Turkey et al

Their appears to be a fondness in our neighborhood for frightfully tacky lawn decorations, and Riley has become a big fan. A favorite was the turkey a few blocks down the street.

For Halloween, this same house also had an inflatable haunted house, and for Christmas, they now have a snowman, a Christmas tree, and (on a balcony overlooking the yard) Santa himself. (These are the type that’s made out of light parachute-type material and have a little electric motor and light going constantly to stay inflated and beautiful. Like Jake’s fat suit, but way less cool.)

Just around the corner is another house with another Christmas tree (of the fake-but-real-looking variety), a reindeer (wire mesh with lots of white lights), and a scary (just ask Riley) paper-mache-type snowman covered with multicolor LEDs that slowly shift colors (like something you’d find in the magic mushroom infested section of Splash Mountain at Disneyland). Riley has largely conquered her fears, however, in a multistage process that starts with making Daddy touch it and ends a few days later when she goes up and touches it herself.

Someone on the next block just put up these (moving!) reindeer and a snowman:

I suppose it looks better at night (well, the reindeer at least). What else is a conscientious LA homeowner to do come snowman season? A few houses down someone actually filled their front yard with real snow, but that only lasted about a day. At this point it’s just as well that Riley doesn’t realize that real snowmen are made out of snow, but that is a situation we’ll have to be sure to rectify before her childhood memories are permanently warped.

(While we’re on the subject of frightening Christmas decorations, here’s a picture of the tree in the Office of Building where the shiny new New Dream office is:

Not to worry, the view helps blot the image from your mind.)

With Tiger

Flowers!

Supper!

Out of sight, out of mind?

Riley can definitely remember people now. She talks about her grandparents and uncles a lot (she’s always asking when Michael and Eric are going to come visit….”Eric visit soon? two weeks maybe?”) She’ll pick up a phone or remote control (hard to tell the difference) and put it up to her ear and say, “Hello Michael!” Unfortunately she seems to get stage fright when there’s actually someone on the phone to talk to…

She remembers that Cheyenne is going to have a baby (check out Joshua and Cheyenne’s blog for updates) and frequently asks to see pictures of Cheyenne on the internet… I’m not sure how much she understands, but she does get very excited when she says “Cheyenne’s a have a baby!”

One of her books has a baby doing yoga and she always says “grandpa yoga!” when she sees the picture (my dad does yoga pretty much daily when he’s visiting and taught Rileyto say yoga)

Sage’s mother gave Riley a pair of red shoes, and whenever she puts them on she says “Oma Peggy shoes.”

When she’s sleepy she frequently starts reciting the names of all her friends at school…

I’m sure there are more examples that I’m forgetting…

Art

Riley brings home lots of art projects from daycare. We have them up on the refrigerator and walls in the kitchen. Here are a few of our favorites:

There are more here. I have to say, though, my favorite is still one she did about a year ago, back while we were still in Palo Alto (before she was a year old!). I think it’s been posted to the blog before, but here it is again anyway:

Farmer’s market

There’s a little farmer’s market that just started up recently in Westwood. It’s pretty small, but conveniently located right by our house, so I’ve been going with Riley most Sundays. There’s one stand that sells the most delicious berries ever (including yellow raspberries) so we pretty much always buy an assorted 3-pack from them, then sit on the curb and eat just about all of them…

Another highlight is the little petting zoo that is sometimes there. They have little goats, sheep, chickens, bunnies and even a little pig. Riley loves to see the animals, but still gets nervous about petting them. One week we went to the farmer’s market to see the animals and they weren’t there! Riley was really sad and kept asking, “Where’s the animals?” I suggested that maybe the animals stayed home because they were tired and Riley thought about it for a bit then said, “Animals tired, animals sleeping” and seemed completely satisfied with that answer. For the rest of them week if you asked her where the animals were she would tell you they were tired or sleeping.

There’s a woman that always brings a couple play shopping carts for kids to borrow. Riley loves pushing the cart and runs up and down the street with it (mowing down whoever happens to get in her way). We usually buy cherry tomatoes, and she likes to take one choice tomato (or strawberry) and put it in the cart. Good times.

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Recently Riley’s started asking to go to the farmers market. It’s on her list of answers to the “what do you want to do today” question… (along with beach, pool, park, animals, outside…)

A couple of time I’ve taken Riley after being on-call the night before. Being on-call on a Saturday really sucks because it obviously kills the weekend. Usually I end up being so busy in the hospital that I don’t have much time to be sad about missing Riley… but sometimes it actually hurts to be away from her. Sometimes Sage and Riley come visit in the hospital and we get something to eat in the cafateria then hang out on the grass in front of the hospital, or play in the Barbie house (the children’s hospital is sponsored by Mattel so there’s Barbie stuff everywhere, kind of disturbing, but Riley sure loves that pink house). Anyway, after being away all day and all night Saturday, I feel like I need to make the most of every minute on Sunday. So we go the farmer’s market, eat berries and bread, pet the animals and run around with the cart until we’re both exhausted and ready for a nap…

Oh no!

Riley wore a hole in her shoe! The first of many, to be sure. They were well loved (thanks, Chloe!).

Phrases

Riley’s picked up some cute phrases…

“Excuse me” (sounds more like “scuse me”). She likes to use that one when she’s trying to squeeze by you… like when we’ve trapped her between us in a booth in a restaurant.

“Come here” (sounds like “camear”). Mostly used for the cats, she rubs her fingers together like we do to try and attract them.

“Right there” (sounds like “rightdare”) Mostly used for stickers. The plastic on her changing table was starting to get ripped up so we covered it with that contact paper stuff for lining drawers. Turns out it makes a perfect surface for sticking and unsticking stickers. Before she sticks on a sticker though she always thinks about the perfect spot, then points it out “rightdare” and sticks it.

“Here you go” (sounds like “hereyagooo”). Obviously used for when she gives you something. Usually followed by “back?”

Pretty cute. Hopefully we can catch some on tape…

LA County Arboretum

A few weeks back we spent the morning at the LA County Arboretum just outside of Pasadena. The highlight of the morning was definitely the wild peacocks, of which there are about 70, roaming aimlessly around the park. Riley loved playing with the tail feather we found on the ground, and was generally obsessed with the peacocks, but a bit intimidated when they fluffed up their tails and wiggled their haunches. Such weird birds! The flowers were of course fun, too.

Shortly after we sat down near this waterfall, a girl in a short tight dress and her photographer friend showed up and started taking glamour shots of her reclining on/straddling the bench. It wasn’t too long before Elise was flashed and her lack of underwear became apparent. Classy! The odd part was that they were dropped off by one of the park guys on his electric cart; not sure how you get the VIP treatment. Welcome to LA!