1. Her newest favorite thing to say? "Mamma do!" "Daddy do!" or "Ri Ri do!"  whenever she wants someone to do something for her.  Sometimes "do" is followed by something slightly more descriptive, but not always. :)
2. She has discovered she can SCREAM when things don't go her way.  Not whine, or cry, but a blood curdling shriek of anger/frustration.  It drives me CRAZY.
3. She's really into putting puzzle pieces in the wrong spot while saying "here? noooooo!" with a sly little smile on her face.  Such a little jokester.
4. She LOVES cookie monster (calls him coo-coo) even though I'm pretty sure she's never even seen Sesame Street.
5. If she doesn't get my attention by yelling "MAMAMAMA"she switches it up and yells "MIMI!" "MIMI!"
6. Every time it's time to get in the car she tries to bring every stuffed animal she owns with her.  And four of her blankies.  And every time I have to spend 10 minutes convincing her to just bring ONE blankie and ONE animal. 
7. She is obsessed with sitting on her daddy's face.  I have no idea why, but if he lays on the ground to play with her, she runs up to him and sits on his face.
8. She has finally figured out Minnie Mouse and Mickey Mouse are two different characters, and that only one of them is actually called "Minnie."
9. She HATES putting pants on.  She fights it every. single. time.  But once they are on, it's totally no big deal.
10.  She also refuses to wear or have ANYTHING on her feet while she sleeps.  Absolutely NO footed pajamas, socks, or blankets may touch her feet.  If you try and sneak a blanket over her legs once she's fallen asleep, if she wakes at all she whines and cries and kicks until her feet are free.  Strange. 
11. I gave her chocolate milk one day in a big girl Peter Rabbit cup, and now every time she sees that cup, she demands chocolate milk.  Needless to say that cup has gone into hiding.
12. Every time we color, she asks me (or Mark) to draw her the following: circle, square, triangle, slide, pentagon.  Yes, a pentagon.
13. She cries over spilled milk.  Literally.  She HATES when any little drop of milk spills anywhere, and whines until it gets cleaned up.  She actually likes to clean it up herself, though!
14. She loves to pull the plug out of the bath (while she's still in it), but does NOT like when her toys get sucked to the drain, and calls for daddy to save them!
15. She is EXTREMELY afraid of the "talk" feature on her video monitor.  Don't EVER try to talk to her through her monitor, she will absolutely lose it.

Yup, I think that's it for now.

Little Riley loves puzzles.  She's been pretty good at the "easy" ones for a while now (you know, the wooden ones where you match the puzzle piece to the exact picture on the puzzle board).  But now she's starting to get the hang of the harder ones, the ones where there is no exact picture on the board, just the shape.  And she gets verrrrry excited when she gets the piece in.  See for yourself.

YAAAAAAY!!!

I did this when we first moved into our home, because we had changed so much in our house, and I wanted to share our living space!  Well, I don't know what it was, but after returning from the US, I got the itch to move and change things around again, and since we needed a nursery in addition to a big girl room for Riley, plus a more appropriate living area for our growing toddler, we changed things up.  And we're still changing things.  AND, we've done a lot of work on the outside of the house as well.  We're of course still not done with many of the rooms, or the outside, so I'll have to do this in stages, but here's what we've got.

We'll start with the kitchen.  Here's the BEFORE, first when the old owners were living there (so with all of their furniture), and then all cleaned out.

This was taken literally the day we moved in.  We didn't even have a microwave yet.  The "accent wall" was sort of a teal blue/green color (which, why would THAT wall be your accent wall?), the hardwood floor ended before going into the dining area, the counters were laminate, the curtains (you can barely see them) were so puffy and an odd shimmery color, and there was no window treatment on the kitchen window.  Here's what it looks like NOW:

First we painted... and you may notice that the wall on the left is light blue, and the wall on the right is grey... yeah, we haven't quiiiiiiite finished.  Also, I REALLY wanted new white wooden cabinets, but that wasn't in the budget, and you can't really paint these cabinets, so we had to work around them.  We added a roman blind to the window, replaced their old curtains (you'll see that more in the dining room later), extended the hardwood floor into the dining area, AND my most favorite, most recent addition- granite counter tops and tile back splash!!

Now, in the US, granite counters are THE thing to have.  All the newer houses likely have them, or something fairly comparable.  In New Zealand, I have not been to a single house that has granite counter tops.  Some of the newer built houses are putting them in (that I've seen in pictures), but they are so expensive to get!  We actually brought granite tiles over from the US when we moved here (crazy, I know), so all we had to pay for was installation, which wasn't really a big deal, and I think it will definitely help when it comes time to resell our house.  We also already had the blue glass mosaic tiles, we just had to decide on the design for the back splash.  We contemplated doing the whole back splash out of those tiles, but decided it might be a tad too bright and bold, so we just bordered a plain gray tile back splash with them.

And one more view (baby's fridge magnets removed for the sake of pictures):

Now, is this my dream kitchen?  No.  There are a lot of things I would change if funds would allow.  But, it's perfect for us right now!  And I'm still trying to figure out what to put on those shelves, they are pretty narrow so we're a bit limited in what they can hold...  Work in progress, I suppose.  Anyway, a side-by-side before and after:

So that's the kitchen!  Dining room and lounge, coming soon.  I hope.

One more week until full term!  Hooray!  Here's the latest version of me:

How I'm feeling:  Actually, feeling pretty good.  Tired chasing after and entertaining a toddler all day, but I get to look forward to a nice long nap or two during the weekend, and maybe even a sleep in if I'm lucky, so that helps.  No more heartburn (yay!), and still no carpal tunnel (yay yay!).  I am definitely feeling very pregnant though, and things like rolling over in bed and getting down to pick up Riley's toys are requiring a bit more effort these days.  I get out of breath much quicker, and I'm definitely feeling like I'm waddling a bit these days. I swear I get up to use the bathroom hourly during the night, which is less than ideal, but I remember it very well from last time.  What else... sitting certain ways has started to become pretty uncomfortable, the baby just doesn't have any room to move and he's squishing me!! The cramping has started, just like it did leading up to Riley's labor, so that's a good sign, although not really indicative of when labor will start.

Best part of the week:  Finally getting hospital bags packed, car seat ready to go, bottles and other baby things all sterilized and ready... pretty much everything directly related to the baby is all done and ready to be used.

Worst part of the week:  Realizing there's probably no chance all our stuff shipped from the US is going to get here before the baby is born.  Which means not only won't I have some essential items, but I will have to be unpacking and washing and putting away all that stuff right after the baby is born.  Lame.  Oh also, finding out I need to continue the injections for 6 weeks after baby is born.  Boo.

Weight gain this week: Well at first I wasn't going to weight myself, because I always do it in the morning and today I forgot, but then I got curious and just jumped on the scale after dinner (nice timing, I know).  Buuuut then I realized I didnt' really remember what I was last week, so who knows how much I gained... let's say 1 pound?
Total weight gain: Approximately 27 or 28 pounds.  I think my weight gain is slowing a bit, as my appetite has not been as big.

Cravings: Hmmm... apple juice, and oddly, whipped cream.

The OB appointment:  Okay so.  I saw the OB yesterday, and things didn't go exactly as planned.  First of all, turns out I have a UTI.  Never would have guessed that, since I have not a single symptom, but apparently I have one.  So I'm now on antibiotics for that.  Secondly, according to him I'm only measuring at 32 weeks, which makes me "small for dates" and he was concerned about IUGR (intra-uterine growth restriction).  I found that a little odd since this entire pregnancy (including at my appointment last week) I have been measuring just fine.  But he sent me for an ultrasound to confirm, also informing me that if baby was measuring too small, I would be induced asap (basically because something would be wrong and preventing baby from getting the nutrients he needs to grow).  So therefore, we did NOT set an induction date for 38 weeks, because we needed to wait and see the results from the ultrasound.  Needless to say, I was just a little bit stressed out.  Lucky for me I was able to get an ultrasound appointment fairly quickly (helps when your OB labels you urgent).

The ultrasound: Well, conveniently, my midwife's office is in the ultrasound office, so she stopped in to see me.  She measured me before I went in for the ultrasound, and according to her I was measuring 33/34 weeks, not 32, but better to get the ultrasound to be safe.  She said she'd wait and chat with me after the appointment.  So I go in, and turns out, baby is measuring "perfectly average" as the ultrasound tech put it.  Pretty much 50% across the board.  Best guess as to current weight is 6 pounds, 2 ounces.  So no cause for concern, no need for immediate induction, no need to stress!  If that measurement is correct though, and I'm induced at 38 weeks, we may be looking at a little 7 pound baby!  Riley was 7 pounds 6 ounces and she was SWIMMING in her newborn clothes, so looks like I should be getting some preemie clothes just in case!

The induction:  SO as I said, no date set.  We will do that at my next appointment when I'm 37 weeks.  The date will likely be around Feb 10, when I turn 38 weeks.  My mom arrives on the 7th, so I'm hoping baby will come on his own between the 7th and the 10th!!  The reason for induction has to do with my clotting disorder, which means there is more potential for the placenta to deteriorate or the cord to clot late in pregnancy, both of which are serious risks to the baby.  Also, with the amount of bleeding that occurs in labor/delivery, it's really not a good idea to be on blood thinners when that happens, so with an induction I will go off the blood thinners a day before.  If that were the only reason, I would push for a later induction (even just to 39 weeks!), but because there is added risk to the baby, I'm going to trust that these doctors know what they are talking about.  Better to have a slightly small baby than to have something horrible happen simply because an induction is not the way I wanted it to go (and yes I know there are other risks and possible downsides to an induction).

Whether I go naturally or via induction, I will have a baby in TWO WEEKS or less!Can't wait to see his precious little face!!

This last month FLEW by.  And now I have a 19 month old, one who is now that much closer to being a big sister!

This month Riley has been learning so many new words, and I just can't keep track anymore.  She tries to repeat everything we say, and picks up new words all the time. The bigger development though, is she's starting to put two and three word sentences together quite frequently, and it is so amazingly cute.  And I swear, nothing gets by that girl, she remembers everything we say.  One day, while she was coloring, she took the pen and colored straight on her mouth.  I told her to keep the pens on the paper, no pens in her mouth.  Next time we pulled out the pens, first thing out of her mouth? "No no pen mouth."  Atta girl.  Also?  If you tell her we're going to playground, and then ask her what's her favorite thing at the playground, or what she wants to do at the playground, she'll go through her list of faves: "Slide!!  Sweeeng!  Tunn! (Tunnel) and Breee!! (Bridge)."  She is becoming quite the little bargainer, and her fave thing to say is "one more time?" in the cutest little voice ever, and you can't help but let her do what she wants just one more time.

She busts out with random words that she has learned from various toys/books we own, and it surprises me how she picks things up after just a few times!  Like she knows and says the names of a ton of sea animals from this one puzzle we have (jellyfish, squid, seahorse, octopus, shark, whale, dolphin, crab), and she points out and says random things in all sorts of books after me pointing them out just once (things like "watering can", "pancakes," "sink," "shovel" and tons and tons more).  She's really into pointing out and labeling things as either mommy's, daddy's or "Ri Ri's".... like Mommy's shoes, Daddy's pants, Ri Ri's cup, etc...

She is suddenly really into her stuffed animals right now, and has 4 faves.  There's panda, Ri Bear (Riley Bear), Bay (Bailey), and Puppa.  She likes to put shoes and socks and hats on them, "feed" them her crackers and milk, brush their hair, put them "nigh nigh," kiss them, and carry them all around the house.  She puts them in a doll bed and rocks them back and forth.  She sleeps with all of them every night.  She wants to bring them all around the house with her.  If she's laying in bed, falling asleep, she runs through her checklist (out loud) to make sure they are all there.  She calls out "puppa?  Bay?  Pan? Ri Bear? and has to see/touch them all to make sure they are all in fact right there with her.  And you better believe she will know if one is missing.

She pretty much knows all her uppercase letters now, although gets a little confused with certain lowercase letters.  She also knows things like M is for mama, R is for Riley, Z is for zoo... you get the idea. She can pick out and say most numbers 1-9, and knows a whole bunch of colors and shapes.  She has counted from one to ten, but more often she gets stuck on 5 and 6.  She is getting opinionated in her old age, and I'll say to her "Riley it's time to get a new diaper" and she will look at me and say, "no new di!" and carry on with what she's doing.  Lucky for me, she is obsessed with all things Minnie Mouse related, and I have been able to use this to my advantage since we have diapers with Mickey and Minnie on them, so she gets to have a "Minnie di!"  Win for everybody!  Even better?  Riley has notice that some diapers have "TWO MINNIES!!" and it gets her to lay still every single time.

She loves art projects- coloring with crayons and pens, painting, stickers, you name it.  She has her own art cabinet, and she goes and gets her art supplies at least 3 or 4 times a day and marches over to her high chair and asks to get up.  I think part of the reason she knows so many colors is because of all her colored crayons and pens and paints!  She loves having someone draw shapes for her, and will say "Daddy do... Circle!  Tri!  Square! Star!" until he draws all the shapes she wants.  Also?  I've never met a child so obsessed with stickers.  I swear I clean up SO. MANY. STICKERS. each and every day.  They are on the floor, on the couch, on our clothes, in the bathroom, on the cupboards, EVERYWHERE.  Oh well, she's just being creative, right?

She loves peanut butter sandwiches, hummus, spaghetti, sausages, and homemade pizza.  She loves helping me load and unload the dishwasher, and putting the soap in and pushing the buttons.  She always wants to be in the kitchen with me, and will literally step on my toes repeating "uppa uppa uppa! see? uppa?" until I lift her up to see what I'm doing.  She loves watching home videos of herself, and will yell "more Ri Ri!" when it's over.  She loves cuddling with me, and she's gotten less mama-obsessed this month, which has definitely made things a little easier!  In fact, I left her with Nana today while I went to my OB appointment, and she didn't even notice I was gone!! 

Her favorite activity right now is waiting for someone to get up off their chair/couch/bed, and then SPRINTING to take their seat, sitting down and yelling "Hey!!!  My seat!" She loves being outside and constantly asks for her water table and clam shell (little baby pool with no water in it...)  Also, a recent development in the last few days?  She will sprawl out on the floor, and yell out "oh no!!!!" Fall down!!"  and then get up, and repeat.  She is seriously such a goofball and I have no idea where she comes up with these things.  Although once she does it once, and it's funny, I may or may not encourage it... :)

Oh and this face?  Was her response to me asking if she wanted me to comb her hair.  "No no comb!" was her response.   She HATES when we mess with her hair. :)

Man do I love this little girl.  I'm cherishing every last moment with her as my only little baby. :)  Happy 19 months baby bug!

We had a good weekend.  For starters, it was a 3 day weekend, which always helps.  The weather was pretty good, and we got a LOT crossed off our to do list.  Our kitchen is finished (photos coming soon!), my hospital bags are mostly packed, and we're feeling rested and ready for another busy week ahead.

And what did we do this weekend?  Oh, just the usual.  We went to the playground, where Riley spent most of her time in the "fweeng".

Little one loves her swings.  She says "weee!" literally the entire time she's in there.  She may hop out for a quick venture onto the slide or through the tunnel, but then she's right back onto the swing.  The girl knows what she likes.

Then we ventured back to Nana and Grandad's house for a little fun, which involved playing with pegs, of course.

Riley is getting so smart, it amazes me each and every day.  She knows most of her colors, and was totally excited to show me all the "purpur" pegs, one by one.  And when Nana asked, "how many pegs do I have?" she looked down, and said "one, two, fwee!" and sure enough, Nana had three pegs.

The rest of the afternoon was spent hanging out with Harvey the beagle, who Riley now calls "ha-bee" instead of just "ha."  She thinks it is SO funny that he sits on the couch.  He is not quite as amused.

And of course, her favorite activity at the moment... waiting until someone gets up, and then running and stealing their seat and shouting, "Hey!!!  My seat!!!" It seriously is funny every single time.

Honestly, every weekend should be a 3 day weekend.  Right?  Glad we agree.

On tap this upcoming week?
-OB appointment to schedule induction date (eek!)
-Riley turns 19 months old
-I become 36 weeks pregnant, and try my best to NOT let baby come early!
-and about 40 other things to get done.  No big deal.

When I was pregnant with Riley I had maternity photos taken, and I am so glad I did because my weekly self portrait in the mirror is not exactly the best way to capture the pregnancy.  This time around I wasn't sure if I was going to get photos taken or not, and I went back and forth, and even almost booked a photographer, and then decided against it.  But I still really wanted them done, just without the price tag, so I decided to get my butt in hear and take them myself.  Now, this required a bit of planning because (1) I wanted my husband and daughter in some (2) I needed my husband to help me take some of the photos while also keeping Riley entertained and (3) I felt like I only had one shot at this with a less than patient toddler and fairly busy husband.  So.  I thought about it and planned it in my head, and decided I wanted 2 types of photos, so I would do them separately.

The first (and easier) ones I wanted to be done at home.  These were ones of just me, so the plan was to do them while Riley was sleeping.  Well, Mark was less than enthusiastic about helping me, so I pulled out the trusty tripod and used my self timer for all of these... NOT as easy as it sounds, especially when space is a little tight and you are rushing to get your fairly pregnant self into position before the timer goes off.

So basically, these weren't exactly what I wanted, but they will do the job.  If the weather is nice I hope to do some outdoor ones where you might actually see my face more than one time.  :)  And maybe Mark and/or Riley will make an appearance in a few too.  Until then, here's what I've got:

Now normally I'm not into the bare belly thing, but I thought what the heck, why not?  So you get to see a few.  Lucky you. :)

These next pictures make me feel like baby is definitely pretty low... right?

Look, it's my face!!  Proof it is actually me you are seeing. :)

Yeah, so that's the best I got today.  I've got a lot of work to do on my self portrait skills!  Either that or to convince my husband to help me out next time, we'll see.

Just to warn you, there will likely be more videos than normal in the future on this blog.  I've left a lot of family and friends behind in the US, and sometimes they need to see Riley in action.  So feel free to watch or don't watch, it's up to you.  Riley has been REALLY into Minnie Mouse lately.  Like, more than the Wiggles even.  For Christmas we bought her a HUGE Mickey Mouse sticker book, and she plays with it all the time.  And just from playing with that book, she learned all the characters.  Then all of a sudden the next time we let her watch an episode of Mickey Mouse clubhouse, she got so excited to see all her favorite sticker friends in action!

_I swear she doesn't watch THAT much TV, she really did learn all the characters from her book!  That hot dog dance though?  That's from the show. :)

So this is the big 35/35 day, which totally doesn't apply to me anymore.  It means 35 weeks pregnant, with 35 days left to go. I only have about 21 days to go if I'm being induced at 38 weeks.  So anyway...

With Riley, I had maternity photos taken at 35 weeks, so my goal is to get some taken this weekend... although I'm doing it myself, so it could get a little tricky, but we'll see.  Therefore, no weekly photo quite yet!

How I'm feeling: TIRED.  I didn't remember feeling this tired with Riley, so I looked back at my little pregnancy journal I kept, and apparently I WAS feeling quite tired, but I was able to sleep in as late as I wanted on days I wasn't working, so that clearly helped quite a bit.  This time around?  Not so much.  Also at this point last time my carpal tunnel was going in full force, and it hasn't really been an issue yet.  Hooray!  Now heartburn... right at 34 weeks, heart burn was awful.  I had 3 or 4 days of just horrible night time heart burn.  I had to watch what I was eating, how much I was eating, and stop eating well before bed time in order to not be kept awake for hours and be forced to basically sleep sitting up.  And then?  It was gone.  Completely.  I was pretty sure that was a result of the baby dropping, as there had been a few other signs that he had dropped, but I wasn't sure.  Then at my midwife appointment yesterday, my midwife told me he was definitely very low (and head down still, yay!). Looking back at my notes from last time around, apparently something similar happened to me with Riley (got heartburn, then it went away around 36 weeks when she dropped).  Sooo we are definitely making progress towards labor!

Weight gain this week: 1 pound
Total weight gain: 27 pounds.  At this point with Riley I had only gained 21.5 pounds.  Eesh.  I'd really like to stay under 30 pounds gained, but at this point, whatever happens happens.

Best part of the week:  Completion of our new granite kitchen counters (pictures coming soon).  It was supposed to take 2 days and ended up taking twice as long, which meant we were without a kitchen for FOUR days. 
Worst part of the week:  Trying to feed a picky eater toddler without being able to cook in the kitchen for 4 days.

Cravings: Popsicles, smoothies, various fruit
Aversions: none

What baby is up to: weighing in at around 5.5 pounds and measuring around 18 inches long.  That's pretty much the important stuff!

I have mostly packed my hospital bag, so at least that's one thing checked off the massive to-do list!  Hoping to get a lot more accomplished this weekend!

Before we got back to NZ, Riley went through a two week period of HATING the bath.  She would fight getting in, cry the whole time, and especially hated having her hair washed.  I don't know what the deal was, since she previously loved it, but part of it was probably due to her being sick and just feeling irritable in general, but then it hung around post-sickness, so I don't know what the deal was.  But since we've been back to our house in NZ, she's back to her usual bath-loving self.  Thankfully.  Bath time battles are no fun at all.

And I've been trying to get back into the habit of taking more pictures again.  I left my charger for one camera in the US, and my memory card for the other camera in the US as well (and no they are not interchangeable).  So I was limiting my picture taking until I got those two pieces for my cameras, and now they are here!  And I might be unique in that we actually have really good natural light in our bathroom for bath time pictures.  Sadly, this was the very first face she gave me:

What a goof.  Right after this she was playing happily with this little red cup, and she would bring it up to her head and laugh and laugh, so I told her to do it again so I could take a picture.  Well, actually, I told her to "put it on your head, Riley!"  So she decided to fill it with water this time and then put it on her head.  She was not pleased with my suggestion.

Not to worry, she recovered pretty quickly.

Yup, bath time is a favorite activity once again.  Full of playing with letters and numbers, eating bubbles (yum), fishing for tur-turs (turtles), fishies, and oc-poo (octopus).  Splashing and pouring water on herself, submerging ducks and letting them go and watching them pop above the surface.  Standing up and sitting down quickly so she can splash with her little butt.  It's fun, I tell you.  Until, of course, it's time to get out.  But with a lot of advanced notice, and the ability to bring a few bath toys out of the bath, and if all else fails, lots and lots of singing and dancing by daddy, we can usually avoid any meltdowns.

Yup, bath time is back in the good books.  Just the way we like it.