Reading

Riley has gotten really into reading these last few months. She’s always loved being read to, but now she wants to do the reading. At first she just memorized her books and recited them, but recently she’s started making up her own stories with bits and pieces of all her books. When she reads she often turns the book around so her animals or we can see the pictures (the way I’m sure the daycare teachers do when reading to the group). it’s pretty cute.

This is an oldish video from when we went to San Francisco in February.

We’ve been trying to go the library every couple weeks to get new books for her. It’s hard to come by good beginner chapter books, but Riley is remarkably not picky. Some favorite book series are frog and toad, iris and walter, little bear, henry and mudge.

Whenever I’m not on call I read to Riley before bed (or she reads to me). Recently it’s been hard to lie flat so I sit against the wall and Riley lies in front of me holding the book and using my belly as a pillow. When I’m really tired or not feeling well, she’ll specifically choose books she thinks I like (for example Snuggle Puppy, which is a book I love that we sing). Once when I was going to take a nap post-call, Riley offered to read me some books and tuck me in. She is such a sweatheart, it’s amazing.

Recently she’s been asking us to define words more often, which is actually kind of challenging. Some recent words were any (which Sage says is hard to define without using set theory), favor, possible, and literally. Often she uses full phrases she picks up from other people, but clearly doesn’t quite know the meaning of.

I heard a story on This American Life about how the most important years for learning are actually 0-3, and the shear number of words a child hears in those years is the biggest predictor of how well they’ll do in school later (tv doesn’t count). If that’s true then Riley is all set. With all the grown ups she hangs out with she’s heard plenty of words, and her vocabulary is pretty broad.

An Awesome Book

While reading An Awesome Book (a book from Jorge about dreaming big):

not a million quiet dreams
a million dreams that roar
a million dreams so loud they scream
so loud they scream and shout
so super huge they say “hey world,
guess what i’m dreaming ’bout”

Riley: “I don’t want to dream those dreams.”
Elise: “Why?”
Riley: “Because they’ll wake me up.”

Kicked by the baby

Riley is really excited about the new baby. Almost everyday she comes up with a new name for him – some better then others. Most are real names, some are just totally made up words. She’s pretty much abandoned her top choices (Becky and Taylor). Whenever anyone asks though she replies, “We’re still thinking about it.”

She’s been trying to feel the baby move, but she gets impatient and always seems to move her hand away just before he kicks. The other day we were taking a nap together though and she was right up against my belly when the baby kicked hard. She jumped up, kind of shocked, then started laughing. A few minutes later he kicked her again. She asked if he could hear her talking, and I said yes… so she turned around and cupped her hands on my belly and whispered, “Shhh baby, it’s time to sleep…”

What I’m most happy about is she’s already taken ownership of the baby, which I’m hoping means she’ll feel like an important big sister, rather then a jealous sibling when he’s born. Whenever she talks about him she says “My baby…” and she takes every opportunity to raise my shirt and show off the belly to anyone and everyone – even strangers on the airplane. It’s a little embarrassing, but I let her do it because I don’t want to dampen her enthusiasm at all.

She came to one of my doctor’s appointments to see the baby on ultrasound. Dr. Johnson was awesome about showing her everything and printed out a picture for her to take home. We didn’t really have any questions that day so he asked Riley if she had questions… she wanted to know how big the baby’s hand was. He took her hand and said it was about the size of her palm. Riley gave a full report about the visit and Dr. Johnson (the doctor for mommies) at daycare that afternoon.

Apparently she talks about the baby at daycare a lot. She actually was the one to announce that I’m pregnant pretty early on. The kids were all sitting around for story time and Riley stood up and announced, “Mommy has a baby in her belly!” When I came to pick her up that evening, Lucy (the daycare teacher) had a big grin on her face and said, “Riley shared some news with us today…”

The rest of the kids are excited too. They always come running over and want to rub the belly and ask questions. Some of the kids put baby dolls under their shirts and pretend to be pregnant too.

The baby is already getting showered in hugs and kisses from Riley (through the belly of course), I love it. I’m due July 23rd, about 6 weeks to go. I think Riley’s going to be a little shocked when she realizes how much babies cry, but hopefully this excitement will continue when she finally gets to met him…

12 weeks:

18 weeks:

NYE

Here’s another way over due post…

For New Years Eve we decided to have party, which turned out to be really fun. Nothing too crazy, just good friends, good food, good times. We decided to see let riley stay up and she did amazingly well. I told her she didn’t have to go to bed as long as she was having a good time and not crying so all night she kept running up to me and saying “Mommy I’m having a really good time!!” We mostly just let her roam around the party on her own since she knew most of the people there. Here’s a video of her just after midnight, with seemingly more energy then any of the adults around…

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On a side note, that t-shirt she’s wearing is her absolute favorite t-shirt and she would wear it everyday if we let her. It’s from Brad and George and it says “Vintage 2006” The boas on the floor are from my halloween costume box and have become a favorite dressup toy for Riley. She was either wearing them or waving them around most of the night…

Horsey

Sam brought this home for Riley, it was hers when she was a kid. It’s been a big hit. Riley rode it all the way to the village and back, and it’s made many laps around the house. I was worried Riley might destroy it since she’s not so careful with it, but sam says not to worry about it, and so far it seem pretty indestructable…

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I love classic toys like this. Seems much more wholesome then the plastic battery operated monstrosities you see everyewhere these days…

Riley turns 3!

It was Riley’s birthday recently… (ok not so recently, January 9th, we’re way behind). The night before, Riley and I made blueberry-banana muffins to bring to the daycare:

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Riley’s been asking for a bouncy house for her birthday for months. It’s really the only thing she asked for actually – more than a cake or balloons or presents. So we looked around online and I got a suggestion for www.planetbouncy.com.

It’s actually reasonably priced, so we relented and rented the castle. Luckily Lucy agreed to have it at the daycare. The kids loved it of course. When Sage and I got to the daycare in the afternoon all the kids we going crazy bouncy around.

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After a while it was time to sing and blow out the candles. I had a moment of panic as the muffins were getting passed around that the kids would realize they’re not cupcakes and refuse them, but they didn’t seem to notice (phew). They stuffed them down then started running around again. Every kid got a balloon when their parents arrived, and Riley had a blast bouncing in the bouncy house WITH her balloon. Simple pleasures.

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We made her a birthday table to surprise her when she got home (in the Lawson family tradition):

Youtube

Riley is so entertaining these days, it’s a shame we’ve gotten so behind on the blog. She literally makes me laugh every single day, and I just want to hug and kiss her all the time.

I wanted to share some of Riley’s favorite videos… She doesn’t watch tv at all, but she gets to watch a few short youtube videos on the computer before going to sleep at night (honestly it’s kind of a bribe to get her to brush her teeth and get ready for bed). Doesn’t take the place of reading books, that comes after, but it has become a regular part of the bedtime routine.

Anyway, here’s a few she asks for frequently that we also like:

Elmo and Andrea Bocelli:

Elmo and Robert DeNiro:

Kermit and Debbie Harry:

Of course there’s tons more, but that’s a good sample.

yay youtube!

Dress-up

Riley wanted to dress up before brunch.

Updates

It’s been a while since we’ve posted, mainly because the way we manage our photos makes it a boy tedious to post them here. It finally dawned on me yesterday that there’s a wordpress app for the iphone, and our phones are chock full of Riley pictures, so we may as well post them in all their grainy glory while waiting for the elevator or whatever. Enjoy!

Iceland

We went to Iceland at the end of August, just a few weeks before the country went bankrupt. It was beautiful. Here is Riley dressed for the weather in her fuzzy coat from Rachel’s mom: