Merry Christmas 2012!

Yummy imaginary tea!

Doll Mansion

Wooden magnetic dress up dolls

Taking care of baby

Ketchup...works every time...j/k

Elmo has the same soccer jersey as River

Purse and accessories

Getting served...some Abby Caddaby tea

Kitty Cat

The love seat

What's that you're eating?!

Here's lookin' at you, silly face.

Soccer in the Blood

River, petting Tsosie with her dolly. Sweet.


She's a Lil' Kicker! Sometimes they kick soccer balls around, but mainly it's more bubbles and songs and cone towers...lol. Pretty darn cute.

Tutu Dreams

 These are the photos you use to scare off all potentially terrible mates...

Gift Dog

I'm pretty sure Tsosie is being shipped off on Christmas. The next step in this bubble wrapping fiasco was trying to balance a present on Tsosie's head...not sure what that was all about.

New Words, New Month - River at 19.5 months

These days River is pretty much trying to say EVERYTHING we say! It's so funny because a while ago I had my "mommy mouth" on and said "shoot!" when I dropped a nail behind her bed while trying to hang a picture. River picked up "shoot!" So (thankfully!!!) when mommy mouth was out to lunch and angry mouth came out when mommy dropped something on her toe...River said "shoot!!!" as if she had never even heard what I had actually said :).

So these are some of the words she says regularly and this is by no means comprehensive:

Fly (which she does now, as regularly as dancing)
duck, cow, teet teet (bird, which also involves a hand sign), swan
kiss
pull
box
mice, mouse
Tsosie (dog- which recently turned out to have a Southern drawl. lol.)
funny
stuck! (which has been used a lot...because she manages to get stuck a lot.)
shoes, socks
mittens
heart
money
pickle
applejuice
neck (which sometimes means Giraffe)
snake, snake
turtle
see
sit
soap
up, down (usually a very funny up and down show to go with it)
pee pee, poo poo
bye bye to the above
dolly
keys
knees, toes, feet, hand, eye
beak
bloop bloop (seriously, it sounds perfect...and it means fish)
Sita (which originally confused me to no end since I could only think of Rama and Sita), by this she means "Rosita" from Sesame street which we figured out fairly soon.
Tookie (which comes up because of both the food and the sesame street character...lol)
uh-oh, oopsie
ant
walla (which refers to koalas)
nice (she learned this in the bathtub when I asked her if the bath was too cold, too hot or nice)
pen
circle (and she draws a circle)
Wipey
towel (is a favorite this week. I play fought with her about how this is a blanket, and she'd say, noooo, towel.)
tickle
brrr (cold)
walk
people
peas
bounce
kick
stick (sounds more like deek)
broken (today the sticker was broken)
boy (mostly everyone is a boy since she doesn't say girl yet. Yet another pretend fight we have.)

She also has really begun to speak in sentances much more fluidly and regularly. It's funny, Daddy funny, It's a duck, mommy hat, what's that?, etc.

River recently went to her first Lil' Kickers "Soccer Practice." Chris and I aren't those parents who are "putting our child on a scholarship path" at 1.5 years old. As the coach said, "NO EXPECTATIONS. They may start to get it, maybe not." Perfect. It was great. Most of her class was spent balancing on the blowup partition they had between the classes on the fake indoor arena grass. Some was spent kicking, throwing, sitting on soccer balls, some chasing bubbles, etc. She was the best ever at running ;). He had them run several times back and forth and she was gone! One side to the other. Very fast kiddo.

Her sleeping (and mine!!!) has improved immensely. She will wake up, at most, once during the night. Other than that it's before bed and maybe once in the early morning. We've since set up her "big girl room" with Hello Kitty everywhere, posters of jungle cats, abc's and her new toddler day bed. She naps in her day bed and she really can't get enough of her room. She loves it. She "helped" set up her bed by using the Alan wrench to twist things in various random holes in the wood. Very cute.

She's helpful around the house too. She loves stirring food, feeding the doggie, sweeping, and she actually takes out the trash. Every few days she'll go to the bathroom trashcan, pull it out and say "ew, yuck." I'll get a trashbag and she will (by herself-seriously) dump the contents into the bag. We then go around to all the little trashcans around the house and dump them one by one. It usually ends in her trying to take the huge bag out by herself, giving up and letting me carry both her and the bag to the dumpster. Lol. Ya gotta start somewhere.

She brushes my hair and shares food. That's just the way we've always done it.
She pretends she's sleeping, playing with her dollies, cars, and jumping off of things.
She really loves hot dogs, and pizza but also enjoys brocolli, carrots, and other meats besides hot dogs...although sometimes it's hard to tell...

She counts to 2. It's more like, one, two, one, two, one! And when she sees me writing or is drawing what she perceives to be letters, she says I O I O I O I! very proudly.

Getting Ready for the Holidays

Taken at Thanksgiving dinner at the Frazier House

Taken by Grampy Ken. Dressed by Daddy...

River Piggies

Happy Half birthday my 1.5 year old!

She is growing growing growing!!! up Up UP!

Chris and I have been trying this new thing with our big girl to ease her frustrations of mommy leaving every morning to go to work. Chris tells her that they are going to get the newspaper and walk mommy to her car. So off we all go, me to my car, them to fetch our morning newspaper. River picks up the paper, Daddy picks up River and I blow kisses from my car.

We have only been doing this for maybe a few weeks. It really seems to be working. Before this she would cry for quite a while and be really terrible the rest of the day. Now, she waives and doesn't cry at all. The other day I was gathering my things and Chris says to her "Time to go get the newspaper!" To which she responded "Bye bye Mommy," with a smile on her face, waiving her little hand! We hadn't even gotten to my car. :)


Potty Time:
Last night River was diaper-less. She began to tinkle a little so I stopped her and said, "River, we use the potty when we pee-pee. Run to the potty!" She loves running. So off she ran with mommy in tow to sit on her potty and for the first time, she peed in her little potty. We still need to work on what Toilet paper is for, but what a start!


Things we do together on Mommy's days off:

Eat Breakfast/brunch at Whole Foods. Her favorites are bow tie noodles and blueberries
Music Together classes every Saturday morning
Watching Elmo and Abby on the Kindle
Playing in her new room! We decorated it with Hello Kitty wall decals and curtains. Now when she wants
                     to play in her room she just says "Meow meow!" and points down the hall.
Farmer's Markets
We attended the Zoo Boo with some of her friends
Visit friends and her Nonnie and Grandpa
 

River's new words:

Run/running (and she will run while saying it)
One
boot
water (pronounced watey)
uppy (up)
shoot (thank goodness I had my mommy mouth on when I dropped that nail on the floor!)
       And this is what she was saying when I couldn't find my keys today.
hopper (grasshopper)
Potty
Poopy

I know I'm missing some.

Last but not least, and her favorite of the week:
Money...

The Day we pierced our Daughter

First we put her in a hat, because of course, every kid hat should have ears and/or horns!...and then we decided to get her ears pierced....but only if we could ride the "Nay nay" with a lollly. :)

Baby Bach

Corn Maze: What were we thinking? HOTTT!!!!!

Downtown Grower's Market

She was really interested in the giant pumpkins. I had $6 so I bought a pretty good sized one. She tried to take it from me and carry it, but alas, it was too big for baby girl. So the vendor was so nice that he gave her a little one to carry on her very own! But then we had to take a rest!

                                        She kept calling it an apple. And then she tried to eat it....

Little girls love toddlers and babies. Anywhere we go, River has little girls following her. This little girl came right up to us and asked if we named her River after the character in Firefly. Mouth agape, I said that is where the name came from. I had a nice chat with her mommy and then we all pet some cute puppys! Ahhhh the grower's market!

Explora Bubble Girl