Visits with Family and Friends

The past couple of months have been filled with visits with family and friends. First, was my grandfather's 80th birthday. We celebrated his big 80 with the rest of the family. Unfortunately, instead of my grandfather being the center of attention it was all Riley. One of the pictures of that day clearly shows that. Here is a link to the pictures.

Next was a visit with Great Aunt Irene and Uncle Ken. After their trip through New Zealand, on their way home to Wisconsin, Aunt Irene and Uncle Ken had a 24 hour layover at LAX. We wanted Riley to meet them so Riley and I drove out to have dinner with them. Since Ben was coming home from another interview that day, he came straight from the airport to meet us later that night. We had a great time visiting with them and hearing about their trip. Riley loved getting a chance to meet his Great Aunt Irene and Uncle Ken. Once he gets a little older we'll be making a trip out to Wisconsin to visit them! We can't wait.

This past weekend Dan, Leah, and Gabe came for a visit. They were making a Southern California tour during their Spring Break and we were happy that we got to spend some time with them. They arrived on Saturday afternoon. Michelle and Jethro came over to spend some time with us and we hung out at the house and caught up. After Michelle and Jethro left we all headed out to dinner at one of our favorite spots.....Shabu Shabu!!! You just can't beat good shabu shabu and good friends. We ate like pigs!!! I wish we had taken our camera with us so we could have gotten a picture of all of the rice that came off of Gabe after he was done eating! Here are the pictures from that weekend.

Our Little Leprechaun

Catching Up

Riley is such a mellow, good-natured baby. Here are some Riley tidbits:

loves to suck on his hands and fingers

constantly tries to put his toes in his mouth--he's getting close to being able to stuff them all in there

loves green beans, sweet potatoes, squash, peaches, pears, bananas, and applesauce

hates peas and carrots

loves to watch cars driving by

is a huge flirt

got a nasty virus (croup) his 2nd full day of daycare

rolls all over the place

started rolling over in his sleep to sleep on his belly just like his daddy

always wakes up in the morning with a big smile

hates sleeping by himself in his playpen/crib

loves sleeping with mommy and daddy

favorite sleeping position = smashed up against mommy

transitioning from size 3-6 months to 6-9 months in clothes

loves to play peek-a-boo

loves to hear daddy on speakerphone when daddy is traveling

loves bathtime

Look Who's 7 months old

Riley turned 7 months old this Saturday. After 2 weeks of gloomy weather, it was a beautiful sunny day in the high 70s, so we decided to spend the day at the Arboretum. Here are some pictures of our day there. Notice how Riley's clothes slowly came off as the day wore on. The last two pictures of Riley's new love - the Lactaid box! Riley loves to pick up and drop daddy's box of Lactaid.

Here is the link to the pictures........

How Time Flies

I meant to update the blog right after the new year but as you can tell that just didn't happen. The last month and a half has been filled with a lot of fun times and changes. Here are some of the highlights....

• We had a great holiday dinner with the Steins. We haven't laughed so hard in a long time. Who knew Surprise, Arizona could be so funny.


• We spent a great week up North for the holidays. We managed to have time to go to Santa Rosa to visit Ben's mom, Stockton to see Dre, Suzy, and Zen, see all of my family on Christmas, visit with Leah, Dan, Gabe, Michelle, Jethro, Joyce, and Whit (we missed seeing the Tuan family during this get together). Riley got beyond spoiled for his first Christmas. Here is a link to some of the pictures we took during that week.


• We had a relaxing New Years. We went to hotpot and then came home and watched the countdown. Amazingly we made it to midnight this year without falling asleep.


• The New Year brought a big change.....my maternity leave was officially over. I couldn't believe that 6 months had come and gone that fast. I started back to work on the 2nd and we have been adjusting since. Since we felt Riley was still a little too young for daycare (not to mention the fact that we hadn't found a daycare we liked) we were lucky that my sister and mom were available to watch Riley for us when I had to go back to work. Cindy came for the first 2 weeks of January and watched "chubs" which is her new nickname for him and my mom has been here since. I've switched my work schedule around and now try to get into work by 6 am so that I can leave by 3:30 or 4:00. As many of you know, I am definately not a morning person and I was so used to getting at least 8 hours of sleep. This new adjustment has been really tough getting used to but getting home early to play with Riley is worth it.


• Riley went to his 6 month check up in mid January and he weighed in at 13 1/2 pounds and 24 inches. He's getting really close to reaching the height/weight curve for his actual age.


• Riley is finally done with his apnea monitor!!! We did one final pneumogram......which was awful by the way.....and he passed with flying colors so we are finally done with that awful machine. Yeah, no more false alarms constantly going off in the middle of the night.


• We've had a setback with getting Riley to sleep through the night in his own bed. A few nights before Riley was taken off his apnea machine the thing went crazy so we weren't able to use it. Since we couldn't use the monitor and I needed a way to be able to check up on him constantly through the night we put him in bed with us. However, getting him back to sleeping on his own through the night in his own crib has not been going so well. We're hoping that he'll get back to his normal sleeping habits soon!


• Riley has started eating solid foods. We started off with some rice cereal and for the first two days he was definately not happy. However, once he got the hang of mushing it around in his mouth and swallowing it he started eating like a champ. He's had rice cereal, sweet potatoes, and bananas so far. We're on to green beans next week!!


• We went to our first kids' birthday party with Riley at Chuck E. Cheese. My co-worker's daughter, Katie, was turning two and we wanted to be there to celebrate. Ben and I have not been to a Chuck E. Cheese in a long long time and it has definately changed from the one we both remember in Stockton. The placed was so packed. It was a lot smaller than what we remembered and there were no more Chuck E Cheese and Friends on the main stage........just one giant Chuck E. Cheese and a whole bunch of tv screens. We had a great time though and Riley got to meet Chuck E. Cheese!!


• We went to Riley's first neonatal followup clinic appointment and he weighed in at 14 lbs 2 ounces. He gained over 1/2 pound in less than 3 weeks. Even though we know he is doing great it was nice to get confirmation that he is exactly where he should be developmentally.

Here are some more pictures from the past couple of months.........

My Boys.......

Brownie Extravaganza

It's that time of year again.......yup, it was time for some holiday baking. Every year I do a big baking day and make goodies for Ben and I to take to all the people we work with. To give you some perspective last year I ended up making over 1000 cookies. I knew there was no way I could take care of Riley and still be able to make that many cookies so I went with something a little less labor intensive and made brownies this year. I ended up making 9 different kinds of brownies and ended up with 288 large brownies.

I made: Peanut Butter Hazelnut Brownies, Choco-Marshmallow Bars, Peppermint Bark Brownies, S'mores Bars, Peanut Butter Fudge Brownies, Fudge Brownies, Fudge Brownies with Walnuts, Cream Cheese Brownies, and Black and White Brownies

The baking part ended up being the easy part of the whole process. For the past couple of years I have always had my sister Cindy around to help me during the packaging portion of the process. Not this year!! Since I was wrapping each brownie individually and labeling them and then packaging them it was quite a process.....I was my own little sweat shop! I had a blast though and can't wait until next year to come up with something new!!

Here are some pictures of what I ended up with:

Last Year's Cookie Extravaganza!

The 9 different kinds of brownies

Each of the brwonies individually wrapped and labeled

The finished products......the front and back of the bags!!

The label on the bag