28 months

This little munchkin is 28 months old!

She is so much fun and she gets smarter and smarter every single day.  My mom recently decided to teach Riley a few new songs since we sing the same 20-ish ones over and over...  They were songs she had never heard before, and after just one day she knew them and was singing them by herself.  Guess I need to learn some new songs to teach the girl!  We also bought her some new puzzles- some more difficult, more advanced puzzles for age.  She struggled with them at first, but after helping her do them the first time, she then understood what she needed to do and could do them on her own!  She memorizes new books after reading them only a few times... it blows my mind.

She is absolutely in love with my parents' two black labs.  She wants to snuggle with them and play with them, give them "nose kisses" and pet them and feed them treats.  She is very gentle with them, our only problem is keeping her away from Penny who is just a puppy and can get a little too excited/rough with her.  Riley thinks she's the boss of the dogs, and is constantly telling them "go to your bed!  good dog! No Penny, no barking!"  Sit penny!  Give me a kiss Bailey!" etc etc...

Right now she's obsessed with doing everything by herself.  Opening doors, climbing in and out of her car seat, picking her own clothes, pouring her own water, picking out her own snacks, etc.  Which means everything takes ten times as long, but is ten times as cute as well.  She's starting to get pretty good at playing independently for short periods here and there, but of course that usually involves making a HUGE mess. 

Lately her favorite foods are: carrots, salad, Life cereal, smoothies, almonds, fruit snacks, and sometimes grapes and bagels. Sippy cups are a thing of the past, but she is really into using a straw all the time.  She is a master iphone user.  Mark and I never had iphones, she never got to play with one until we got to the US... Both her Grandma and Aunt Jennie have one, and she has not only cracked the code, but she know how to get to what she wants with no problem at all...  She loves taking pictures and videos.  I think Jennie has hundreds of pictures of random stuff on her phone thanks to Riley Bug.

Little miss smarty pants is really getting the hang of pronouns, and is forming long complex sentences that still blow us away every time we hear them.  We've seen a decrease in tantrums this month, but an increase in whining.  And boy is whining annoying!  She's also at a weird stage where she still NEEDS a nap, but can go without one, but if she goes without, she gets realllly cranky in the later afternoon, and then she needs to go to bed at like 6:30.  But if she does take a nap, it's usually 2-3 hours, and then we cannot get her in bed before 9:30/10pm.  So we play it by ear, depending on our plans for the day and how she's doing, and what time she wakes in the morning.  Some days she naps, some days she doesn't, but she can't usually go more than a 2 days in a row with no nap.

Going for car rides with her is pretty fun these days.  She pretty much sings to us the entire time.  And if she's not singing, she's blabbering away... something like this, "This is a red light, red means we have to stop.  Waaaaait... waaaait... now it's green!  Green means we have to go!  Go mama!  Chase that truck!  Get 'em!"  She likes to point things out, ask questions, jabber jabber jabber.

She picks up on things really fast.  On our way home from the airport, we went over a bridge, and then through a tunnel... Now every time we go through the tunnel, she says "first the tunnel, then we get to go on the bridge!"  Or we were stuck in traffic once, and she asked me why we weren't driving.  I told her about traffic and that we couldn't go... the following day, we were stopped while waiting for Mark to run out and grab something.  She said "oh no, we can't go, we're stuck in traffic."  I told her that actually traffic only happened when there were lots of cars, so now every time we stop but are not at a red light or not in traffic, she says "We're not in traffic, because traffic means there's lots and lots of cars.  We're just stopped."

She's so very observant.  She will tell you "Daddy likes coffee and orange juice, Mama likes pepsi, grandma and Aunt Jennie like wine, and baby likes water and milk."  She plays pretend tea party and pours everyone their favorite drink without being asked, which is pretty funny to see a 2 year old pour her Aunt Jennie some "wine" in her tiny porcelain tea cup.

She's a little bit shy when she first meets people or when new people are around, but as soon as they leave, she just won't stop talking about them.  She is extremely goofy.  She likes to mix up words to songs and make up her own words, and laugh and laugh and laugh.  She is getting a sense of humor and I can't believe some of the things she thinks are funny... like replacing "Head, shoulders , knees and toes" with "Head, shoulders, knees and butts" and cracking up hysterically.  She LOVES to be naked.  She runs around with no clothes on yelling "I'm a naked baby!"  She loves drawing all over her body and is often covered in pen.  She ADORES her baby brother and is a fabulous big sister.

I'm sure there's tons more I'm missing, it's just so hard to keep up with all her new tricks and developments, my little genius baby!