18 months

Ahhh, my little baby does not look like a baby anymore. She is such a toddler now. It hurts my heart a little that she is growing so fast! I mean where did that tiny itty bitty baby go?

I love love this stage she is in now. She is happy, silly, determined, independent, bossy, so so loving, sweet, smart, grumpy, and a little sassy at times. She is learning many, many things. And she has too many words in her vocabulary to keep track of. She has recently started putting two words together, her favorite being "no momma" "no dadda".

We went to see Dr Shuman several weeks ago, and Riley breezed her developmental test. This was basically just questions for me and for Riley to assess where she is. Sidenote: I was a little surprised they only expected her to be saying 10 words.

Rileys 18 month stats. Nothing much has changed here still tall and skinny.
Height: 33 inches, 75-90%
Weight: 20 pounds, 12 oz 5%
Head: 18 inches, 25%



Riley now LOVES to color with crayons and we will hopefully be trying fingerpainting soon. She will even identify a few colors, blue, black, and orange (but not always 100% of the time.) She is still in the super loving stage and gives hugs and kisses to everything that moves or doesn't move including trees, leaves, her hair brush, etc. She will also blow bye kisses to the cashiers at the grocery store, and people who greet her (although its often delayed and after they have already turned to what they were doing.)

She identifies her bible and askes to read her bible daily. Clay and I now pray for a desire to read our bibles like Riley! "Bybul, bybul, bybuuullll!!" :) Oh and she LOVES Noah. The Squillantes' got Riley a Little People Noah's ark for her 1st birthday and Riley loves to point to Noah in the Bible and then to Noah the little person.


Lastly, Riley has started doing the hand motions to The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and Roly Poly.

Oh and she can open my iphone on her own. Like push the button, slide to open and then browse around. What?? Yes. And its on video, I will try to post it soon! I did not realize just how much technology she is exposed to each day and just how much it will change in her lifetime! Amazing!

Momo Marathon

Riley just recently discovered and fell in love with Elmo. Long story. Try to make it short. I was in a store with Riley several weeks ago, when a little boy Riley's age spotted an Elmo toy. He was chanting Elmo, elmo, elmo over and over. So I asked Riley if she knew who that was. Of course Riley does not sit still or anything especially for cartoons so she had no clue who Elmo was.

A few days later I turned on Sesame Street and let her check out Elmo. She seriously loved Him. Now she asks for Momo all the time. We hardly ever watch TV when Riley is awake but she loves it soo much that we've watched it about 6 times now.

Fast forward to Friday. Since she has been sick, all she has asked for is "Momo." I could hardly move, sit up, etc myself so we had a "Momo Marathon" friday.

I also ran out of my beloved Costco diapers Friday and so quickly RIley and I went to Walgreens to get diapers and Pedialyte popsicles. I grabbed Pampers, not knowing they have Elmo on them. They do. Now Riley loves to change her diaper. She used to run from me and it was a game to chases her, etc. But now all I do is ask if she needs a diaper change and she points down to her belly and says "Momo" "Momo" Cute!! (Until I go back to Costco diapers and she's devistated :)

MIA again

Well it happened again. I went MIA. Ugh..it is hard to stay caught up with this thing, I may just skip a few blog posts. But I will post Riley's 18 month blog soon (hopefully before she is 19 months old :)...I was waiting until I took some cute 18 month pics this weekend, but Riley and I ended up sick this weekend.

Riley had the stomach bug Thurs and Fri and I am taking her to the Dr this afternoon b/c as of now she still has not eaten anything substantial since Wed morning. Poor thing. She is drinking some but not much. And she is just pretty fussy and not active like her usual self. I'm thinking it may be strep throat or something. We'll see.

I joined Riley in getting sick Friday. And of course, Clay had gone hunting Thursday night and was supposed to be gone through Sunday. Sadly, (not really) the mule broke down and they boys came home early. So Saturday night Clay helped comfort Riley and pamper me. As much as I hate being sick, I would rather still be ill than Riley. It hurts my heart to see her not feeling good.


Pedialyte, water, and saltine crackers. It was all either of us ate on Friday. Sadly just after taking this (horribly out of focus pic...hey I was feeling TERRIBLE.) Riley lost it all over the chair and blanket I was laying on next to her. :(


Daddy and "MoMo" Elmo to the rescue. Aunt Kristi came by to check on us and brought Riley an early Valentines present/get better gift. I'll post about "momo" in a little bit. So that this isn't the longest blog post in history.

Another cute bathtime

Riley so loves bathtime! She loves to squirt her animals, play with her letters, and most of all she LOVES her new bath crayons! Santa left these for Riley in her stocking and she begs for them at each bath. She is so cute drawing, then telling us she drew Bubba or Kritty (Scout and Aunt Kristi), then she will swipe swipe with her wash cloth and start again! SO cute! I don't have any pics of her crayon masterpieces but will try to get some soon.

Christmas finale

We celebrated Christmas with Clay's family a couple of days after we got home from DFW. We had a great time! Riley enjoyed opening gifts again and she was very sweet to help keep the floor clean from any wrapping paper trash, she loved picking up each piece.

This is a chair Clay and Kate shared growing up. Grammie (CLays mom) or as Riley calls her "mimi" will be thrilled with this picture.







And I tried to get a few of just Riley in her Christmas dress but had little luck. Maybe when she's older she'll stand still (and smile) for a few seconds...



Giving herself a kiss.

Christmas eve and day

After a great candlelit, Lord's supper, Christmas eve service at my parent's church, we came back to some yummy food and then it was gift time.  Riley had such a blast opening her gifts, she totally understood what to do and loved opening each gift.  The first gift she unwrapped she would pull of tiny pieces and then take them one by one to Nana, Papa, or aunt Kristi.  But it only took one gift for her to realize there were toys for her inside and she began quickly tearing into the gifts.








So I was totally making fun of Clay's wrapping job on my gift. White lined paper, I couldn't figure it out, my mom had shown him where the gift wrap, ribbon, etc was but no he choose white lined paper. That is, until I saw what he had done with that plain lined paper. 3 amazing drawings, the top one of my parents living room, the middle drawing is of Riley's room, and the 3rd of our family room. Love it!! I only hope Riley gets her artistic skills from her daddy not her mommy!


After a wonderful long week with my parents we headed home, only to discover that Santa came to our house in Houston too.


Almost done with Chrismtas posts (1 at most 2 more to go)

Ponytail time

Riley's hair is finally long enough and somewhat thick enough for a cute little ponytail. Here's her first:

Christmas part 2

The weather turned fairly cold just a few days into our trip, but that didn't stop Riley from her daily walks. The road to my parents house is hilly and Riley loves to run up and down, up and down!!
*warning excessive amounts of pictures below







Which way Riley?

Ft Worth zoo

We had such a wonderful Christmas this year! We got to spend lots of time relaxing, enjoying family and friends, and reflecting the birth of our sweet Savior.

We were so fortunate to be able to spend an entire week with my family this year. A couple of days into our visit, we headed to the Ft Worth zoo. The weather was perfect and we had such a great time!





Somewhat enjoying petting the goat








Feeding the birds

Was cool for a little while

Until, they get a little too close and Riley tries to grab the little birdie

A little too close for comfort

Whew. He's leaving!


Cool bird

I would love to see one of these in the wild someday. Alaskan cruise maybe? :)

365? 52?

So one of my many New Years goals is to create a 365 day photo blog. Some have been know to call this a phlog. :) Basically, it is what it sounds like; Iam going to do my best to take and post one or more pictures per day. I will likely fall behind and even miss a few (okay many days) but I'm okay with that. My reason for doing this to improve my photography skills. I am hoping that by getting out my camera at least once per day, I will learn to look for interesting angles, different subjects and different lighting.

Because I still want to maintain this blog for family and friends and documenting the happenings of our lives, I have created a seperate blog for all of these 365 pics. I have a link to this other blog, the link is in the upper right hand side of this blog. If you click the button "From Michelle's Lens" it will take you right to my new blog.

Now I'm off to catch up on the Christmas pics.