Yep

She’s just a bit more flexible than I am.

She’s a climber!

Way back when we were pondering the wisdom of living on the sixth floor with a baby and other safety issues, our designer Theresa told us that the real question was whether Riley would be a climber or not. One of her kids was a climber: out of the crib, up on furniture, etc., and the other wasn’t. Well, that burning issue has now been settled.

Get the Flash Player to see this video.

One of Riley’s favorite new games is climbing up on the Eames chair (thank you, Vida and Dallas!) and either having us spin her (whee!) or bouncing on the back. The funny thing was it all seemed rather sudden: it wasn’t long ago that she would need help climbing up on anything. These days she does it all on her own: the brick wall in the front yard, the fireplace mantle in the living room, the chair, and of course the soft padded shape things in the living room. Yay!

Drinking Fountain Skillz

At Holmby Park. The best part was that we didn’t actually show her how to drink… she was just thirsty and went for it.

Riley at Griffith Observatory

With her uncle Eric.

Riley helps Mom graduate

Last weekend Riley helped Mom graduate from medical school. It was a long day, with a luncheon, some sitting around/playing before the ceremony, a long ceremony (which Riley mostly spent running around nearby), and then finally:

Get the Flash Player to see this video.

Riley was especially concerned about how Mom looked in that funny hat while she walked her across the stage. For her assistance she got a special gift from Dean Pizzo–a certificate and a pin! Not as fancy as Mom’s diploma, but still pretty cool. A little later, at the champagne reception, she saw her opportunity and took matters into her own hands:

Babysitters

This last weekend Riley had two sets of babysitters! On Saturday night Ben and Jesse came over for dinner, then stayed while Sage and I went to a movie (while Riley slept, pretty easy babysitting). Sunday was our one year anniversary, so Brad and George babysat while we went to a champagne tasting event. Sounds like it went really well! She was sleeping peacefully when we got home, and they had many stories of Riley cuteness to report. Apparently Riley remembered Brad’s name right away when she saw him, pretty cool.

Riley’s day

We don’t have a very good internet connection at home yet, so we haven’t been able to upload new pictures and videos… which is too bad because this post would be better with pictures. Oh well. Coming soon!

A run through of a typical day with Riley recently…

Somewhere between 6-7 am: Wake up. On a good day this means we hear happy babbling through the monitor as she plays in her crib. On a less good day, she wakes us with a loud cry. One of us gets up and plays in her room for about half an hour. Then breakfest (scrambled eggs is a favorite right now).

9am: By the time we’ve both eaten and gotten cleaned up and dressed (with a lot of play breaks in between) it’s usally after 9 and Sage has left for work. So we pack up lunch and sand toys and head off to the park in the stroller. It’s about a mile away and we have to stop to pick up leaves and smell flowers and pet dogs, so it takes about half an hour to get there. People in our neighborhood are super friendly and stop to talk, which is a big difference from Palo Alto. The dogs are also smaller and cleaner, and very friendly. Turns out dogs and babies make great conversation openers.

9:30-12 Play play play. Usually with other kids toys, but it’s okay because they play with Riley’s. Often there will be a tricyle or toy stroller or mini-car or some similar thing that Riley will try to steal. She swings and slides and climbs, and stops for a water and food break in the middle. There’s a trellis with red flowers growing on it that shed on the floor, so most days Riley goes around with her blue bucket and collects them all off the floor. She’s very generous with her flowers and gives them out to random people in the park. There
are lots of nannies and mothers at the park, most of whom are very nice, some of whom grill me on where we’re going to send Riley to preschool/elementry school/high school/college (i swear to god). We hear a lot of helicopters, which Riley thinks are planes (LA seems to have more helicopters then planes, we almost never heard helicopters in Paly), I’m trying to teach her the difference… I think she’s catching on, but it’s confusing. We taught her how to sign “Thank you,” which she picked up on surprisingly quickly. I try to remind her to do it whenever a kid gives her a toy to play, or when she asks for something and gets it.

12 – Lunch, then back in the stroller to head home. Riley usually falls asleep about 30 seconds after we leave the park, so I can stop at one of the many lunch trucks that stop in our neighborhood (because of all the construction workers I think) for a burrito and cold diet coke… so good on a hot day. Riley transfers to her crib without even really waking up then usually sleeps for at least 2 hours.

2:30ish. wake up. play. snack. I just bought her a bunch of new toys since i thought hers where to young for her… blocks with numbers, letters and pictures on them (she likes the pictures), block puzzles with colored shapes or animals, stacking rings… all stuff that she can do stuff with. Her other favorite thing to do is wrap up her stuffed animals in a blanket or her pajamas and rock them like a baby. It’s really sweet, she pats them with her free hand. She learned this in her old daycare because there is always a teacher rocking one of the kids to sleep. She mimics everything. When she washes her hands she reaches for the hand soap, but just touchs it. I don’t think she really knows what it is, but she sees us doing it. Sometimes we go swimming in the afternoon, sometimes we just play around the house or walk in the neighborhood or run errands.

6ish – Sage comes home (yay!! everyone is very excited). We make dinner and try to eat together at the table, but sometimes Riley can’t wait. Usually she insists that we go outside and play ball. Our house came with a full-size basketball hoop and basketball, and Riley is obsessed with watching us try to shoot the ball. She doesn’t seem to want to hold the ball herself, she just points at the basket, then cheers when we throw it. We got her a little kid hoop and she immediatly took the little ball and dunked it. Maybe the WNBA is in her future?

7:30ish – bedtime routine begins… change into pajamas, brush teeth (amazingly she actually likes brushing teeth), read books.

8pm – bedtime. sometimes riley crys for 20 seconds when you leave the room, but then she goes right to sleep.

Child care

One of the saddest parts of moving (besides the huge waste of time to pack and unpack) was taking Riley out of the Arboretum daycare. We love that daycare, and more importantly, Riley seems to love it too. The teachers are awesome and they were always doing fun things and going on walks. On her last day her teacher Liz made a huge goodbye poster for her (she says it’s the biggest she’s ever made) an gave us a photo album full of beautiful pictures of Riley and her daycare friends, plus an early mother’s day present for me, wrapped with instructions not to open it early. So nice.

Along with the daycare, we also had to say goodbye to Riley’s nanny, Maricella. Riley started going to the daycare full time a while ago, but we still saw Maricella for babysitting every now and then. She’s wonderful. She really seemed to love Riley and I trusted her completely to take good care of her. Here she is (about 8 months pregnant) on her last day taking care of Riley (before full time daycare started)…

My mom and I took Riley over to visit Maricella and her husband and new baby girl Julia Maria before we moved. Riley was very curious about the little baby…

Now that we’re in LA the big challenge is finding a new daycare. I’ve called more places then I can count, and we’ve visited a bunch, but we really fell in love with one family daycare that is less then a mile from our house. The woman who runs it, Luz, is also a gardener, and her backyard is like daycare heaven. We quickly realized she was interviewing us as much as we were interviewing her (or Sage realized and informed me), and luckily Riley was in the best of moods… sitting in her little chair doing a project, playing with the woman outside and doing her signs, she even said “agua” on the way out pointing at a water fountain. She couldn’t have been cuter. There was no spot available then, but since we didn’t really see anything else close by that we liked we decided to wait it out. I called a couple time to be sure she knew how much we liked her daycare, then we just had to wait. Luckily, a couple weeks after we visited a spot for Riley miraculously appeared! Such a relief. We visited again today and I’ll start going over there with Riley to visit till she gets comfortable next week. Luz says she is very picky about which families she accepts, and that all the families she has are pretty mellow and easy going. And she does not accept celebrity kids (apparently she turned down Bruce Springsteen because of the security issues!)

So we’re happy, and relieved. Hopefully it will really be as great as it looks!

The timing has worked out really well. It’s been nice taking care of Riley full time these last few weeks. I didn’t really have much that I had to do, so I could just focus on hanging out with her and playing. We fell into a nice routine with Sage going off to work in the morning and Riley and I walking to the park, which is about a mile away. There are cute pictures from the park that aren’t up yet, so maybe I’ll save that for another post!

One last Japan post

If you haven’t read enough about our Japan trip and want to hear more (or just a different perspective), check out Brad and George’s blog. I just caught up on it, and found this picture, which I think deserves republishing here…

High 5

Before we moved, Becky came over to hang out with Riley and teach her a very important life skill…

Get the Flash Player to see this video.

The funny thing is once Riley got the hang of the high 5, she only wanted to do it with Becky! All afternoon she kept walking up to Becky ready to high 5… but not to anyone else. Unfortunately, since then Riley has forgotten this important skill. Good thing Becky’s coming to visit in a few weeks!