One of the guys working on our new place has a real hard time remembering if Riley is a girl or a boy… and when in doubt always seems to guess boy. It’s a little odd because Riley quite frequently wears pink and flowery girly girl stuff. Anyway, Rachel Morrison (my oldest friend from way back when we were Riley’s age) gave us this shirt, and even though it’s a bit big still, we thought the situation made it time to break it out…
In other news, Riley had her 4 month check-up with Dr. Drucker. She’s still healthy, still growing, still basically a superstar (in my personal opinion anyway). Her numbers are as follows… Height: 24.75 in (70%) Weight: 14 lbs 10 oz (73%)
So, as her parents, any new thing that Riley does is of couse big news for us. I hesitated before posting about Riley learning to roll though, wondering if the rest of the world is really quite as interested in these milestones as we are… but then I realized most likley only Riley’s most ardent fans are still checking the website, in which case you’ll be interested to hear her latest accomplishments…
I may have exaggerated a little bit when I said she rolls… really she just like to turn onto her side and sometimes turns too far and ends up on her belly. which she hates. so she squirms and kicks her little legs until she rolls back to her back/side. It’s kind of funny to watch. Her method of pulling her legs up then flinging them repeatedly to one side can actually move her all the way across her playmat… needless to say gone are the days when you could safely leave her unattended on the changing table.
This picture is unrelated, but i just think it’s cute…
I have to admit, watching this video makes me a bit self-conscious about the silly things we do just to make Riley laugh… but it really is too cute not to share. She’ll smile at almost anything these days, but I swear this is the only way to make her giggle… and when she giggles it’s just the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard.
Riley seems to be settled into the new place now. She now has her very own beautiful yellow room (though she still sleeps in our room for ease of early morning feedings) and a gorgeous crib complete with a fantastic handmade quilt from Kendra. She transitioned from bassonet to crib without any trouble at all, and continues to pretty much sleep through the night. We’ve finally hung a little fish mobile (that we bought on the beach in Zanzibar and used to hang in our bathroom) above her crib and she’s completely fascinated by it, it’s cute.
Riley seems to be developing more everyday, it’s so fun. She’s a very smiley happy kid and recently has started laughing and making little squealing noises when she gets really excited. Her very favorite thing to do is stand up and jump around with a little help, and she’s pretty obsessed with the toys hanging from her play-mat. She can actually keep herself amused there for quite a while and is getting much better at actually grabbing and holding on to the toys (though her end goal always seems to be putting them in her mouth). She continues to enjoy looking at herself in the mirror…
We’ve been introducing her to the plants in the garden, not sure how excited she is about them though.
We’ve learned a few new tricks… Riley still hates driving in the car, but turns out playing static real loud on the radio calms her down, and even puts her to sleep sometimes. At home the new trick for calming her down when she’s tired is bouncing with her on the blowup exercise ball. I’ve definitly gotten stronger from carrying her around these last few monthes, but she’s still pretty heavy and at the end of the day it’s nice to give my arms a break and just bounce on the ball…
So the whole reason we went to New Orleans was for Julie and Brian’s wedding… which almost didn’t happen after Katrina, but ended up coming together beautifully! It was a whole weekend of fun that Riley seemed to actually enjoy. Friday night was the rehersal dinner, which she mostly slept through, until of course the room got quiet for toasts… so I hung out in the back bouncing Riley along with the mother of the other baby. Saturday we went to Brian’s family’s restaurant, O’Henry’s, where Riley got passed around the table and Becca learned that carrying a baby back to the hotel in your arms is hard work.
The big event was Saturday evening. Riley wore her fancy pink dress! (which Julie says went perfectly with the color theme for her wedding, thank god). She actually seemed to like all the layers, and kept the top layer in her hands/mouth at all times. The wedding was outdoors so we stood in the back with Riley, who mostly kept it together until the very end when she let out a yelp… thankfully everyone seems to think it was a bird making funny noises so Riley was off the hook!
She was in a pretty good mood and got passed around the table some more, but mostly slept despite the loud music. We learned that southern women like to be meddlesome and give out unsolicited advice (like the woman on the plane who sternly told me to put peacefully sleeping Riley in her car seat even though the FAA says she’s perfectly safe on my lap at this age). Turns out Riley’s got good people-sense though and promptly started crying when a particularly annoying woman at the wedding tried to pick her up, mid-advice giving. Go Riley, we’re so proud.
The wedding festivities ended with brunch the next morning at the Rosenblat’s amazing house. My favorite part was when Riley gave Julie a big smile, to which Julie replied, “She social smiled at me, how developmentally appropriate of her!” It’s good to have med student friends.
More wedding pictures (including some from Becca, Ellen and Mary-Beth) here and here.
The French Quarter is filled with stores selling colorful t-shirts, many of which have recently taken on a Katrina-related theme (“FEMA – the new four letter word”). Since we had rented a car, we spent some time exploring the city, including some neighborhoods that took a particularly heavy beating during the hurricane(s). The first was Lakeview, (which used to be) a reasonably nice neighborhood on the north side of the city (bordering Lake Pontchairn). The most notable feature was a scummy water line cutting across every house, between 6 and 10 feet off the ground:
Most houses had already been gutted,
although a few were still filled with the remains of their original contents:
For sale signs were everywhere, as well as various advertisements for demolition companies, “we buy houses” posters, and political statements (“Hold the Corps accountable”). Maybe 5% of the houses seemed to be in the process of being rebuilt. A few people were picking through what remained of (presumably) their possessions, and a fair number of other cars appeared to be driving around at random (like us!) scoping things out (with some NOPD cars scoping them out). What a mess!
The day after the wedding we drove over to the Ninth Ward, a lower income neighborhood that was also also hard hit. Although Lakeview seemed pretty grim, it looked like a fair number of residents were trying to pull it together and rebuild. The Ninth Ward was less encouraging. The first thing we saw was a large tree that came down on the front of a house, smashing it to smithereens:
We started out near the river, which looked somewhat similar to Lakeview damage-wise, except with much cheaper and older housing. Once we moved a bit north, though, everything changed. Instead of nastified houses, we found houses that had moved (often smashing into other houses),
It looked like a total loss. It didn’t look there there was much to be done except bulldoze the entire thing and start over. Which made us wondering what was going to happen. It didn’t look like almost any of the residents had come back (or that there was anything to come back to).
On our first morning in New Orleans we walked over to Cafe du Monde, the obligatory beignet feeding station for tourists. The menu is simple: bignets, coffee. Which is good, given we were up most of the night with Riley’s first cold! Snarfle.
