. First she stopped saying wa-wa. And then she started saying 4 when counting from 1 to 10. Now she has started to enunciate her L-M-N-O-P when saying the alphabet rather than blurring it out and she is remembering T comes after S instead of W-V.

4.) Riley seems to be getting the idea that a baby is on the way. However, she doesn't seem to understand that her little sister is going to be living here in her house. She keeps talking about going to her little sister's house.

5.) Chris finished painting Riley's "big girl room" and we have the bedding. We are still making final decisions on her furniture, but I think its ok b/c we want to leave her bed on the floor for a while until she gets used to it. She hasn't started sleeping in there yet, but we are thinking of giving it a try in the next few weeks. She likes to get in the bed and pretend like she is going to sleep so hopefully its a smooth transition to really sleeping in there.

6.) Riley likes singing Ring around the Roses, but instead of saying pocket full of posies she says "popcorn, popcorn, ashes, ashes we all fall down."

7.) She really enjoys counting. She can pretty easily count from 1-10, but then starts going random 10-13-17-5. She has started including 4 now.

8.) She still mostly calls us Mommy & Daddy, but for the past month or so she has also referred to us as Mom & Dad. What?! I am so not ready for that. She will say "Where's my dad?" or "My Mom is at work".

9.) Update on #2. She is making great strides on the potty and is already past the whole running into the other room.

10.) Update on #6...I think the day after I wrote about popcorn she started singing "Pocket full of posies". She absolutely loves the Ring around the Roses song and sings it loudly all day long and when winding down in her crib.

11.) She is starting to learn how to spell her name and loves playing with letters. She also like singing the days of the week. It goes something like this Sunday-Monday, Tuesday-Wednesday, Saturday and then click-click of the tongue. Yes, I realize she skips Thurs & Friday. When I try to suggest to her that these two days need to be added to the song, she kindly tells me "No Mommy, that's not how you do it."

12.) She knows another song that is helping with days of the week. This one goes "It is Monday. It is Monday. All day long. All day long. Yesterday was Sunday. Tomorrow is Monday. Oh what fun!" Again, I have tried to explain that if it is Monday tomorrow cannot be Monday. Again she kindly explains "That is not how you do it." Its great b/c she totally tells me that with this huge grin on her face like she thinks I'm just messing with her.

13.) I think this kid is potty trained (2/9/2009). We have been doing the whole underwear thing (she loves underwear) and we had one accident in the beginning and then nothing since. We even sent her to school/daycare in underwear today and much to my surprise she didn't have any accidents. Is this possible? Should I expect this to wear off? Am I jinxing myself by writing this / saying it aloud?

14.) I'm pretty sure I'm raising my sister's kid. She wants to use the potty everywhere we go...restaurants, target, friend's house, her new daycare. In fact, today was her first day at a new daycare/school. Before I left we had to go in the potty together. I mention my sister b/c we all used to joke that she was writing a book about rest area bathrooms...she used to like to stop at every one on roadtrips.

15.) Tonight on our drive home she must have been practicing her greetings. In the back seat I hear her..."Hi Kevin. Nice to meet you Kevin." "Hi Sarah. Nice to meet you Sarah." And so on. I'm not sure where she gets these manners, but I'll take credit if I can.

16.) She did decide to sleep in her big girl bed a few weeks ago. It went really well for 5 or 6 nights (as long as Mommy put her night-night). but then she decided she wanted to sleep in her "baby crib" again . We haven't really tried to reintroduce it since then...Chris & I have both been traveling and figure maybe we'd wait until that was done.

Alright that's it for now (this update has been written over a few weeks...Chris and I are amazed at the changes in that short amount of time).

December: http://picasaweb.google.com/pschwalje/Dec2008?authkey=k8TUgBMitXM#

January: http://picasaweb.google.com/pschwalje/Jan2009?authkey=fW6FwvuMrFw#