Joke's on you, Chuckee

A few weeks ago, me and my friend Marie took our kids to Chuckee Cheese's. They have free rides every weekday for a few hours. Technically, you're probably supposed to buy their overpriced pizza while you're taking advantage of their free rides, but who cares about technicalities. Take that, Chuckee! That'll teach you to be generous and let kids use your toys for free.
Riley loved it! He absolutely loves anything with wheels, so a bunch of toy cars with at least one wheel apiece was his idea of heaven. He was a little scared of the electronic puppets that dance around stiffly and sing outdated songs, but who can blame him there?
On a side note, I'm glad my friend Marie and her little boy Hayden moved to Provo. The only kids Riley has to play with from our church are all girls. And he's a little...umm....rough with them. More like heathenistic. I was at a baby shower a while back, and there was a little girl a couple of months younger than him sitting on the floor. I sat him down and he crawled right over to the little girl I thought maybe they would play together quietly for awhile. But instead, he pushed her over.
>

Hooray for teething!

Yep, I'm serious. I'm greatful for teething. You want to know why? Because without it, i'd just have to admit that I have a fussy baby who still sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and likes to throw major tantrums.
As it is, at least I have a scapegoat to blame everything on. What's that? Riley took one bite of his food and then spit it out all over the place? He must be teething. Riley woke up two times last night? Surely he's teething. Riley is rolling around on the floor, screaming at the top of his lungs because I got tired of carrying him around and put him down. Teething, teething, teething.
Seriously though...Riley has been sooooo soooo fussy these last couple of weeks. He was sick for a few days and had a high fever of 103 off and on. The doctor said it was just a virus. It was weird though, because he didn't have any other symptoms other than being really hot.
And I think teething is at least a small part of the problem. He has three teeth completely in now, and two more trying to pop their way through. I feel bad for the little guy. It must hurt. I'll be honest though---I mostly feel bad for myself! No one warned me that tantrums started at age 1. I thought that didn't happen until the terrible twos.
Good thing Riley is so cute. It makes it all worth it.

guys + hair fixin' = trouble

So awhile ago, Riley's uncle Dustin decided to fix his hair for him.
   After about a pound of hair gell, this lovely mohawk was the end result. Of course, this was done on purpose. But I still can't help but conclude that men don't usually have what it takes in the fixing-other-people's-hair department.
Which leads me to some painful memories from my childhood. My mom taught early morning seminary for years and years, so my dad had to get us ready for school. My sister and I would roll out of bed with unruly hair and dad would just stick a bow in it somewhere and send us off to the bus. We were so ashamed that we always wore a hood on the bus, even if it was burning hot outside.
As you might guess, this didn't do much for our reputation as one of only a few Latter-day Saint families in town. Everyone else on the bus thought we were in some weird kind of cult or something.
Luckily, my mom would always meet us in the school bathroom to fix our hair before sending us off to class. That helped kids like us even more--we not only wore hoods all the time, but we must have had some sort of weird disease because we spent half an hour in the bathroom every morning.

Kissin' Cousins

Last week, Riley's newest cousin was born. Her name is Graycie Lynne Leasy, and she sure is a cutie! It will be fun to have a new little baby around.
The new mom
She's a grandma...again.
"Hooray for babies!"

It's just not the same

So now that Riley is older an an extremely active little boy, I've noticed that I have a brand-new dilemma in my life. When in the world do mothers of almost-one-year-old boys use the bathroom?
Every time I look like I'm thinking about heading in the direction of our porcelin throne, Riley seems to know about it. I think he's a mindreader. It's a race to see who can get to the bathroom first, and Riley usually wins. Then, the next ten minutes consist of me trying to pry his strong little fingers off the door frame (or if I'm lucky off the toilet seat--thus lengthening the process because I have to disinfect his hands), picking him up and plucking him down at a safe distance from the bathroom. I run back as fast as I can so I can close the door without worrying about slamming his fingers.
From there, you would think that the process would be over and a person could use the bathroom in peace. But Riley has figured out that the latch on our bathroom door doesn't close tight, and if he pushes just right, he can get the door open. If that fails, he stands outside the door and yells and pounds on it at five-second intervals. Either that or lays down on the carpet and peers through the crack between the door and the floor.
It's quite a process, and I'm about to decide that it might be easier to just buy some giant diapers for myself and join Riley in his carefree attitude about the necessity of toilets. Then again, this whole process results in the only exercise I ever get, so maybe I should keep things as they are.

It's Funny Because It's true

My mom e-mailed me this video that I think is absolutely hilarious. For any of you who want to see it, click on the "It's Funny Because It's True" title and it will take you there.
I think all of us moms will relate to this. Guys have a tendency to freak out over dirty diapers. Maybe they just have a stronger gag reflex than women. Or maybe it's because they aren't around dirty diapers all day long like we are. Or maybe they're just wimps... I think I'm getting close to the real cause with that third guess.
Oh, and P.S. How do you load video from google or other places off the internet directly to your blog?

Baby Messes

Caught in the act!
Riley's favorite hiding place--Under the bar stool.

Above all else, Riley loves to make messes! He spent two hours today crawling from bookshelf to bookshelf and throwing all the books on the floor. I would have stopped him, but truthfully, it was really nice to have something capture his undivided attention for two hours. Luckily for him (and me), his baby mess-making is still cute at this point. It's kind of like when you hear a tone-deaf three-year-old singing in church. It sounds horrible, but it's adorable just the same. The other day, I was making dinner and I could hear that Riley had managed to open the cupboard underneath the entertainment center. I had raw chicken juice all over my hands, and figured he couldn't do too much damage in a couple of minutes. I was wrong. Before I knew what had happened, he had managed to dump out four boxes worth of game pieces and thrown our CD stack all over the place. It took me almost half an hour to clean up.

Powell Cont.

It took some getting used to for Riley to get used to his life jacket...As you can probably tell by the look on his face.

Riley and his great-grandma Morrill.. and their almost-matching hats.

Here's even more Powell picks for ya'll to peruse. Someone out there who knows what they're talking about, is there anyway to post more than five pics on the same entry? I can't figure it out...but that's really no surprise.

Lake Powell

Grandpa and Riley, the awesome fishermen. You can tell what Riley's thinking. "What the heck is this thing and can I eat it?"


We had the chance to go to Lake Powell with my family last week. We've been going there once a year since I was 12, and I have some great family vacation memories from that place. It was a fun trip...there isn't really any other place like Lake Powell. It's so beautiful.
Riley loved it...I don't think he'll ever be able to readjust to life in our boring old apartment again. There was just too much excitement! He's a smart little guy. He would pretend to drive the boat and make little motor boat sounds. He also learned how to quack when we were feeding the ducks. Any time after that when we saw ducks again, he'd start quacking.
If you ask me, he says three words already. "Mama, Dada, and Bye Bye." Sam disagrees with me. It's true Riley doesn't always use those words in the right context. He calls ducks "Mama" and boats "Dada" I know, I know. All of you critics are thinking this kid doesn't know what the heck he's saying. But he has also used those words enough in the right situations that it makes me wonder. One definite..He knows "Uhoh." He says it anytime he drops something. He's growing so fast! I can hardly believe how much he's changing.

Pics

More Pics

Joseph Smith

As promised, up above I posted some more photos of Riley that we took while Grandma and Grandpa were down from Texas. On Monday, we went to Temple Square in Salt Lake City before we dropped them off at the airport. It was a perfect day (aside from a few very tense moments when we couldn't figure out how to get on crazy old I-15 and thought Grandpa and Grandma were going to miss their plane.)
The flowers on Temple Square were beautiful, and we had the chance to see a new movie about Joseph Smith, the first Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I think the Church always does an amazing job with the movies they make, and this was no exception.
It was amazing to have the opportunity to look more closely into Joseph Smith's life. Even though I was distracted and had to take Riley out into the lobby a time or two, my testimony that Joseph Smith was a prophet grew from this movie. It was a very emotional, personal look at Joseph Smith's life and all of the trials he went through to restore the gospel. So many people persecuted Joseph and the early Saints because they believed the heavens were closed and that there was no such thing as revelation. But why should this be? If God had a prophet and he spoke to him in ancient times, why would he not do the same thing today?
In that one brief instant when Joseph Smith saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, so much truth was restored. Because of Joseph, we know we have a loving Heavenly Father who is interested and wants to be involved in the details of our lives. And because of Joseph, the true Church as it existed during Christ's ministry exists again on the earth today.

Smert Sam Fineeshed Kolluge!

Hi Everyone! Well, Sam finally did it. He graduated from BYU with a degree in Biology...pretty impressive considering how difficult some of the classes were that he had to take. Sam, we're proud of you!
We had a barbeque after graduation with my family and Sam's family. We also had a really fun visit with Sam's parents (they came down from Texas for graduation.) Riley sure did love them! He still hasn't really hit the stranger anxiety phase, which was good because he warmed up to them in no time. I'll post some more photos from our visit in the next day or two.

Easter

Riley's first Easter was great, but uneventful. My mom bought Riley a cute little outfit (Is it okay to call what boys wear "outfits"?) Maybe I should say my mom bought Riley a very manly collection of clothing. It was really windy and kind of cold, so it was kind of hard to get good photos. We didn't do much of note, but we did buy Riley a little Easter basket with some toys and books. They were all from the trusy old dollar store. You've got to love that place!

The Birthday Boy

Yesterday was Sam's big #25 birthday. We conned my sister into watching Riley for the afternoon and went snowboarding. It was so much fun! It was a warm day, but it had also just recently snowed so the conditions were great. Good thing Sam had a birthday so we could convince ourselves it was okay to spend money on lift tickets.

Isn't he cool?
Not quite as cool...but I tried.

He Crawls (Sort Of)

Video Sharing at DropShots.com

I must warn you in advance, this video is not going to win any awards. I know, I know, it's enough to make you seasick. But in my defense, it was pretty hard to crawl backwards and film at the same time. My crawling gait isn't very smooth--I'll have to work on that.
Oh, and P.S., what's with me talking like a hick? I say "Cum git it" about 20 times. I'll have to work on that. There's nothing like listening to your own voice on tape to make you realize just how stupid you really do sound.

Fun, Fun, Fun

Hi everyone! I just thought I'd post some pics of Sam from a couple of months ago when he ditched me and Riley and went snowmobiling with my dad in Colorado for a week. In case you can't tell, that's Sam behind all those huge puffs of white snow.
Things are going great for us. Sam is suffering from a severe case of seniorities and getting some quality nap time in all of his classes. Just a few more weeks to go until graduation, so hopefully he can make it. It'd be a bummer to drop out of school now.
Riley is still growing, and we're starting the teething process. He's been a little fussy. Thank goodness for infant tylenol. I guess it's never too early to start our reliance on medicine and mind-altering drugs. I'm doing great too---I'd tell you more about what is going on with me, but it's all pretty boring.

Growing Pains

I can't believe how fast my little baby is growing. He's almost eight months old now. Although he hasn't completely figured the crawling thing out yet (he can't get up on his knees yet) he sure can move. He does this combat roll combination demented seal crawl combination back arch, and amazingly enough, it's pretty effective. The other day I put him in the living room on the floor with a few toys for just a couple of minutes. I went to check on something, and when I came back he'd crawled all the way across the room, tipped over a bowl, and scribbled all over his face with ink pens. Luckily he didn't poke his eyes or anything like that. I guess it's time to baby proof the house. That should help keep Sam out of trouble too.

This is Riley's new high chair. Someone in our church gave us their old one, which was a huge relief because I wasn't wanting to go out and buy a new one. Doesn't Riley look big in it? The high chair addition to our home came just in time. It's starting to get really hard to feed Riley. Everytime he sees the spoon headed for his mouth, he thinks it's really fun to grab on to it. The problem with this is that he gets baby food all over his hands. From there, the baby food quickly migrates to Riley's hair, clothes, face and then somehow it gets all over me. Now that we have a high chair, I can just drape him with a sheet, sit him on top of a giant plastic tarp, and then hose the whole thing down when he's done eating. Problem solved.

These are pictures of Riley's new favorite toy...yep...you guessed it. It's a lamp. Should I be at all worried that my baby is obssessed with a lamp? No matter where he is in the room, he always squirms around so he can look at the lamp. He'd rather stare at the crazy old thing then eat. He loves to suck on the metal lamp shade, and I have to admit that I sometimes let him (of course I take care to make sure the thing is unplugged and turned off so as to avoid electrocution).



Just a cute picture of Riley and Grandma last time she came to visit. I love his little hat. He doesn't seem to mind it to much either...He doesn't try to rip it off or anything so I'd say it's pretty much a success.

Sitting Tall

Hi everyone. Thought I'd just post a couple of photos. I love this one because it shows off Riley's beautiful blue eyes. Please also notice his slightly orangish skin. Apparantly I didn't get all the squash wiped off from breakfast.

Here's Riley demonstrating his amazing sitting up skills. He's quite good at it, but still doesn't understand the concept that he can't just fall to the floor whenever he feels like it. I think he's remotely close to trying the army/demented seal crawl thing. He's starting to pull himself forward a little bit.
Things are going great for us. Sam isn't nearly as busy this semester, so that's been nice for me. He's home a lot more. I'm staying plenty busy keeping Riley entertained and working a bit from home.

Update

Well, Riley had another doctor's appointment last week so I just thought I'd let everyone know how he's doing. He is about 27 inches tall and 17 lbs 11 oz. No more shots for about three months, Yipee!
Riley finally figured out how to roll onto his stomach from his back. That's good news because he could never learn crawl until he first learned how to get on his tummy. Unless he figured out how to do a crab walk or something like that. On the negative side though, when it's nap time I've been putting Riley in his crib awake to try to get him to learn to put himself to sleep. He doesn't like it at all, and usually rolls onto his belly to try to suck on the crib bumper pads. (I'm not exactly sure why that's comforting, but apparently it is. Maybe I should try it.) He usually cries and, now that he's laying on his belly, he gets snot and other gross things all over his sheets. I have to change them about three times every week. Just thought you all might like to know that!
He's also finally starting to master sitting up all by his baby self. You have to watch him though...he'll be sitting up just fine, and then two seconds later he'll keel over for no reason at all.