Play Date

A couple of weeks ago I took a Friday off and had a girl's day with Riley, well it turned out my girlfriend/neighbor was working at home so we planned a play date in the afternoon with Riley and her son, Owen, who is a month older than Riley. We took them down to the park down the street that has a little water area in the center during the summer. We tried to keep them away as long as possible from the water but it was inevitable, luckily it was a warmer afternoon (which we have had few of this summer). Riley did really well keeping her clothes dry until she slipped, fell backwards, popped up stunned, and well that was the end of dry Riley. It was really cute seeing Riley and Owen play together rather than in parallel. Riley would copy nearly everything that Owen did!

Here are some pictures that my friend sent:

And this is Elisabeth and my ultimate favorite photo of the day! Riley's face is priceless!

Hooky

Marc's company had a picnic on Friday and family was invited so we all played a little hooky (well not really, I got permission from my boss) and headed down to the South Bay for a good old fashioned company picnic. I worked at home in the morning and took off a little earlier than normal summer hours, we kept RiRi home from day care and headed on down mid morning. It was a great time! Riley made a new little friend, she's a little obsessed with babies right now, even though this baby at 8 months was nearly as big as her! Marc's co-workers wife brought bubbles so she was pretty cool in Riley's book!

After the picnic we headed to our favorite mall, Valley Fair, and did some shopping, mostly for RiRi of course. We topped the day off with dinner from my favorite place, Rubio's Fish Tacos.

A Little Birdie...

is eating all of our Cabernet grapes!!!

I'm Sure...

Dr. H would kill me for putting these shoes on Riley, but a girl has to have a little bit of fun!

Night Out

Saturday night my friend Lori had a birthday party in the city so we decided to get away for the night. My parents flew up and stayed with Riley and Marc and I got a hotel room in the city at the Mark Hopkins in Nob Hill. We went in early in the day before the party and went shopping, Marc made us park in Union Square where we always park and walk up to Nob Hill. This is what the hill looked like:

Looking down, half-way up:

Finally made it:

And this is why we drive the company car into the city (note, we're not parked here, we just thought this was ridiculous):

Work

Riley visited my work on Wednesday before her end of summer party, we were having a birthday celebration so my co-worker and I both brought in our kids for some cake (it was her birthday celebration). It was a party Wednesday for us! Her kids love Riley and it was a super cute coincidence that her daughter, Taylor, and Riley were wearing outfits from the same Gymboree line. :)
















Riley had a blast at the office, she even did the "watermelon dance" for everyone. When it was time to leave Riley walked around to everybody's office/cube and waved, said goodbye and blew everyone kisses.

Old Navy

Riley loves to go to Old Navy, first of all, she LOVES to wave hi to all of the "modelquines" that greet her each time she walks in. She also loves to pet the Old Navy dog and approaches him like she would any dog, with her hand out so that the "dogdog" can smell her and get to know her and then she says hi and pets him. It's pretty funny, I'm wondering when she's going to realize that they don't say hi back because they're not real and when she's going to realize the Old Navy dog is not soft like real dogs. But Riley also loves to go to Old Navy because she loves the little dance area back in the kids section. In fact, if we're stupid enough to go in without her stroller then she darts straight to the back. She doesn't care who else is on the dance floor, she just charges right in and dances her heart out, even with the big kids there.

It's the little things in life...

Sappy

Ok, I'm going to admit that this is totally super sappy but I've been wanting to do this for a while and I was never really inspired by a song to get it together and figure out how to make a "movie." I've been hearing this song by Bruno Mars on the radio a ton and it totally makes me think about Riley. It brings me back to her clubfoot days and how amazing she was (and how amazing the process of fixing her feet was) and still is about everything and how beautiful, inside and out, she is (I told you this was going to be sappy!). She just has a beautiful soul and this song sends me into lala land at work whenever I hear it. So I finally put it all together, starting with her clubfoot treatment and progressing up until now. Hope you don't get too bored but I did have fun doing it so there may be many more!

End Of Summer Party

Riley's day care had an end of the summer party last night from 5-7 so I decided we should check it out for a bit after work to break up our normal routine. It was mostly geared to the older kids but Riley had fun playing in the big kids' playground. Her class' playground is right next door so she can look through it during playground time and watch all the big kids, I know she wants to go over and play with them so she felt like hot stuff actually playing on their playground. They also had a jumpy house so Riley just HAD to check it out! There were a lot of big kids on it so I tried to keep her off by telling her that she had her shoes on so she couldn't go in, but she sat down and took her shoes off so that trick didn't work for too long. I was afraid once she was in I would never be able to get her out and I would be that person crawling in and trying to get her out. Fortunately I was able to trick her by telling her we needed to go home because Dadda was home, she said "Dadda!?!" and came close enough to the edge that I could grab her before she realized I had tricked her! I still have a few tricks that work! :)

I see a future filled with jumpy houses ahead of us!!!

Going,

Going,

Gone!

A Day At the Ball Park

Sunday we ventured to the city to go to the Giants/Padres game, we got the same seats that we had at the last game so we knew we would have tons of room so we were hopeful that it would be a good experience. Unfortunately, Riley has hit the challenging phase so it wasn't quite as enjoyable as last night but she did get into the game which was adorable. Every time the crowd cheered she would clap and scream "yeah" and she spent several minutes watching the game. The Giant's got seriously beat so the crowds enthusiasm waned very quickly which resulted in Riley losing interest, we then started walking. She was actually very good while walking and held my hand while we walked and used the other hand to wave "hi" to everyone and anyone who passed. Most exciting for me, I took my new camera and got to play with it at the stadium, in between juggling Riley and her snacks and whatever else she was getting into that is.

The Watermelon Dance

Riley was definitely challenging today, especially when it came to eating. She hardly ate lunch and wouldn't eat anything tonight for dinner but fruit, and when she did she would a take a bite of her fruit, and then do this little dance to go along with it...

She's darn lucky she's so cute!

Fuzzy Slippers

Riley LOVES shoes, she's a total girl. She's recently figured out how to put on her own shoes, she doesn't know how to put her socks on so it's quite the interesting process but she can officially remove and put back on her shoes. Riley particularly likes to try on my shoes, poor girl with my big dogs and her teeny tiny feet, she will never ever be able to borrow my shoes. She especially loves my fuzzy slippers, she puts them on and shuffles around the house, so when we ran to Carter's today I let her pick out her very own pair of fuzzy slippers. I gave her the choice of a pair of bear slippers or these pink kitty slippers and she chose these (good thing because they didn't have her size in the bear, but I thought they were super cute)! I'm sure they aren't orthopedic approved but oh well because she is darn cute in them and a Momma (and Riley) deserve to have some fun since we are vigilant about her night night shoes! And most importantly, Riley loves her fuzzy slippers!

19 Months

Yep, Riley's another month older so it's time for her monthly growth trend. She's in her PJs because today was "Pajama Day" at school!

Haircut

Riley got her second haircut this weekend. She actually did really well this go round, she sat still for the most part, which is very rare for Riley!

Pre-Haircut, looking kind of shaggy:

Almost done, looking like such a big girl!!! :(

T-R-O-U-B-L-E

I turn my back for a minute to check dinner and when I turn back around, this is what I find!

And when she realized that I caught her, she looked at me, shook her pointer finger at me and said "no,no,no." Take your own advice sister! :)

Chopsticks

We had Japanese the other night and to get her to eat her yakitori I fed her with my chopsticks. Well my chopsticks soon became Riley's chopsticks...

Play Date

Saturday evening Riley and I had a play date with our neighbor Shari and her son Ryan. We took the kids up to Blackhawk, an outdoor shopping center. There's a huge pond with tons of ducks and lots of restaurants around it it. We went over to the Mexican restaurant so the mommies could have some margaritas, the restaurant was right next to the pond so we sat on the patio and got a table right by the water so the kids could feed the ducks while we enjoyed our drinks and got some food to eat. The kids had a blast feeding the ducks. Every time Riley threw a piece of bread to a duck and it ate it she clapped and said "yay!" She was very proud of herself. This was also the first time that I have taken Riley out to dinner in a really long time, probably over a year, other than a few family dinners while we were on vacation. She actually did really well, I think having the ducks to look at and having her friend Ryan there made it that much more fun! And the Mommies had a great time chatting, enjoying their margaritas, and some yummy Mexican food!

Good times!

RiRi loves her baby!!!

Although we need to work on how she holds her!

Mmmmm, watermelon

We went to Red Robin for lunch on Saturday and Riley sure did enjoy the watermelon! She's never eaten watermelon off of the rind so she felt pretty cool eating off of the rind rather than having little chunks handed to her! She was a sticky mess, but she so enjoyed her watermelon!

Beach Day Turned Shenanigan Day

Sunday we decided to take Riley to the beach. Growing up in San Diego, the beach was an integral part of my summer so I've been very eager to introduce Riley and the beach. So we decided on Half Moon Bay so that we could swing by Stanford Mall on the way home and pick up some Sprinkles Cupcakes and then head down to Mountain View to grab some yummy Chef Chu's Chinese Food. On the way out to Half Moon Bay we stopped at Target in Foster City to grab some things. I was off looking at new Elmo DVDs for Riley because we were sick of watching the two that we had in the car and Marc was off doing who knows what. All of a sudden we meet up and he just has to show me something because it is a smoking deal. 45 minutes later, we have this at customer service waiting for us to pick up after the beach:

Can we say shenanigan? We paid for our small stuff and had customer service hold the BBQ so we didn't have to waste gas schlepping it over the mountains and around town. I will say I am slightly excited to have a gas BBQ, we've had a charcoal one since we've been together and they are just a pain. I can even fire up the grill on a week night for dinner now.

After we left Target we headed straight to the beach, well with a stop at an organic fruit stand that was packed and selling blueberries for $0.99, shenanigan #2 of the day. Then we headed to the beach, after driving around Half Moon Bay for a while, we finally stumbled across a State Beach and paid our $10 parking fee. We had a nice picnic up in the picnic area before heading down to the beach. We figured, Riley + Sand + Food would not make for an enjoyable meal. Now, it was pretty chilly at the beach, in the 5os, which, being a San Diego native is very foreign to me! We had Riley in a sweatsuit and I was in jeans and a sweatshirt so she didn't get to go in the water but we did have some fun in the sand. At first she was very cautious of the sand and actually wouldn't walk on it, she just crawled (we didn't go down to the wet sand so it probably was a bit odd to walk on for her in the soft sand), but I finally convinced her to try walking and she got it down. She loved picking up the sand and rubbing it in her hands and covering her feet with sand. I loved burying my feet in the warm sands on the beach when I was little and I totally had flashbacks watching Riley do the same thing, though I don't think the sand was quite as warm as my childhood sands. Riley also loved the waves crashing as they came to shore and we got lots of "oooos" watching them come in. All in all it was a great time, even if it was a bit chilly!!!

A sign of a good day, she was out cold before we even left the parking lot!

We headed to Stanford Mall and picked up some sheets that they had on hold for us at Pottery Barn Kids (a shenanigan from Saturday that carried over into Sunday) and then got our Sprinkles and headed to get Chinese food from Chef Chu's, our favorite! After Chinese food pick-up, shenanigan #3, a quick stop at Carter's. I had 15 minutes and I did good in those 15 minute! 2 sweatsuits, 2 sweatshirts and a pair of corduroy pants, not too bad for 15 minutes!

Then it was back to Target in Foster City to purchase and pick up the BBQ which required a reshuffling of our already packed SUV before heading back over the Bay and home to get ready for the week. Whew! Shenanigans really need to take place on Saturdays!!!