I don’t follow too many “influencers” on Instagram, but the ones I do have to do with parenting. One of my favorites is a woman from Texas who preaches about positive parenting. I get her emails and near the end of November she sent out an email with some an advent calendar print out. She shared that she likes to do advent calendars filled with family activities to promote togetherness during the holidays. I thought it looked fun, so I printed out some of her ideas and added a few of my own to create 24 family activities to do during December. I will say part way through December it started to feel like a lot, to have to do an activity every day, but that’s why there were a lot of simple things in there. There were a few big activities, a few crafts that required a lot of oversight, but there were also things like have hot chocolate, watch a Christmas movie, sing Christmas songs at the piano, or have a Christmas music dance party. While the big activities were fun it was really fun to see what small things brought her a lot of joy as well.
One of our first activities was going to see Christmas lights! I love getting to see lights and luckily there was a big walk through display not too far from our house. I really prefer walking through lights to driving through, but I did plan it earlier in the month so it wouldn't be too cold. Turns out we planned it for a perfect night. When we arrived in our jackets we immediately put them back in the car because we didn't even need them! Jazmin joined us to everyone's delight and we had a lovely walk through the lights. There were lots of fun animal shapes that Riley loved. One of the first ones we saw was a wolf so I knew it would be a good night. She recently decided she was very fond of wolves. I've been trying to find more books at the library with wolves in them because of this fondness, but I will say it is hard to find them where the wolf isn't a villain! Also, why are there SO MANY children's books with bears as the main character?? I guess the whole teddy bear thing? Book writers really think kids are into bears! Anyways...so yeah lots of fun animal shaped lights.
This is the face of a girl watching a light show to the tune of "Let it Go"
There was some significance for this tree...I have no clue what it was now, but I'm gonna just say it was the Tree of Hope...or something.
Meeting Santa! ...Sort of. Last year Santa only did drive-bys. I was hoping he'd do one again, but I couldn't find any information about it and it was already December so I decided we'd have to go attend the Kensington City Tree Lighting to get our Santa fix because it was advertised he'd be there. I am not whole-heartedly encouraging the whole Santa thing, but I figured it's a fun outing either way. I did tell Riley that Santa had brought the Santa gift and the stocking things, but when she asked me if reindeer fly I told her that real reindeer can't fly, just Santa's pretend ones. I feel like pretend things like Santa is such a weird place for a parent! I don't want to be lying to the child, especially when she asks direct questions, but the magic of the make believe is fun too. Although, this girl has so many imaginary friends that maybe knowing the Easter Bunny and Santa aren't real would be a good thing for her. Bring a little piece of reality into her very imaginative life haha.
Anyways...so the Sunday of the lighting arrived. It was at 5:30 and around 5:15 I remembered it was happening. So we quickly had to decide if it was actually worth it to get ready and go, we decided to just go for it and in record time we got out the door. Kensington isn't a big town and we live just 4 minutes away from town hall so it wasn't too bad to get there in time. We arrived, got some cookies and cider, and awaited our famous guest! After 15 minutes or so they told us Santa was on his way and boy he sure made an entrance. As you'll see in the video at one point I lost hope we'd ever see him when truck after truck went by without him in it. Like how big of a posse does Santa really need?? Riley was not sure about the whole thing, Santa frightens her a bit in general, and with all the sounds and lights she was definitely taken aback. Then it was time for Santa to light the tree! Oh boy was that anticlimactic. I have a suggestion. If you are going to advertise a "tree lighting" maybe spring for more than just one single row of cheap lights strung around the tree. Santa wasn't able to meet any kiddos, but Riley got a candy cane from one of his firefighter helpers so she was satisfied. The whole thing lasted about 30 minutes and then we were out of there and right back home. Short and sweet.
Frozen- the Musical!! After our night at the lights we went to the food court at the mall for dinner. While we were there I saw an add for a Frozen I & II the Musical for the next Saturday. I mean that seemed AMAZING so I immediately tried to RSVP for it on the website, but all the spots were filled. It kind of seemed like something you could still show up for, but I worried about getting Riley's hopes up and not getting to see it. The day of the performance we ended up at the mall for other reasons and decided we could stick around and see if we could sneak in. Turns out sneaking wasn't even really necessary. We just waltzed in there and sat down. No one questioned us at all. It was a big open area and tons of people were just able to stand around and watch the show. We ended up putting Riley on this little rug area in the front when we realized she wouldn't be able to see super well in a chair and we stood near the rug and watched her have the time of her life. At first all the little girls were sitting still watching the show, but as soon as Let It Go started a few of the girls stood up, turned to the audience, and performed the song along with Elsa. Riley wasn't quite that bold, but she did start to sing along a little bit here and there. The cutest part was watching her catch on to the clapping at the end of each song. She just looked so grown-up clapping for the performers. Speaking of the performers, we were really impressed by them! I mean for a little mall performance they were pretty good! Kristof had room to improve, but still enjoyable.
We kept up our tradition of gingerbread houses! Honestly, when the night to do houses comes it always feels like it's gonna be so much work, but it always turns out to be a lot of fun. Riley loved making her own little house, and then once she was in bed the adults spent the next 3 hours building our own houses.
These videos are long and not much happens in them, but I just love watching her play and talk.
One of the fun, easy activities involved giving up a box of baking soda and sticking the pups in it. I told myself it was going to be a messy activity and once I embraced the fact that I'd need to vacuum after she was done I was able to enjoy watching Riley have a fun time playing in the snow with her pups.
Not a Riley activity, but proud of myself for sending out Christmas cards this year!
Who's ready for another rendition of Riley says the darnedest (and cutest) things?
Riley's bedtime process includes getting to sing two songs before bed. One night after we sang "Search, Ponder, and Pray" I asked her if she knew what ponder meant and then explained what it means. For weeks after whenever Ben or I would sing her a song she'd ask the definition of nearly every word in the song, realizing it was a great way to put off bedtime.
I was very proud of Riley when she requested to stay in the car to "finish the song". That's when I truly knew she was my daughter.
Watching Riley watch TV is a very enjoyable pass time. She only gets a show every so often so it's still a big deal when I suggest we can watch something. I just wish I could explain in writing the joy with which she said, "I LOVE THIS SHOW!" the first time she watched Puppy Dog Pals.
Speaking of TV shows, our most watched shows are probably Paw Patrol and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. One day during Mom and Dad's visit Riley started dancing around and singing the entire Paw Patrol theme song. I had no idea she knew the words, but she really went for it. Although she didn't want an audience, whenever Dad peaked his head out of his room she'd act as if she wasn't doing anything at all.
One of the Paw Patrol's sayings is, "No job is too big no pup is too small." Whenever Ryder says that on the show Riley finds it necessary to correct him, "You know Ryder, Skye is a little small!"
"Ha ha ha ha ha I laughed too much!"
For some reason we were talking about how mom's are smart and know lots of things which led to the question, "Are dads smart too or just moms?"
After seeing a pair of Ben's shoes still at home Riley started yelling at the door, "Dad, come home so you can put on your shoes so you can go back to work!"
Riley has been led to believe any Pop song has to be a Troll singing since that CD is basically the only Pop music she hears. One day at the mall she starts bobbing her head and swaying to the music and says, "Yeah…this is groovy Trolls."
Sometimes Riley helps me see that the phrases I use can be misleading. Like when I tell her to hop into bed or hop on the toilet and she replies, "No, that's dangerous!" One day it cracked me up when I told her I needed to comb out her hair and she asked, "When you comb it out will my hair be there or will it not be there?"
Owen came over for a play date and Riley must have recently reached some new social milestone over night because she was all over him, hugging him, talking to him, encouraging him to play her games with her. She also kept calling him bud. I was dying. "Dance with me bud!" Then after Owen's mom came to pick him up she said to me, "Owens mom…that one's pretty nice to me." Since those interactions her social habits have totally changed! It's crazy how kids change from one day to the next, but now she's all about interacting with kids at the park when before she would run from them!
Another demonstration of her mind's development in these last few weeks is how much her imagination has blossomed. One day she came up to me with a little ball and told me, "This is my friend Lamby." I have no clue why a blue ball with Paw Patrol characters on it would be named Lamby, but that was the name she gave it and that's still it's name. She had a ball playing with her little Lamby.
Lamby isn't her only interesting new friend. She also has a bunch of imaginary wolves that follow us around every once in a while. One day we were leaving church and she said, "We left the wolves!" As Ben is about to go in and start searching for some wolf toy I say not to worry, lower our window, and tell Riley the wolves are all jumping in. We have pretend pups, trolls, and princesses that regularly make appearances in our lives now as well.
Question about baby boy, "Is he trapped inside?"
It's so funny the things Riley picks up from books. It still cracks me up whenever she narrates the way she is saying or doing something like, "I want a snack. She says while jumping on the chair." After reading one book she picked up the phrase, adios amigo. It cracked me up when after singing the song popcorn popping on the apricot tree with Grandma and Grandpa instead of giving us the final big pop as per usual she goes, "Adios amigo!"
Riley speaks pretty clearly in my opinion, but it's cute when she has certain things that she struggles with. I may have mentioned previously that she calls an elevator and alligator. When she requested to listen to the "Month's song" her request sounded like the word months was never going to end. "Can I listen to the months-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s song?" Something about those s's after that th really messed with her mind.
Being around a child can make you notice your habit whether you want to or not, "You say oh geez a lot Bo."
I love children's confidence. After pushing Riley a few times on the big kid swings she loudly declared, "Everyone is so impressed!"
When Ben is asleep on the couch, "He’s still real, but he’s not working.”
Ben walking towards Riley with a blanket on his head, "You’re like Jesus!"
"I’m choosing to follow God."
Riley has occasionally started praying and saying this. "Oh God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee in the name of thy Son to bless this water to the souls of who partake of it. Amen." Ben has tried to explain that is a special prayer, but I'm just impressed she's listening!
I knew that replacing our old Alexa was going to be like Riley's first experience with death. I wasn't wrong. She had lots of questions as to why we were sending the old Alexa away and replacing it with a new one. After talking about it for a while so started looking through the instruction manuals for the new Alexa and said, "I’m just gonna read about why the old Alexa is in trouble."
We read a book about a father who brings the moon down for his daughter. As she's playing with it it shrink and shrink until it disappears, as seen in the picture above. Looking at this picture I tried to explain how the moon cycles work to Riley. I said, "So the moon gets smaller and smaller until-" "It turns into a kitty cat!" Hahaha you know, looking at the pictures it's not an unreasonable conclusion.
We see so many planes and helicopters at our house, whenever she sees a helicopter she says, "I think that might have been Skye's!"
I don't remember when she said this, but I can picture her cute voice breaking my heart at the thought of leaving any puppy behind. "Can I grab the other pups? We are gonna miss them!"
Occasionally, when I'm making dinner Riley will go downstairs to play with Aunt Bo. On other days I'll be done for the day by dinner time and I'll lay down on couch for a rest. One day she started heading downstairs and Britt asked, "Is your Mom making dinner?" She replied,“No, my mom's laying on the couch, yelling at Alexa.” Hahaha okay I do not recall yelling at Alexa, but I was on the couch.
"I made a compromise." Her favorite false statement. Whenever I ask her to compromise she'll ask me to do the exact same thing, but in a sweet, calm voice and then will assure me she has made a compromise.
Riley was playing outside with Ben and he was throwing her up in the air. He asked, "Do you want to touch the sky?" After throwing her up again she said, "I didn’t quite get it. I want to grab a cloud! I want to reach the clouds!" I was just waiting for Ben to give some inspiring fatherly council about reaching her dreams and to hear "I Believe I Can Fly" start to play.
"Next time there is a fly I’m gonna use my magic hand and CLAP the little buggie."
Riley is very interested in EVERYTHING that we say. She'll often ask us to repeat whatever we say and if we don't repeat it verbatim she'll respond, "That's not what you said!" One time Britt wanted to tell me something, but was very aware of Riley being near by so she whispered to something to me. So Riley whispered, "What did Bo say softly?"
Now some random photos from the last few months that won't fit in other blogposts:
Fall came and Riley discovered the magic of leaf piles!
Riley requested to be swaddled like a baby and Ben obliged.
We were so happy when we discovered the mall finally opened up it's play area.
This marks the beginning of Riley wanting to wear "tutus" and play dress up with her dresses.
Sometimes you just need some you time.
This pure joy can only mean one thing, this girl is watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
When church is at home for a week we allow a loose definition of "dress".
Just living her life.
One day Riley randomly told me she was going to give me a blessing. She came over, put her hands on my head, and said a prayer.
Then she did the same for Bo.
But during this blessing she got a little distracted....
And we ended up here.
Our backyard can be beautiful at times.
And then you remember you have to rake those leaves...
This is a series I'd like to call Riley trying to quit naps.
Oh how'd this get in there....haha this was an after Thanksgiving coma.
I love how her imagination can make some little numbers with eyes families that she can play with, but I especially love how every family always has a Mama, Dada, and Bo.
Just some cute dancing.
We love listening to the Elephant Baby Walk, and this is how you dance to it in case you didn't know.
Riley has heard her bedtime songs so much, that now she boisterously sings along.
At some point Riley decided that whenever she asks to watch a show her chances of getting a yes are increased if she uses a "cute" voice. Even still when she asks to watch a show in a normal voice she'll quickly repeat her request in this voice.
If only I'd been videotaping the first time! She followed along even better the first time it played, but this is still cute. I love when she does my workouts with me. :)
Now some longer videos, I just love seeing Riley "read" books. As you see she really prefers when we read to her, but every once in a while I can convince her to read it to me for a video.
This was her second time through, it wasn't a clear as the first time cause she was reading it kind of carelessly, but I still love it.
Riley randomly came up with a workout routine for Britt and I to do.
Halloween! I haven't cared much about this holiday since I was a trick-or-treating child. Once that wasn't part of the holiday I didn't really care much about the whole dressing up. This year Halloween became a way bigger deal! Again, Riley is experiencing holidays for the third time, but they've all felt like the first time because she is old enough to really enjoy it instead of just being dressed up for pictures.
Weeks before Halloween I asked Riley what she would like to dress up as for Halloween. Without hesitation she answer, "Branch!" I wasn't exactly shocked it was a troll she wanted to be, but it did surprise me she chose the grumpy, male troll. I continued to ask her who she was going to be and the answer was always Branch. I searched google for branch costumes, but the only real option was a real cheap looking onesie outfit that was way more than it was worth. So I got the crazy idea that I could make her costume. The pants would be easy, we'd buy a wig, and the only part I'd really have to craft/sew was his vest. This is who we were trying to emulate:
Although, we decided we'd do Branch after he receives his "true color" so his skin is a little brighter turquoise and his hair is purple. Luckily, I have a friend with a sewing machine, and when Mom was in town we tackled this project.
Our Halloween celebration had two parts. We went to a little trunk or treat at the church on Saturday, and then went Trick-or-Treating with Owen around our neighborhood on Sunday.
Getting ready on Saturday was very exciting, finally seeing it all come together! I had bought some face paint, but Ben and I hadn't exactly seen eye to eye on how much we should paint. I knew he thought we were just going to paint the nose, but I really wanted to at least see what it looked like to paint the whole face the turquoise color. Britt was near by encouraging me to paint her, and I kept looking to her for assurance that troll face was acceptable since they are a fictional species. After just painting the base color on we almost took it all off because other than the color it looking a lot like the style of blackface, but after I added color to the nose and dotted a few freckles on her it actually looked really cute!
I was not going to go through the effort of decorating our trunk to hand out candy, but I brought some candy just in case there weren't many people participating (although I didn't think through the fact that my trunk was full of junk that needed to go to goodwill at the time). There were actually a bunch of cars participating, and I'm pretty sure we were just about the only family that showed up that didn't hand out candy. You never know the dynamics of things in a new ward...I figured a bunch of older families in the ward would come to hand out candy, but no it was just everyone with young kids handing it out to each other. Everyone absolutely LOVED Riley's costume. We were told by the missionaries that Riley would've won best costume, but they wanted to give it to a kid a little older who would appreciate it more. (Ben's response was, well what about her mom who made the costume?? I think she would've appreciated it!) Most people knew she was a troll and a few people knew the exact troll she was. We had a really fun time, and Riley quickly caught on to the whole operation and was brave enough to go a trunk or treat a few times without us right by her side. There was one car, however, that she nearly ran away from without any candy to show for it. There was a man dressed as a turkey, giving out candy. He was gobbling and wobbling his head about, really committing to the turkey character. Riley wasn't about it, but after he calmed it down a bit she was willing to take his candy from as far a distance as possible. When asked later how she liked the trunk-or-treat she reply, "There was a funny person!" Haha glad she decided he was funny.
Riley and her friend, Lily
On Sunday night we told Riley we'd do something like trunk or treat, but instead we'd be going to people's doors. She wasn't sure about that, but we promised she'd still get candy in return for her efforts. As I told her it was time to get ready she said, "This time I want to be Poppy!" (The girl main character from Trolls.) Oh dear. I hadn't thought about the potential issue with dressing up more than once, Branch was already done...she's ready for a new costume! But after I explained we could maybe be Poppy next year and Branch was all we had she didn't put up too much of a fuss. Owen and family came down to trick or treat with us since we live right next to a ritzy neighborhood and they'd heard not much goes on in their neck of the woods. It was so fun to have them with us! Britt also came along for trick-or-treating, I assumed to continue to bond with her niece and family, but soon discovered it was for all the houses that just leave the bowl out and she could add to her candy stash. I had worried 5 would be too early to go out, but it definitely wasn't. I'm really glad we started out that early because we still stayed out past our 7:30 bedtime! It was fun chatting with a few of our neighbors and getting to meet the people who live in these giant houses we pass all the time.
Pretty sure Owen's mouth is already blue from M&M's
One moment of note, once it started to get dark we realized why young kids start trick or treating even earlier than 5. With the darkness comes the preteens. Oh goodness, the preteens! They travelled in packs of 5 at the least and like 20 at the most. At one house Britt and I go up with Owen and Riley. As we turn to go a hoard of preteens are blocking our path. The porch is such that they are blocking the only exit. There were at least 15 of them all coming for their candy. Some of them are wearing those creepy camouflage/hunting suits that Danny wanted to wear for halloween. The biggest problem was that as they approached Riley, Britt, and I went to one side and poor Owen went to the other. Well really he just didn't go to a side at all and is just kind of under all these teens. We tried to get to him, but it was hopeless. He started stepping into the house of the random person because it felt like a safer option! After that we were sure Owen was a changed child.
Some other memories, Britt openly cursing the houses that were dark saying, "If you live in a house this big you owe it to society to give us candy." Really surprised by the fact that only 2 houses had full size candy bars! In my day, you went to the rich neighborhood for the full size! None of this fun size stuff! The poor people can hand that out! Calan (Owen's mom) sprinting towards a bowl of candy when it was announced they had Ghirardelli. (Which wasn't easy while she was wearing a baby and holding a dog's leash.) Riley going for some people's cheese they were having with their wine after not seeing a visible candy bowl. Some guy handing out sausages on toothpicks for the parents.
The next day Riley was doing something and I said, "You're so cute!" She responded, "That's what all the people at the trick or treat said!" Haha so obviously we had a great Halloween that boosted Riley's self-confidence.
There is a water bottle in Britt's hair to make that happen...it was quite an ordeal to put in haha.
