San Diego

We headed down to San Diego last Thursday for a quick trip to see my parents and also because my friend Jen (aka Woody) was in town from Indiana with her family.  I had not yet met her son, Brady yet (who will be 1 next month) because I was too pregnant with Jacob to travel when he was born, she hadn't met Jacob yet and her daughter Annabel is about a year older than Riley so we couldn't wait to get the girls together and then to have the boys hang out together.  We met them at Sea World and we had a great day, the girls got along great and the boys were as cute as can be and the adults got to catch up and hang out.  I love that 11 1/2 years (man when did I get old???) after graduating college my girls and I are still as tight as ever and we still see each other, though not as frequently as I would like! 

Here are some pictures of the day, as luck would have it, both Annabel and Riley like dolphins and princesses so the dolphin show was a huge hit as was the dolphin encounter.  Even Jacob was interested in the dolphin show, I actually think it's one of the best shows at Sea World, there is a ton of action from the dolphins and whales, plus the storyline isn't super cheesy!  The shamu show was sort of a bummer and poor Riley was too short to do the big kid stuff in the play area but too old to do the little kids stuff, if only she was a little bit taller!  We had an awesome day though and it was awesome to see Woody and the family!

Me and my happy boy!

Believe it or not this is the best picture I got of the girls together

So excited about the dolphin show

Woody and Annabel

I took this picture because Jacob was eating the last time that he went to the dolphin show

Nate and the girls

Dolphin!

The prince and princess from the dolphin show came out after the show and let the girls take a picture with them

So excited!

Dolphin, up close and personal

My handsome pants

Riley teaching Jacob a lesson

Shamu

This is when we got back on Saturday night and Riley refused to go to bed, she fell asleep at 10:00 on the couch

What Does a 3 1/2 Year Old Pack When Given the Opportunity?

So I took Riley out 2 weekends ago to run some errands and Marc stayed home with Jacob (he had the hand/foot/mouth so we split up the errands).  We had to go to Babies R Us and while we were there Riley saw a princess rolling backpack.  Well she's obsessed with a) backpacks (actually any sort of bag) b) rolling suitcases/bags, and c) princesses so it was like the best thing ever for her.  She had some gift cards to Babies R Us and Target left over from her birthday so I told her that she could buy it with her own money.  The girl was as excited as could be, between the gift cards and earning her allowance I think she's finally understanding that you don't just get stuff.  I told her she could use it for our trip to San Diego later that week and she asked if she could pack her toys in it, I told her she could fill it up with whatever toys that she wanted and this is what she chose.

Yep, that's a ZhuZhu pet, some Disney figures, a car, a puzzle, lipstick (naturally, a lady never leaves the house without her lipstick) and a foam ear of corn.  Yes, you read that correct, Riley packed a foam ear of corn.  I wonder what TSA thought as her bag went through the xray machine and they examined a foam ear of corn?

Big Girl Room

So I'm completely behind the times but between vacation last week and the fact that my daughter will no longer sleep (see paragraph below) I've had zero time to upload photos from my camera to my computer, let alone blog about it.  Thank goodness for work at home days and the fact that I need a break from the 8 hours of web trainings that I have been completing today. 

Marc is on a 2 week leave, he was asked to take 2 furlough weeks in the last quarter and since he hasn't used up his paid family leave from Jacob's birth he decided to use two weeks to kill both birds with one stone (and get paid a little too).  He has quite the "honey do" list.  His first project since Jacob has started crawling was to get the queen size bed out of Jacob's room.  At first we were just going to give it away but then my sister-in-law gave us the idea of just giving it to Riley.  Jacob's crib doesn't convert, or at least we don't think it does so he would eventually need a toddler bed so we decided to do a furniture swap and give Riley the queen size bed and move all of the nursery furniture to Jacob's room.  Riley was excited about the prospect of having a bed just like Mommy and Daddy's and I was hoping it would help with her sleeping. 

As of about 2 weeks ago, she refuses to go to bed.  She begs me to stay with her, have a slumber party, let her sleep in my room because she doesn't want to be alone.  Up until about 3 nights ago she screams, kicks, pounds but we decided to just leave the door open and ignore her so now she just walks out of her room and plants herself on the couch and we go about our business. I think she thought we have this big party when she goes to bed and I think she was disappointed to find that we sit on the couch, I pump, and then I go to bed.  It's pretty uneventful.  In fact the past 2 nights I have gone to bed before her.  She finally gets into bed when I get into bed but then pulls me out to take her to go potty and to tuck her in where she tries one last effort of manipulating me into staying.  This morning she woke me up at 3:40 and told me that she wanted to come in bed with me to sleep, she was promptly told to go back to her room and go to sleep, it took a few minutes and there were a few tears but she eventually went.  I went to check on her at 4AM and she was flushing the toilet so I ran back to bed and 15 minutes later I went to check on her and she was fast asleep in bed.  I on the other hand was pretty much up the rest of the night/morning.  Perhaps I should have done my pictures/blogging then, that seems to be the only hour of the day that I get alone time.  Day care says she's testing her boundaries and independence, I say we have a behavioral issue and have an appointment with our pediatrician next week to discuss with her, I have emailed her and she says it's not uncommon at this age but seriously, I am over it.  I have had no break in months because she also refuses to nap or even do quiet time, in fact Sunday she screamed for 3 hours straight and it was so bad I packed up Jacob and left the house before I did or said something to her that I would regret.  Of course even though she insisted she wasn't tired she fell asleep on the couch at 4:00PM which didn't help the bedtime routine at all. Again, day care says she knows what buttons to press to get us upset and that's what she's doing but it has got to stop.  And I would read books on it but, oh yeah, I have no free time, because between this little thing I call a job and Riley not sleeping I have no time to read a parenting book.  

Anyway, here are some pictures of her new big girl room and her new big girl bedding. 

Naturally we went with an owl theme, I have an owl decal (that I bought years ago and never hung up) that we need to try to hang up still but I love the bedding.  It must have been meant to be too because not only was the bedding on sale but I received a coupon for 15% off AND our Pottery Barn Kids had all of the bedding in stock so I didn't even have to pay shipping.  It was fate!  Now if only my daughter would voluntarily sleep on it!

8 Months Old

I know that I say this every month, but I seriously can't believe how fast time is flying with Jacob!  I truly can not believe that he is 8 months old already.  The biggest development this month: CRAWLING!  Yep, little man is a full blown crawler as of about a week and a half ago.  He has even gotten confident enough to make his way into the kitchen, yep, life as we know it is officially over as we now have 2 mobile kids.  Agh!!!  Poor Jacob was the lucky recipient of Hand-Foot-Mouth Disease on his 8 month birthday so he was a hot mess all weekend.  It started Friday night with the onset of the fever.  Feverish all day Saturday with lots of drool followed by not being able to eat on Sunday (his 8 month birthday) and lots of discomfort.  I selfishly enjoyed all of the cuddles but not seeing my baby boy so miserable.  Hopefully we're on the upswing!  Now that Jacob can crawl, he loves going after his sister's toys, his sisters food, and anything that he can get his hands on.  He's ll boy and is going to be lots of trouble!  We finally got the bed out of his room (his sister scored that-more on her real big girl room later) and now need to work on putting the gate back up but Jacob is loving being able to move around his room!

Uncle, Aunt Lauren and Cousin Daniel also came to visit on Jacob's 8 month birthday, I got some cute photos of the kids together that I will post once the adoption is complete and I'm allowed to.  I'm busting to share because not only is my nephew adorable but he and Riley love playing together and get along great!  He'll be 3 in November so he's just under a year younger than Riley and they get along perfectly, it's so much fun!  Jacob chilled and watched the older kids playing, no doubt he'll be in on the action soon enough!

I love that I get montly picture of the 2 of them together

Official 8 month photo

Such my happy boy

Mr Blue Eyes, notice the drool, that's courtesy of Hand-Foot-Mouth Disease

Man where has my little man gone?  He's a big boy now!

End of Summer Party

Thursday Riley and Jacob's day care had an end of summer party at the school.  It was a cowboy theme so Riley wore her best jean shorts and plaid shirt.  She requested that I go at lunch and get her a cowboy hat but I opted for a Starbucks instead.  It didn't matter that she didn't have a cowgirl hat because she had a blast.  They had face painting, tatoos, a jump house, band, snacks and best of all cotton candy!  I even had a cotton candy, delish!  Riley jumped, then got her face painted (Hello Kitty) and tatoos and ran around a bunch before settling on the band before we left. 



So excited she got to go to the party (she made good decisions and got to go!)



Cotton candy, can I got a woot!?!



How grown up does she look here!?!  Seriously what happened to my 4ls of fury!!!

It Seems We Have A Monster Problem

Yep, we've ended up with signs throughout our upstairs to scare the "mean monsters" away, apparently nice ones are ok to have around.  Sunday night about an hour after we put Riley to bed we heard a blood curdling scream coming from her room.  We bolted upstairs, seriously by the sound of her screams I thought she had seriously hurt herself.  Instead she informed us there were "2 mean monsters" in her room, one on her bean bag chair, the other in front of her bookcase and they were trying to get in bed with her (creepy right!?!).  Well after an hour of trying to get her calmed, reading her a book, and her begging me to sleep either in her room or let her in my room we finally got her to agree to sleeping with the light on (because everyone knows monsters are afraid of the lights!).  My mom suggested making signs since my usual tricks of setting "traps" and spraying my anti-monster spray weren't working.  I barely slept because I kept an open ear for her and laid in bed wondering if I was permanently damaging her by not staying with her or letting her come in bed with us.  We made these signs last night at dinner, I thought we would hang them on her windows but she first wanted them in our room and Jacob's room because she didn't want the monsters to get to us, my sweet girl always thinking about her family.  I finally convinced her to hang them near her room so we ended up with one on her door and 2 on the staircase.  Fortunately with these signs up and a light on we were "mean monster" free last night, apparently a nice monster came to visit but it was ok and they played hide and go seek this morning before school, and we all got a good night rest!

Le sigh, it's always something! 

LMAO

LMAO, that is all I can say about this video.  My favorite part is Riley rubbing Jacob's head while shaking her hips, like it will give her good luck!



Mr Funny Man

Jacob is pretty mellow guy but he's also pretty funny and likes to play, his new thing to do is to climb on my, put his face on my arm and make raspberry noises, he thinks he's hilarious!  And the more slobber the better!

The Brawn

Jacob is learning very fast that he is the brawn in this family. Friday while he was figuring out his crawling he had his eye on some puffs and Riley got in the middle of Jacob and his food.  So Jacob tried to go through Riley, considering the 3 year age difference, he held his own pretty well.  I think he's quickly learning that his size will be an advantage for him in the this house!

Hooky

Riley and I played hooky on Friday and we had a girl's day with Bella and her mom!  Riley was so excited she could hardly contain it and I was pretty excited as well, we definitely needed some quality time together as it's been a long time since we had some good girl time.  We took our time in the morning, got Jacob dressed and gave him his bottle and then took him to school and dropped him off.  She wanted to stay and watch Jacob eat with the older babies so we hung out for a bit and Riley scored a waffle for breakfast (which meant I didn't have to make her breakfast, which would have consisted of toasting my own waffle but hey that was one less thing that I had to do).  Then we came home and watched some Olympics that I had on DVR, which she loved.  She tried to copy Gabby Douglas and Aly Raisman's balance beam moves while we watched.  At 9:30 we headed down to San Jose with Jen and Bella, we put Riley's car seat in Jen's car so we could drive together.  The girls had so much fun riding in the car together and talked and sang the whole way down.  We got to the San Jose Children's Museum around 10:15 and the girls had a blast.  I had a hard time getting good shots of them!

Ready to get our girl's day started

Quick shot with her brother

First "experiment" at the museum, concentrating so hard

Already having fun!

Exploring bubbles

Making music

Giving Clifford a bone

Best shot I got of the 2 girls

I used to love these things when I was little

Digging for dinosaur bones!

Future waitress?

My lovey!

Water play, she waited all day for this!

Last stop, face/hand painting!

After the museum we got some lunch and then headed home.  We got home around 3:00 and watched some more Olympics while I folded laundry, then we went and got Jacob and picked up some yummy CPK for dinner.  Riley even talked me into getting us a strawberry shortcake for dessert.  Riley fell asleep on the way home so she didn't see Marc when he stopped home before heading to the Giants game.  Saturday morning she woke up and ran to him and told him "Girls day was so much fun daddy!"  It totally melted my heart, and yes it was so much fun, Riley was fantastic.  She listened well, played nicely and overall behaved despite being exhausted.  It was just what the RiRi and I needed!

Breaking News!!!!

Big Man is CRAWLING!  I am in so much trouble now!  It started Thursday when I picked him up, I always sign the kids out, peak into Jacob's room and then get Riley before picking Jacob up.  Well I peaked in Thursday and he was crawling!  I looked at the teacher and she made a face like "oh my God, he's doing it!"  So she started to get excited, he looked up, saw me, and that was the end of that and I actually had to go in and get him before getting Ri, which was a big old meltdown from her.  Then tonight I got him home and they were both hot messes, well a few minutes after finishing dinner he decided to snap out of it, climbed off of my lap and started to crawl!  He's still pretty clumsy but each time he tried it, he got better and better.  First thing he went after?  Riley's stuff of course, which went over oh so well!  But all in all she was very excited about her brother's new skill and was cheering her on and getting up in his business the whole time!

Puffs

I gave Jacob Puffs for the first time last night, he was huge fan, as was Riley.  It was so cute watching him try to pick them up, he was concentrating SO hard on them!

Pouting because I was taking pictures of Jacob and not her

She's just messing with me!