Will Dance for Giggles

If you were a fly on the walls of our house this week, well, you'd be very cold. But, you'd also have caught us acting like total goons on more than one occasion, in order to illicit giggles from Riley. Yes, it's true, Rew does dance. Beyond that, we have not done anything terribly exciting. We're both trying hard to get a little work done during the day. Easier said than done. We had a very relaxing weekend of sitting around the house. Things are quiet. And cold. Hope you're all surviving the storms this week!
Oh, and we all hope Ben had a good time in Houston this week. Probably would've been more useful on Monday, but we wish him luck!

Flying Baby!

A quiet moment with Dad (few and far between, actually)

Head shot.

Play time on the floor. He doesn't really wriggle side to side very much yet. Don't know how he's ever going to learn to roll over that way, but I supposed it'll come in due time.

Riley's new light-weight winter suit. Patagonia on WICKED sale!

3 Months

Ok, so Riley was actually 3 months old LAST Friday, but I've been lax in updating. That turns out to be ok, because we've had some major developmental milestones in just the past couple of days. Yesterday, Riley began purposefully reaching for toys, and running his fingers over them to feel them. Then tonight, he started bringing them to his mouth by himself. Yesterday, Rew thought he heard a real giggle. He's had pre/proto giggles for a long time (funny noises accompanying big smiles), but today we accidently sparked what seems to be an involuntary laughing response. It seems Riley is ticklish under his arms! How fun (for us)!

This photo's from this morning. Riley's demonstrating his tummytime talents. He's been steadily increasing his ability to lift his head over the last several weeks, and is getting pretty good!



We managed to catch Riley's second "real" giggle this morning while we were changing him. The first was this morning when we accidently tickled his armpits. I think it's really an involuntary response right now, but so cute!

Room to Roam

So our big accomplishment of late has been to rearrange the living room. It was clear that it needed to be changed from a room for a couple to a room for a family. So we moved the coffee table (with all its dangerously sharp edges) to the side of the room, and bought an area rug. Now Riley can wriggle and roll to his heart's content! We also bought a footstool with storage inside to use as our new coffee "table". Rew put casters on the feet so we can move it around the room (and it will also serve as a little extra seating for when we have company!). I have to credit Kristin for that brilliant concept. Here are a couple of pix- I need to take better ones and I'll post later...

I tried to get a view of the whole room here, but it's not very clear. The endtable in the middle of the room was our temporary coffee table while we made a tour of the IKEAs in town looking for our footstool. It'll eventually go next to the couch, when the tree is taken down. ANywho, here's the carpet and new arrangement.

See, Riley enjoys the new space!

In other news, classes began this week, and we've been trying to get into work more regularly. Unfortunately, we've also had wicked snow and cold temps. I think the high for today is in the negatives (brrrr!). I went to my class on Tuesday (I'm not teaching it yet), and we're trying to work Riley into the schedule. Should be interesting.

What's Going on in There?

Ok parental units- advice is needed.
1. My kid is still eating like a newborn, every 2-3h during the day. Is this normal for 3mths?
2. My kid is only napping for 30-60min during the day, unless we knock him out with a car ride. Is this normal for 3 mths?
3. My kid has started refusing bottles. QQF? When do you move up to the next size flow? Any other thoughts on why he's decided to do this when I'm trying to go back to work?
4. Despite the fact that he's still eating as much as a month ago, I could swear my milk production is down. He's learned to eat in 10-15min instead of 20-30min...does the decrease in sucking knock down production?

Danke

No Rest for the Wicked

As the title implies, we're all a little weary an worn here. Riley's either going through a growth spurt or fighting off a mild cold. His nighttime sleeping schedule is all wonky and we're doing extra feedings and much less sleeping. Hopefully it won't last too long! Other than that, we're gearing up here for the start of the semester and doing some minor home improvement (pix to follow). Hope your new year is off to a good start.

Here's Riley in one of his rare good moods over the last few days. He weighed in at 14lbs 10oz on Friday at the doctor's office, and has gained almost 1.25oz a day for the last 20days. Good grief.

Here's a photo of the aftermath of last week's flood in our neighborhood. Similar to last fall, we had a massive rain, but on the heels of a massive snowmelt. So the lake across the street flooded again. Here you can see the ice that had been on the lake, pushed up onto the banks. Pretty cool.

Riley's Christmas present- a big wooden castle that we put together a few days ago. It'll be a while until he ha play with it, but we'll have lots of fun when he's finally there!

Catching Our Breath

Our Christmas holiday was very busy, as I'm sure yours was too. Andrew's family visited just prior to the holiday, and were able to stay for several days....

Here's Andrew's brother (Matt) holding Riley and his daughter Brenna. Our house was definitely more lively with everyone here, and it was nice to have small kids around for holiday festivities.

On the 21st, we all braved the VERY cold temps here (I think the high for the day was 2F) and organized ourselves to go to the Shedd Aquarium. It was the first time I'd been there in decades, and it was smaller than I remembered :) Brenna and Grandma had a great time, taking lots of pictures and checking out every tank at least once. Brenna liked the sharks, but not the sting rays. You're not supposed to use flash photography around the tanks, so we don't have many pix- but this tank had a sign in front that I could prop the camera on to get this nice photo of corals, etc.

Brenna's family left on the 23rd, while we were receiving a rather large snow deposit. I guess the driving was OK getting back to PA (?). We were thinking of leaving for STL, but decided to wait and see how the weather turned out the next day.

So, we ended up driving to STL on Christmas Eve. We had a nice dinner out (one of our traditions) and Riley was amazingy calm and happy the whole time. This was his first meal out where he was awake and not sleeping in his car seat, and he was awesome. Like I said in the previous post, our tradition is to open gifts on the Eve. Riley got lots of nice rattles and animals and books from my family. I'm sure they'll be delicious! Here's Riley "dressed up" for Christmas day. We didn't do much other than relax and try to keep Riley happy.

The Christmas dinner table, with everybody sitting around it. Riley's asleep on Rew, after an exhausting day of being cranky. We had a lovely dinner and played games afterwards.

On the 26th, we left STL stopping by the Missouri Botannical Garden on the way out to meet my grandparents, and several aunts and cousins (they were there checking out the model train display). Normally, we would have dinner with these guys on the 26th, but we left earlier than usual this year to get the little guy home. We chatted for about an hour and then left (it was funny to go to the garden and not see the garden!). Riley's here on my Grandma's lap, with 3 of my younger cousins standing next to him. He does such a good job of meeting people- I hope that means he'll be a friendly little dude when he's older too.

Jesse and Kristin were up over the weekend, making a whirlwind visit from her folks house in Indiana. We had a great time and miss them already! Here's the group, all on the couch.

Thanks to everybody for making our holidays exciting and memorable!

Happy Christmas!

And happy holidays in general to all our friends and family! We're in Santo Luigi (aka St. Louis). Our family tradition is to open gifts on Christmas Eve- pix to follow. Here's the outfit that Riley wore yesterday, with big aspirations in mind ;)