Riley plays with Leo

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Riley and Leo play with a straw.

Swing!

The swing at the park is always a favorite…

The sweater she’s wearing was made by my mother and is incredibly cute. It has little teddy bear buttons, and is very very warm and soft.

Thanksgiving

I know this is a little late in coming, but better late then never, right?

For Riley’s first Thanksgiving we invited EVERYONE over. All the grandparents were there (Peg, Les, Brigitte, David), a couple uncles (Pat and Eric) and some friends (Leslie, Will, Chloe, Sascha, Becky, Mary). A few days before we realized we didn’t have nearly enough chairs for all these people, but luckily our friendly downstairs neighbors hooked us up with a card table and some folding chairs.

Riley handled the crowd pretty well, and actually ate some Thanksgiving food. Here’s Riley with her grandparents and the beautiful turkey…

She didn’t actually eat much turkey, but she did enjoy Chloe’s butternut squash and delicious stuffing. Amazingly she was a big fan of the persimmons Becky put on the salad. He favorite by far though seemed to be the plantains Patrick made for an afternoon snack. And of course crackers. she sure loves those crackers…

While the family was in town, Riley went on daily walks to Starbucks. Turns out you can make lots of fun toys using straws, wood stirrers, cardboard cup holders and plastic cup lids. Here’s Riley sporting the colorful dress and tights from her grandmother Peg.

Riley and her uncle Eric…

Riley and Grandma Peg…

Riley getting tickled by her uncle Pat…

It was actually really fun having so many people staying in our apartment. Riley always had someone to play with, and when she slept we played games, like apples to apples, cranium, and of course the family favorite: spades. Can’t wait until Riley is old enough to join in the games…

Wanna play ball?

Bagels and coffee on a Sunday morning…

It was a beautiful sunny day and Riley wanted to get out of her stroller, so we let her play on a park bench for a bit…

Pretty party dress for Becky’s Birthday

Riley finally had an occasion to wear the pretty party dress Emma gave her! She came with me to Becky’s birthday dinner at the restaurant Baraka and we had a grand time.

(It was pretty cold in SF so she had to wear her pink pants under the dress)

Finger paint

We saw Riley’s first finger painting posted on the wall at her day care a few days back. It made me so proud! Even before I noticed how it was (clearly!) the best of the bunch. 🙂

Actually, it made me think of a bit of dialogue from Six Degrees of Separation:

I remembered asking my kids’ second-grade teacher: “Why are all your students geniuses?” Look at the first grade – blotches of green and black. The third grade – camouflage. But your grade, the second grade… Matisses, every one. You’ve made my child a Matisse. Let me study with you. Let me into the second grade. What is your secret?

I don’t have any secret. I just know when to take their drawings away from them.

Well, I suppose in this case Riley’s teachers might start by keeping kids on their own canvases. Those blotchy black finger smudges in the lower left? That was Riley’s friend wandering off her own sheet and onto Riley’s.

The class also painted baby pumpkins for Halloween. Riley was apparently the only kid to use sparkle paint. I was almost blinded by Elise’s beaming smile when she told me that bit of detail.

Punk Rock Baby

For Halloween we dressed Riley up as punk rock baby…

The costume was inspired by how good Riley looks with a mohawk when we’re playing with her hair in the bath, and by the AB/CD shirt (in the style of AC/DC) that we got her a while back. Add to that some ripped up jeans, fake tatoos for her arms, a stack of black elastic hairbands that fit her perfectly as bracelets, and lastly a little studded bracelet that we modified to fit her, and youve got a pretty cute costume, er, I mean punk rock costume.

Close up of the mohawk…

We sent her to daycare in her costume and I think it went over pretty well. Her teachers especially liked the mohawk. Now they swear her hair naturally goes into a mohawk when she’s napping and they just let it be rather then smoothing it down…

A day at the Standard Hotel in downtown LA…

We went down to LA a few weekends ago for the annual Newdream Halloween party. On Saturday we met up with Jesse and Leslie and hung out at the pool on the roof of the Standard hotel. Here’s Riley looking very hip hanging out in one of the weird red waterbed pod things by the pool…

The water was ridiculously warm and Riley had a blast splashing around…

Our weirdo waitress was a little obsessed with Riley, who was understandly a bit freaked out by her…

Riley stayed home with a babysitter while we went to the party. The babysitter was a little odd… she didn’t answer the phone when i called to check-in twice so i ended up calling the front desk and they sent security up to check on them. Turns out she had unplugged the phone. Bizarre.

Sunday morning we went to brunch and Riley got her own seat at the table…

yum, triscuits!

Crawling!

This is one of the very first times Riley crawled…

We first convinced her to crawl a little bit by bribing her with a trail of cheerios… she would move across the floor, but it wasn’t really crawling. Then one day at playgroup we had just finished saying Riley isn’t quite crawling yet, when she took off accross the floor heading for a bowl of grapes. Since then she’s pretty much pefected the crawl and is now chasing the cats around (they’re less excited about her mobility then we are…)