Ten Months

Riley is 10 months old today.

I had better start planning his birthday party because that one year mark will be here before I know it. I have lots of ideas and concepts floating around in my brain, and Lizzie, you had better believe I’m going to rely on you!

Riley weighs in at 24lbs and measures 29 inches tall with an 18-inch head. He wears a size 3 diaper and 12-month clothes. I’m really starting to worry that all of those 12-18 month winter clothes I bought months ago on a big sale will not fit him when they should!

Here’s what I want to remember about this past month:

• He’s doing pretty well with eating and has tried a number of new foods this month, including bread, chicken, edamame, cheese, ham, vienna sausage, tomato, radish, hummus, banana, apple, strawberry, cantaloupe, blueberry, yogurt, bulgur wheat, turkey, potato, macaroni, and cheerios. I’m still giving him some stage 2 foods and we are still trying the stage 3 selections. It is getting better, although he does seem to prefer the beef dinners to the chicken ones.
• He has two teeth.
• He is still getting formula 5 times a day (about 28 ounces total). He is holding his own bottle and sippy cup, lots of time with only his right hand. He is also doing well with the pincer grip during snacktime. And I have been giving him water every now and then throughout the day, and he seems to love it. Guess he takes after his momma!
• His sleep habits are still great. He takes two good naps, goes down for the night anywhere between 6:15-6:45pm, and sleeps until 6am or later. In this we know we are blessed.
• We are no longer using a sleep sack, and he is only taking a pacifier when he naps. I do still throw a couple in his crib before I go to bed, and he usually has one in his mouth when we get him in the morning, but he isn’t nearly as reliant on a paci these days. In this we also know we are blessed.
• He babbles constantly and is in a generally good mood most of the time.
• He still shakes his head a lot, and we are trying to teach him to nod as well. We are also working on teaching him to wave “bye-bye” but he’s not really getting it.
• He’s developing quite a good memory: he knows right where his tub of bath toys is and where his little collection of toys Nola keeps for him in her study are.
• He loves keys and even has two sets of his own to play with.
• He discovered stairs this month and how to climb up them. And as of mid-month, he also knows to turn around to go down (video on Monday!), thanks to teaching from Daddy, Nopsi, and Grandma.
• He likes to crawl with something in one or both of his hands and also sometimes with something hanging from his mouth. He also often crawls while pushing something, usually one of his toys, across the floor. And if he accidentally pushes something underneath one of the couches, he’ll get flat on his belly to look for it.
• We realized early this month that he’s tall enough to reach door handles while standing, and he’s just starting to stand on his own for a few seconds now and then. He’s becoming a pro at cruising around holding onto furniture but he’s not quite ready to take steps all on his own just yet. I don’t think it will be long, though.
• This is hard to describe but I love when he does it: he has started rolling his left arm over and tucking it right up next to his body with his palm facing out when holding him with his head on your shoulder. I guess it’s his way of nestling into whoever’s got him, even if it’s only for a few seconds.
• And this is the sweetest one of the month: he’s started giving kisses. We’ll ask him for kisses and then purse our lips. If he’s in the mood, he’ll come in with a big open mouth “kiss.” It is so cute!

Riley-bean, officially ten months old:

Please stop growing up.

Between the Couches

Nola is forever rearranging her furniture in this house, especially in the den. She’s always trying out new configurations, so just when we get used to one layout she goes and changes it up again.

Her latest arrangement is an interesting one, to say the least. She wanted to create two separate seating areas in the den, so she put her two leather couches back to back in the middle of the room, with the coffee table on one side facing the tv, an ottoman on the other side facing the kitchen, rugs under both, and two end tables flanking the couches.

No one but her liked what she did at first, but I have to admit it’s grown on me. She’s contemplated changing it many times (mostly thanks to the grumblings of her family), but now she can’t.

It has become Riley’s new playground.

 

Riley discovered over the weekend that he can crawl through the space between the couches, and now he does it all the time when we’re playing in that room, dragging toys through there and stopping every now and then to evaluate what he has brought with him.

So, the strange placement of furniture shall stay in its current position for a little while longer.

At least until Riley gets bored with his new throughway.

But that very well could be next week.

Babies: they all have a little ADD in them.

Random Captions

Captions courtesy of QP, Aunt Erin, and Uncle Jeff. Thanks, y’all!

Wow, how exotic! I didn’t know cat was on the menu here.

“C” Is for Cute

They totally deserve to board the hot tamale train…..WOOOOOHOOOO!

Even during a faceplant, Riley still looks at the camera.

If only I had front claws…..

Video Monday: Boom Blocks and Copycat

Riley loves when we stack things up for him because it means he gets to knock it down. This tends to happen almost immediately.

Riley also has a new trick that I tried to get him to demonstrate the other morning. Lately, a lot of times when he goes from a sitting position to his hands and knees, he raises his arms high above his head, rears back, and crashes down to his hands with gusto. I attempted to get him to copy me, but his effort unfortunately wasn’t the best.

Try not to laugh at me too much.

Happy Monday!

Return of the McF Girls

Buckle up, y’all; this is a long one!

One set of visitors that I mentioned last week has come and gone. The McF girls came back down from North Carolina to spend some time in the Big Easy. They came to see all of us, but what they really wanted was to spend time with Riley-bean.

He was the focus practically the entire time the three girls were in town, even at Nola’s birthday lunch on Wednesday. However, that surprised no one since he is still so stinkin’ cute, especially sporting his freshly cut hair.

The girls took Riley in the pool (twice), they gave him a Pebbles-like ponytail on the back porch (with Aunt Erin’s help), they put a leopard print headband on him (Margaret’s idea, of course), and they just plain bonded. A lot. All in a few days’ company with three females who are just crazy about the little guy. I know they are already missing Riley (okay, and maybe the rest of us) terribly.

  

(Not sure why he was fussy in that last picture, but check out the size of his two toofies!)

Margaret and Elisabeth even spent two nights at my parents’ house with us, so they got some extra lovin’ in with Riley-bean. I am fairly certain he has those two girls (and their mother as well) wrapped around all of his fingers.

And maybe his toes, too.

Oh, and thanks so much for his Carolina onesie; it is so cute. He can rock the Tarheel colors almost as good as purple and gold. :)

 

After one last meal together out on the porch, it was time for them to fly back home. Thanks again for spending so much time with us; we always love when you girls are here. However, your trips do tend to go by entirely too fast for my comfort. I guess that’s the way it is with fun times, though: they’re always over too soon.

Thank goodness I have more than 75 pictures documenting your visit. Those will at least help.

Now listen up, you three: I was serious about what I said when I dropped you off at the airport yesterday afternoon. Please try to come back at the end of August for the boy’s birthday party, and bring Dad with you!

Fifth Haircut

You may be wondering why I specially chose to document Riley’s fifth haircut. Aside from the fact that he has gotten 5 haircuts and he’s not even 10 months old yet, this fifth one was actually his first professional cut.

Nola and I took him to Henry, the guy that has been cutting our hair for many years. We plopped Riley in the chair at first, with a smock around him, but he didn’t last long sitting there with his arms not free.

 

So we took the smock off of him to see if that would help.

Not so much.

So then Nola picked Riley up and held him while Henry danced around them, attempting to cut Riley’s hair and not nick his face or his ears. Success was eventually declared. At first glance it didn’t seem like Henry took a lot off, but he really did.

Riley did really well throughout the whole process, although it did help that Nola had purposefully put on a very enticing and shiny necklace to capture his attention. And the little bell on the back of the front door proved to be a good distraction as well.

Henry said he was very impressed with how good Riley was. Even though Riley was just too curious about the new person circling around him with shiny scissors in his hands to keep his head still, Henry said he usually has to deal with lots of screaming and crying from little ones.

No crying from this one, Henry! Thanks for giving Riley a better haircut than Kenny or I could do; he looks like such a big boy now.

Even though Riley is officially cursed with my curls, that blonde hair is really starting to come through…..I can’t wait to see how it looks at the end of the summer!

Starfish

Two months ago, as one of his Easter presents, Nola gave Riley a bucket of bathtub toys. They are all plastic animal figures that squirt water out, like a whale, an octopus, a seal, a frog, etc.

And a purple starfish.

 

Riley is obsessed with the purple starfish. Anytime he’s in our bathroom he goes straight to his big blue plastic bucket that holds all of his bath toys, dumps it over, and searches for his starfish. I think he likes the starfish because it’s one of the smaller animals of the set, and it’s really easy for him to hold in his little hand.

 

Plus the arms are irresistible chewing objects.

When we’re playing upstairs and I haven’t closed us in his room, Riley will almost certainly seek out starfish, find him, and proceed to crawl from room to room with him firmly clutched in his hand. He doesn’t usually let starfish go very easily, even throughout his whole bath. And he also likes to hang onto starfish all through drying off and dressing for bed.

 

A boy and his starfish. What more can I say?