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August re-cap.

9/5/2013

Looks like these big monthly blog posts are going to become a regular thing around here. Here's a little photo recap of our adventures last month... The kids love to play outside (as all kids do), and they love to roam around and play on the front steps and driveway, especially in the evenings when they get to wait for daddy to come home from work!

Riley is such a goofball all the time. The faces she makes when I am trying to take her picture are priceless.

Early in August we went to go and visit Jennie down in Long Beach. Just Riley and I went, leaving Jack at home with daddy! I have many more pictures from our time down there, but I am hoping to eventually put together a little video, so well see if that ever happens. :) There was lots of Aunt Jennie time, hanging out at the beach, and playing lots and lots of fetch with Penny!

Riley has been pretty good about naps/rest time lately, and when she wakes up from her nap, she goes and uses the potty, gets out of her (dry) pull-up and into her clothes, and then accessorizes before coming to see me. This is often what I see when she finally exits her room post-nap.

Jack and Riley's relationship has its ups and downs, but they do actually play well together sometimes. :) She loves to tickle him, and he loves to give her lots and lots of cuddles! Other things that are very popular these days? TRAINS, wrestling/jumping on daddy, dress-up, and more trains. And anything that involves being outside.

I love moments like these. Absolutely love them.

Jacky is so funny, he LOVES trains, but he gets so so mad if things don't go exactly like he wants... if the track breaks, or the train gets stuck, watch out, he will start throwing tracks and trains left and right!

I have finally edited Jackson's 18 month pictures too, so I should probably do his 18 month update before he turns 19 months in 2 days... Oops. Also coming up... my thoughts on Riley starting preschool!!

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The rest of July!

8/16/2013

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As promised... the rest of the July re-cap. We have been having some very low key days. Spending lots of time hanging out, playing outside, and enjoying the great weather! The kids LOVE to go for walks or a run to the local school playground. In fact, Jack knows the exact route we use to get there, and is NOT happy if I turn a different way!

Riley has been the most fun little girl EVER. There were a few weeks right around when she turned three that were VERY challenging. Lots of tantrums, crazy behavior, and I was pulling my hair out. And then all of a sudden, she turned back into her normal happy self, and is just SO much fun. She is starting preschool in 3 weeks and I'm actually really sad that she's going to be gone for those few hours 3 days a week!!

Jackson has been a little, um, challenging lately. Holy cow he is hard work! He's super cute and fun, but MAN can he throw a mean tantrum... He's quick to throw things and try and bite if he doesn't get his way, and he has now started hitting (both me and Riley) and thinks it's soooooo funny when you tell him no. He wants to play with eveyrthing Riley has, and she has actually been pretty good at sharing, but if he doesn't get what he wants, well, you better watch out!

I still have to do this little guy's 18 month update, but I need to take his 18 month photos (ack!) so it might be another week before I get around to it... eventually though, it will happen.

We are lucky to have a playground RIGHT by our house, take 2 minutes to walk there (if strollers are involved.... 15 minutes to walk there if the little people are on foot). The playground is really meant for a bit older kids, but Ri and Jacky Boy don't seem to mind!

I totally adore this little girl's wild and crazy head of curls. LOVE.

I was determined to get ONE picture of these two sitting together on our front lawn... cookie bribes got them to stay put, this was the best photo I could get.

Jackson is pretty much immune to my photography antics. No matter WHAT I do or say, he will not look at me if I have my camera pointed at him. BUT. If a bird or plane flies overhead? I thank my lucky stars and am able to capture those cutie blue eyes and even some smiles.

Our backyard is currently toddler paradise. We have a trampoline, and playground, a sand pit, a water table, various toys, and BUBBLES.

Jacky is loving playing "where's the baby?" (also known as peek-a-boo) these days. He thinks he's soooooo clever!

Grandpa is like a celebrity around here. The kids go NUTS when he walks in the room!

The two of them on the trampoline are hit or miss... sometimes they have the best time together and run and jump and chase... other times, there are tears. This was one of the happy cute times. :)

Jackers is happiest RIGHT here, out in the backyard. Exploring, running, climbing... getting into trouble!

I took Riley out one night on a special mama date, and I wanted to take her to this little spot and see if it would be good for future photo shoots. I'd say that's a YES.

I love being able to have some special one-on-one time with her!!! My little Riley bug, I cannot believe how big she is getting!!

So now I'm all caught up with July... just the first half of August and all my videos to catch up... eesh. Eventually I will get there!

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July recap (part 1)

8/11/2013

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My poor neglected little blog. Seriously I need two more hours in every day to get all the things done I need to get done! Or to figure out how to function on less sleep, but I seriously don't think that is possible!!

So we will take few steps back and re-cap. I hate re-cap posts, but I also hate totally skipping over photos, and my sister wants a blog update NOW, so this is what we get. :)

Riley got a balance bike for her birthday, and we've slowly been practicing! She looks all big and grown up riding that thing, I can hardly believe it!

Jackson has become a WILD child. He climbs on everything. He is feisty! He knows what he wants and gets MAD when he doesn't get it. He bites! But, he's also super fun and cute and definitely keeps me on my toes all day long!!

And Jacky is definitely a daddy's boy, no question. He LOVES his daddy, and always has so much fun with him!

Gosh I need to blog more, I can hardly even remember what we did in July!! Jacky dd get pretty sick, poor little thing, he just wanted to be held at all times, with a fever of 104! I hate when the babies are sick :(

The second half of July was pretty fun, but of course, it's almost midnight, so those pictures will have to wait for another day. Hopefully another day this week, if I can squeeze it in!! And then maybe we will get to August and be all caught up!

Also... I want to be able to look back at these posts some day down the road and not have to calculate how old my children were... so for when that time comes, I'm going to start putting my kids' ages at the bottom of the posts. Just sittin' there, by themselves, like this:

Riley is 3 years old! Jackson is 17 months!

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Riley turns three! The official 3 year update.

7/19/2013

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And just like that, we have a 3 year old. A spunky, funny, spirited, adorable, smart-as-can-be three year old.

Where should I even begin? Let's start with her favorite things these days. She loves: Being outside in the backyard, running, jumping, playing on the playground, and being in the sandpit. She loves riding her bike and playing chase with her brother. She loves dress up and looking like a princess. She's into board games and still loves to play games on the ipad, of course. Her two fave shows are Mickey Mouse and Dora the Explorer. She doesn't really watch anything else.

She gets herself completely dressed every single day, and is very particular about what she wants to wear. She does NOT love brushing her hair, but she's getting better about letting me do it. She is still napping half of the days, the other half she is terror on wheels come 4pm... and often times, with no nap, she's asleep before 6. We briefly attempted having her ditch pull-ups for bed, which was successful for three nights before it, well, wasn't successful anymore. So we're sticking with pull-ups for sleep for the time being.

She loves mini pancakes and life cereal for breakfast. She still loves her milk and her Odwalla smoothies (smoothie orangey juice, as she calls it). She loves pretzels and sun butter sandwiches, and sausages and chippies, and carrots and spaghetti! Other than that, she's a super picky eater, and often hardly eats any dinner at all. But she makes up for it in the size of her breakfast! Holy cow the girl can eat breakfast!

She has started to become extremely particular about how she wants things done, and if they don't happen that way, she can throw quite the tantrum. We have definitely seen a huge increase in the number of tantrums in the past few weeks. It can surely be exhausting, for both her and us! Also, the littlest things can become the BIGGEST deals... For example, one morning there was a 30 minute meltdown because her waffle broke and she wanted it put back together. Another tantrum because she spilled a few drops of her milk on her shirt. Things like that where it is totally crazy to you or me, but a huge deal to her little self.

Little Miss cutie patootie still loves to sing. She sings ALL THE TIME. She sings real songs, she makes up her own songs about anything and everything. She knows the songs we sing her before bed time. She knows songs from the radio and from shows, and she uses those songs and makes up her own lyrics. Pretty darn cute!! Between her and Jack there is always some sort of singing/humming happening in our house!

My little monkey LOVES to read. She would sit with me and read stories all day! She also loves when I tell her stories, and requests different stories about different things every night, which forces me to be quite creative in my storytelling!! She also loves all art projects, and has gotten pretty good with her drawing!! She can draw shapes, and some simple letters (like M), and she can trace all the letters on these little dry erase flash cards we got her (which she loves!)

She adores her brother... most of the time. She loves to see him first thing in the morning, and loves to give him cuddles and make him laugh. But then all of a sudden she will decide she has had enough of him, and is not pleased when he wants something that she has, and will give him a good hard shove, or hit him, or something similar. The good thing is, most of the time, I can totally see it coming. Bad thing is, sometimes I can't, and poor Jacky Boy gets pummeled. He's going to be one tough little baby, that's for sure.

Recently Riley loves putting on "shows" for us late at night. She wants us all to sit on the couch and watch her on her "stage" while she runs around, sings and dances with her microphone, and basically puts on a show for us! Then she will bring us into the show to dance with us, and she assigns everyone an animal that they have to dance like or pretend to be. She is pretty darn hilarious!

She has such a fun imagination! I love listening to her little mind work, and the scenarios and stories she comes up with! She also has an absolutely amazing memory, nothing gets by that little girl! She is also totally in the "why" phase of toddlerhood. She wants to know WHY for every single thing. What are you doing mama? Why? Why? Why why why and on and on until she is satisfied with my answer, finally.

She loves to wait outside on the front porch for her daddy to get home from work. As soon as we see his car, she runs right for him so she can help him drive the car in the driveway. She loves wrestling and playing chase with her daddy when he gets home, and lots of times he will take her down to the playground or to play in the backyard while I make dinner. But, she is still very much a mama's girl. She wants me to do most things with her, especially when it comes to the whole bed time routine. She can actually be really stubborn about that kind of stuff. But at least I know she loves me! :)

She has started sleeping in her own bed all night a lot more regularly, but still comes in our room to sleep in the middle of the night sometimes. She wakes up around 6 most days, which is unfortunate since Jack usually sleeps until 7 or even 8. Oh how much more rested I would feel with TWO children sleeping in until 7 or 8 every day!!

She knows her first, middle and last name, where she lives, and where she was born. She knows her age and birthday, and we are working on phone number. She knows her days of the week, and she can spell her name, Mama, Dada, Baby, and a few other words. She knows a bajillion things that start with each letter, and if you ask her what letter any word starts with, she can tell you (except for tricky ones with silent letters). She is constantly asking me "what does this spell mama?, how do you spell this? which word is this? etc etc."

I could go on forever and ever with more details, but this is already almost a month late, so I think I've included all the important details. At some point I will add in the video I took of her for her 3 year video/interview!

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The party!!

7/9/2013

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Ohhhh the Tinkerbell party. The party that almost wasn't... First, let me start by saying, Riley had decided she wanted a Tinkerbell party ages ago. I bought her a Tinkerbell shirt. I did her invitations. We were all set for Tinkerbell. And then she decided she wanted a Dora the Explorer birthday party... I just could NOT bring myself to have a Dora Party, so I'm thankful we were already set on Tinkerbell!

The decorations were fun! Mark was in charge of the "Pixie Dust Tree" which you will see hanging from the ceiling. There were fairies and butterflies, and pixie dust and balloons, and lots of treats!

There were pictures from Riley's first three years, and all three of her albums!! And the cake pops, ohhhh the cake pops. So. so good! Made by a local mom who owns her own cake business, Lovely Little Cakes!

Riley LOVED her Tinkerbell cake. And it was Jackson friendly since it was a vegan cake!!

And then the biggest surprise... Aunt Jennie came!! We had no idea she was coming, and she came with a huge bunch of balloons, Riley was pretty excited!!

Overall, even though more than half the people invited couldn't make it, we had lots and lots of fun and I would consider the party a complete success!

I took so many photos of this little sweet pea to celebrate her third birthday! I absolutely adore her and I just cannot believe she is already three!!

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Round 1 of third year pictures

7/9/2013

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I officially have a problem. I am completely unable to narrow down which pictures I love, so I share them all... so, picture overload from Riley's indoor/studio portion of her third year shoot!

I had this idea for a while now, and I had a 2 hour window to set it up and take all the pictures while Jackson was asleep. And by some miracle, it worked. It was perfect!!

Had to sneak some daddy shots in there, of course!

And no better way to end a photo shoot than sprinkle chocolate everywhere!

I finally got around to taking her outdoor 3 year photos a few days ago, so eventually when I get around to editing those I will share them also!!

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Riley Bug turns three!! (1 of 3)

7/9/2013

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We'll start with her actual birthday... As per tradition, she woke up to a room full of balloons! Well... sort of... she actually came in our room in the middle of the night (not noticing her balloons) so I had to bring her BACK into her own room to see the balloons. Still a big hit!

We had pancakes for breakfast, played and played and played, and then opened up presents with Grandma and Nana. You got some amazing dress up accessories, lots of games and books, a farm set to share with Jacky, and a few other things!

We spent the afternoon at swim lessons, and then home for birthday cake!!!

It was a simple day. Just spent hanging out and doing the things that miss Riley loves. And it was perfect! Next up... proper 3 year update, and party pictures!!!

Oh yeah and? We ended the day with extra stories, tickles, and snuggles in bed. Nothing better.

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August re-cap.

The rest of July!

July recap (part 1)

Riley turns three! The official 3 year update.

The party!!

Round 1 of third year pictures

Riley Bug turns three!! (1 of 3)

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