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!

Allowance

Day care recommended us giving Riley more responsibility at home as they've noticed her behaving better in class when they give her leadership responsibilties so we decided to give her chores to do at home.  She needs to pick up her toys and take out the trash and for that she gets $1.  Riley loves "monies" she is so excited to have allowance.  Her first allowance she wanted to buy her friends James and Bella bagels with her monies and this week she told me she had some monies to give me so that I could go to Target and buy wine.  Unfortunately, all I could afford with her monies is "2 buck chuck!"  But sweet and thoughtful none the less!

Very proud of her monies!

 

Artsy Fartsy

Riley has SO many toys so for Hanukkah this year I tried to get a bit creative and get her more arts and crafts presents since she seems to be able to sit longer and concentrate.  Fisher Price just came out with the "Made by Me" products and thought they would be fun for her.  So one night she got this painting set which proved to be a huge hit and not that huge of a mess.  Double bonus!  She sat at the table for more than an hour painting pictures.

Such concentration!

She painted a rainbow!

Big Girl Bed

Well we finally took the plunge and converted Riley to her big girl bed!  Our pediatrician had recommended waiting until Riley was 3 but that would bring us to Baby #2 being here and I was worried that she would associate her crib going away with him, even though we converted her crib to a toddler bed.  After talking to the day care director at Riley's day care who said Riley was more like 2 1/2 going on 5 and also that if we waited until after the baby would come we would have to wait a year because she would definitely associate her crib going away with him we decided to take the plunge this weekend.  I was fully prepared for battles and sleepless nights and braced myself fully.  Of course Riley kept us on our toes because not only did she sleep 2 1/2 hours her first nap in her bed, she went on to sleep 13 hours Saturday night (and let us sleep to 8AM which I desperately needed!) and then took an over 3 hour hour nap on Sunday with no fight about going to bed (knock on wood) on Sunday night.  We have a great new routine: potty, PJs, brush teeth in her room, then Riley picks out a story, climbs on her bed, and we put her night night shoes on while she's sitting on the bed.  Then we tuck her in "snug as a bug" and read her story, usually twice before good-night kisses.  Riley loves her new bedding and actually does not want to use her old baby blankets which shocked me.  She was more than happy to pose in her new big girl room!  We still have to move the rocking chair out to the baby's room and add some wall decals that I bought her but baby steps, between potty training and a big girl bed I don't want to shake up her life too much!

The proud big girl bed owner!

Her new owl picture!

Doggy and Teddy Bear wanted to be in the picture too! :)

Priceless

2 Movie Tickets: $17
A Medium Popcorn & M&Ms: $13
First movie: Priceless

Marc's buddy from high school was in town this weekend so Saturday I decided to give them some guy time and after gymnastics I took Riley to see "Winnie the Pooh" at the movie theater.  I was pretty nervous but I figured of all the movies out there, "Winnie the Pooh" was the best choice since it's geared to a younger crowd and it's only an hour and nine minutes.  So we went to a 10:55 show.  Riley was SO excited and had been talking about it for days, she even told her gymnastics coach that we were going to go see "Pooh Bear after nastics"!  As we were pulling into our parking spot she said "Oh no, we should have brought Piglet!"  I said "Oh no, how could we have forgotten Piglet???"  (We had talked the past few days about maybe bringing Pooh Bear and Piglet with us to the movie).  She said "We bring him next time."  Clearly she had high hopes for this little outing!

I explained the whole process to her so she knew what to expect: how we had to get in line, buy our tickets, and then we would go in and go potty (for this pregnant lady, not her!), and then we would get in line and get our popcorn (Riley loves popcorn so I promised her some at the movies since our Target Cafe is under construction and doesn't have popcorn right now) and then we would go give our ticket to the nice man and then go pick out our seats.  She was so excited about the process, she was also excited to go through security at the airport so I shouldn't have been surprised, she kept repeating each of the steps to me.  We bought our tickets and then got in line for the concessions, of course they had a display of candy right by the counter so of course Riley needed her M&Ms.  Or as Riley says "I just love Mns!"  We went to the theater and poor Riley doesn't weigh enough to hold the seat down so she ended up sitting on my lap which was fine!  They do have boosters so I will have to try that next time, yep, I said next time!  She did great the entire movie.  We poured some popcorn and M&Ms in the tray we got and we settled in, we got there just as all of the previews were starting.  We watched all of the fun previews and there was even a preview for the new Muppets movie coming out in November!  We are pumped.  Then Pooh Bear started. 

It was actually a really cute movie, told like someone was reading the story.  It was a good mix of narrative and animation of the characters with Pooh interacting with the narrator and the pages of the book.  It was super cute.  Riley sat on my lap for most of the movie, double fisting, with popcorn in one hand and M&Ms in another.  It was pretty stinking cute.  And here's the kicker, my child was probably one of the more well behaved children (and she was by far the youngest) in the theater!  My child!!!  I was shocked, she got a little antsy the last 10-15 minutes but it was just about 12:00 and that's what time she usually goes down for her nap plus she had gymnastics in the morning so she's usually ready for an early nap after gymnastics so I couldn't really get too upset.  She remained quiet though, we talked a lot about not talking and if we had to using our soft voice, she was just antsy and ended up standing in front of me and sitting on the steps of the theater.  But since she sat through the previews she sat still for well over an hour which is pretty good for Ri. 

All in all the experience was two thumbs up!  I'm thinking we'll try the Smurfs in the next couple of weeks but maybe try to hit up a show after her nap and see how having her well rested works out since Smurfs is a little longer of a movie. 

Riding First Class, Up in the Sky, Sipping Champagne

Poppy travels in style so he upgraded us all to First Class, this was Riley's first trip in her own seat, I'm afraid we've set a dangerous standard!

Don't worry, it's just apple juice, she took my pre-flight orange juice glass and wanted to drink out of it.  She had everyone around us cracking up.

The last two days Riley really missed Marc. She yelled with excitement as we were landing that we were going to see daddy and when we landed Marc was waiting for us at baggage claim a Riley jumped into his arms, gave him a hug and said "I missed you,". So incredibly sweet!

I brought her car seat on to try to keep her in her chair longer, I'm glad I did, on the way there she spent most of the flight in her car seat.  On the way home she slept in it for an hour and then woke up yelling "I want out, I want out!"  I took her out, put her on my lap and she fell right asleep for another hour or so.  The rest of the flight she spent on my lap or my mom's lap but she was really good the entire flight. 

The girl sitting behind her was a Middle School English teacher that does a lot of studies on verbal and cognitive development and said that she thought cognitively that Riley was 4 or 5 but she looked so small so she was confused.  She asked how old Riley was and when I told her she was 2 1/2 she was shocked by her verbal and cognitive abilities.  She said that she could see Riley logically thinking through situations and what I was saying to her, and instead of screaming she was verbally expressing her feeling.  Like when we were landing she said "I scared, we falling," instead of screaming hysterically.  When I explained to her the pilot takes us up and then he very slowly and safely takes us down she said "I feel better now."  But the girl said Riley verbally expresses herself and logically thinks through situations better than a lot of kindergartners.  She said she was fascinated by our interaction with each other because it was so logical.  Don't get me wrong, Riley still has her 2 year old moments but it's mostly driven by hunger or lack of sleep so as long as we can keep those taken care of Riley is a pretty good kid.  It was a very proud moment! :)  I was also super proud that we made it through a 5 1/2 hour flight with no temper tantrums!

A New Phase

I think we've hit a new phase - the booster seat!  Sunday Fuddruckers was out of high chairs so we let Riley sit in a booster at lunch and it was one of the best lunches we've had with Riley in a long time.

So happy to be sitting like a big girl!

We've also entered the apple juice phase of life where she asks for it incessantly

Birthday Fun

I was supposed to be traveling this week but my boss let me postpone my training so that I wouldn't miss Riley's birthday so I took Wednesday off for Riley's birthday so we could have a good girl's day.  Of course as motherhood seems to go, it didn't turn out how I had planned, Riley has had an awful cold all week with a cough that sounds like she's a 90 year old man who has smoked his whole life.  It's lovely.  I took her to the Dr on Monday and they told me it was bronchialitis and that we just have to let it pass.  Well Wednesday she seemed a bit better so we ventured to the mall to spend our Gymbucks and walked around a bit.  When we headed into Nordstrom to grab some lunch to bring home she barfed all over herself, there goes the cute little "2" t-shirt that Riley was wearing!  Lovely!  So we cleaned her up, grabbed lunch and then headed home.  After a nice nap she seemed to be feeling better so she had a snack, we played and then I made her Mac & Cheese from scratch for dinner, it was quite delicious.  Marc came home so we went for a little walk and then had dinner, opened presents and had some cake.  She them puked 4 times on my carpet, fun times!  But it was wonderful spending the day with her, I can hardly believe that she's 2 years old now!

Mmmm, mac and cheese!

Princess cake!

Cake time!

Make a wish!

Tada!  It's the birthday girl!

Official 2 Year Photo

My how she's grown over the year!

From birth to 2 years old!

Riley had her 2 Year Well Check today and all went well!  She is now up to 22lbs 4oz (4th percentile) and 33 inches (15th percentile!), she grew nearly 3 inches over the last 6 months!!!