This is Halloween

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. 

Branch in his true element

 

How'd we do??

 

I'm In Heaven

A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of hosting Grandma and Grandpa Messerly! We had lots and lots of fun with only one big downer when Dad threw out his back. Other than that it was a good time! 

On Thursday afternoon Riley and I headed off to the Baltimore airport, I had hopes I could head out there a little early and Riley would fall asleep in the car and I actually get a nap out of her. A few minutes out she passed out and my evil plan was working! We hung out in the parking lot for a bit waiting for Mom and Dad's text that they were ready to go. Riley woke up JUST as we pulled up to the curb and her first words were, "There's Grandma and Grandpa!" We had a fun drive home, I only almost killed us all once, and we got to show off the beautiful view of the temple from the highway. Thursday evening was spent at home with Riley running around to entertain us all. She was SO excited about all this new attention. Honestly, the games she was playing with Grandpa definitely foreshadowed the back injury. She's not a child that's happy to do something one time. She requests over and over to play the same game and I think that's what ended up doing Dad's back in. That or the air mattress. 

Friday morning I immediately took advantage of my free child care (that isn't also working a full time job, and that gets up before 11 am) and headed to the dentist. Riley was all about being left with Grandma and Grandpa and actually started crying when I returned! Apparently, she was sure my return meant all the fun had to stop. 

Friday also contained the one project we'd set out to complete during Mom and Dad's trip which was making Riley's Branch vest for Halloween! I had borrowed a sewing machine from a friend, but upon seeing it Mom was taken aback a the "high tech" sewing machine. Sooo we turned to youtube to help us get all set up. I wasn't sewing anything too fiddly so Mom really just ended up being there for moral support, but that was a big help in and of itself. 

Riley played so hard with Mom and Dad all day that she was literally falling asleep at the dinner table that night. 

No clue why these videos came out black and white, but we are just rolling with it.

Saturday was a more adventurous day since we had Britt and Ben off work, but we also had to keep in mind safety precautions so we decided to venture to an outdoor location where we figured we could keep our distance most of the time and Mom wouldn't have to wear a mask. We went to Great Falls Park, which I only knew about because of Mel's research for her trip to DC. It has pretty views of waterfalls for the adults and a ton of people walking their dogs for Riley. It turned out to be even more exciting because there were a bunch of crazy people that apparently try to kayak down the falls! At first we thought it was just three certifiable individuals, but then another little group and another little group would come. We learned the wimps of the groups go down the left side and the real adrenaline junkies take the route to the right. 

Saturday evening was a calm puzzling night, which ended up being probably my most favorite activity. Everyone got in on the puzzling, even Dad! Although, after getting discouraged by the lack of matches he was finding Dad took it upon himself to be the light holder. Our living room doesn't have the best lighting for puzzling so we were busting out our phone flashlights a lot. After having been the light holder for a while Dad was wanting some more recognition and said, "Another of my unsung jobs has been moving pieces on top of other pieces." Haha yes Dad, we appreciated all the important roles you played in our puzzling efforts.  

Sunday was mostly a day of rest. We went to church, grateful that our ward obeys the mask mandates and also practices social distancing in sacrament meeting. It was so nice having a few extra hands with Riley in sacrament meeting. She's become a bit of a handful during church, but she sat nicely and didn't need to be grabbed from someone else's bench. 

Monday started the beginning of the end for Dad. He woke up with his back in a lot of pain. Unfortunately, this was the day we had our big adventure to downtown planned! It ended up turning our little venture into a girls trip. When we were selling this to Riley we said it was a, "Girls trip to DC!" The whole ride there Riley would recite, "Girls trip to DC! Girls trip to DC!"

It wasn't actually a huge adventure because we had to keep Mom's lungs in mind. Our main destination was the WWII Memorial since that's our favorite memorial. Then we figured Mom could make the walk down to the Lincoln Memorial, see the Vietnam Memorial on the way back to the car, and call it a day. The only hiccup ended up being that the elevator at the Lincoln Memorial wasn't working! So Mom ended up walking up the steps on her own! That was her claim to fame for the whole trip. We told her to make sure to brag about that at her next doctor's appointment. Oh I guess the other hiccup was that I forgot our stroller, but since we were limiting our walking for mom's sake it ended up being okay. Riley was a champ and walked/ran a good amount of the way. There are lots of runners around the mall and every time some one would run by Riley would says, "Let's chase them!" It was pretty adorable. The only trick was trying to keep her alive with a the bikers around. 

It was really hard to convince Riley to leave the WWII memorial, after sitting like this for a while a man came up to me to tell me, "This is the dirtiest water in all of DC." Ummm thanks for the heads up, but my child is not gonna stop playing in the water no matter what soooo we will just sanitize. 

Honestly, Wednesday and Thursday kind of blend together at this point so I'll now just put a few other sweet memories from the trip below:

• Mom brought some of her and our old outfits when we were Riley's age. Randomly throughout the trip Riley would walk out of her room wearing one of the outfits, looking adorable! 
• Mom also brought the Britt's animal families! It was so fun seeing Riley play with toys that we had loved to play with as kids. Britt made sure to keep reminding her that she was graciously allowing Riley to play with HER toys. 
• Mom coming out of her room after showering. Riley, assuring herself, says, "That's still grandma, her hair's just wet." 
• Riley loved playing with her silly Grandpa, but it brought up a serious question. "Grandpa, are you really silly or a little silly?"
• Grandpa said, "You're a little rascal!" Riley's response, "Well my mama and my dada and my Bo and grandma say I'm a little love bug!" Haha she's got a LOT of witnesses. 
• Mom was constantly on the lookout for things to help with, listening in to all conversations where we mentioned something that we should do at some point. After opening the puzzle and seeing we hadn't separated the edge pieces as we do in most of our puzzles, not long after I walk by and see Mom and Dad swiftly sorting through all the pieces to find all the edge pieces. Well all by 3... ;)
• Fresca became known as Grandpa water.
• Mom didn't realize our air mattress pushed out it's air pretty quickly when deflating and tried to sit down on it and landed on the floor. After hearing the crash I went to make sure all was alright and Mom said, "At least I didn't break a hip." 

It was so much fun having Mom and Dad around for a week. I love getting to share Riley with family who don't get to see her much. It's so fun having people see her sweet little personality and it's so wonderful for her to be able to create memories with her Grandparents. I think half the draw of having another baby is I know that means some family visitors! We are trying to get the most out of facetime and zoom calls, but we still can't wait to see Grandma and Grandpa in person again!

Old McDonald Had A Farm

 For the second year in a row we decided to visit Gaver Farms, a cute pumpkin patch about 45 minutes away that has all sorts of fun things for kids. We had fun with Riley last year, but I knew this year would be way more fun with Riley being a year older. Unfortunately, Ben was working the Saturday that they had the military discount, but, although it cost more, it was worth it to be able to do it on the Saturday Grandma Jack was in town! 

We had so much fun! Next year I want to plan on spending way more time there, we kept having to move Riley along to new activities. We had only allotted ourselves 2 hours of play time and we could've spent much more. We ended up being there closer to 3 hours, but I still wish it didn't feel so rushed. Riley still had lots of fun, but maybe the fact that she passed out on the drive home meant she didn't actually need any more playtime this year. 

I usually really enjoy corn mazes, but we skipped that attraction all together partly because of our time constraint and partly because last year we nearly didn't make it out! That maze was no joke. There were people jumping out through the corn because they lost faith they'd find the end. 

The classic giant chair picture. I didn't know this was a thing until Texas, and apparently it's not just in Texas.

I swear it's a rule that Ben will choose to do something during the picture whenever Riley has her cutest smile, but I'm including the picture anyways!

Riley loved this slide, but after going down with her dad she noticed someone going down on their belly. She immediately asked, "What's she doing??" So the next time she wanted to go by herself on her belly!

The game below was super fun for adults, we raced each other trying to get the ball to the top without it going in one of the holes. In one dramatic round Ben had made it to the top in record time only to pull too far away from the wall and have to ball fall all the way to the ground. We would've stayed there way longer without the time crunch. 

Ahh sensory experiences! The joys of just sitting in a pile of popcorn kernels. 

The biggest draw of this whole place was, of course, the animal section. They had turkeys, chickens, bunnies, pigs, cows, llama, and of course, GOATS! 

This llama really loved Ben. 

At this point I want to remind you that a year ago Riley's reaction to trying to feed the goats was to scoot away from them as fast as possible. Find the videos here. This year she couldn't have been more into feeding ALL the goats! 

Also, what in the WORLD is this?? It's a bunch of animatronic chickens singing weird songs, that's what it is...but what is it??? 

I can not get over how grown up she looks in this picture!! This girl is getting so so big!

Another fall, another trip to a farm. Can't wait to go again next year. :)

It's The Climb

 The journey to deciding to have child number 2 is quite a ride. There were so many times in Riley's life that I would think, "This isn't that bad...but only because I don't have another child to take care of right now." Many a time Britt has told me that I had an awesome life, the only way I could mess it up would be to have another child. We've taught Riley to sleep, eat by herself, and use the toilet (it was a longer battle than we hoped, but we've made it!). How could we even consider trying to do that again? We have no idea what type of baby we will draw from the hat. It could be colicy, a bad eater, bad sleeper, etc. It was just a lucky roll of the die that Riley was a mostly healthy, happy baby for her first three years. 

Once you do decide that all the sweet cuddles and great baby smells are worth the sleepless nights and stress-filled days THEN you have to reckon with the fact that you will have to be pregnant again. I am not a happy pregnant lady. Okay, for most of my first pregnancy I was fine, but the only part of the pregnancy that is really clear to me is the last 6-8 weeks. Those were miserable. I didn't find any sort of joy or wonder in being hugely pregnant. I was really, really over it by then. I have never struggled sleeping, so to all the sudden be sleeping horribly right when I'm trying to rack up the sleep was a struggle. I had so many aches and pains to which my doctor husband would say the only treatment is to deliver the baby. 

So eventually, even with all the mental hurdles to overcome we decided we did want to have another baby. It probably helped that Riley has just been pretty adorable and also has been seeming so adult lately. She just doesn't even look like a baby anymore! I believe I already wrote about the fun moment of discovering I was pregnant in the sister's trip blog. Nothing like finding out you are pregnant at 4 am right before you abandon your husband and child for a weekend. :) 

The beginning of this pregnancy was ROUGH. I don't know if it was because I had to try and take care of a sometimes demanding child instead of sit at a desk and occasionally see clients, but this pregnancy was way worse. I felt way more sick and the exhaustion was just horrible. All I wanted to do was lay around all day, but I felt so guilty that Riley wasn't getting enough interaction and attention. Riley usually only gets to watch a show maybe once or twice a week. During this time it was all I could do to keep it just to every other day. This lasted from about 6 or 7 weeks to somewhere in the 14th week. It felt like an eternity. 

During this time period Ben's mom came to visit and cooked and played with Riley for a few days. It was amazing. I tried not to act like I was too pathetic, but she insisted I rest on the couch a lot of the day. 

Also during this time period, we were able to find out the sex of the baby! I have loved being in the military while pregnant because we don't have to pay any copays or hospital bills for this baby. Because of that we knew that we could do the NIPT test, which is a blood test that will tell you if you baby has down syndrome and a few other chromosome related syndromes, for free. While all that info is important, it also tells you the sex! So, on Thursday I had my labs done, and by the next Tuesday I could see the results were in! Then started the longest 48 hrs of my life! Britt had convinced me to do a gender reveal for this baby. Obviously, we weren't going to do some big party, but she just wanted to know the sex and be the one to reveal it to us in a cool way. We were inspired by a video she saw of a reveal with smoke coming out of a cauldron. So I bought a giant cauldron and some smoke bombs. Well, although the results were in on Tuesday the bombs weren't coming until Wednesday!! I nearly just looked and said forget the reveal, but Britt was really excited about it so I resisted. Well the bombs did come on Wednesday, but Ben's schedule was weird so we couldn't do it that night either. Thursday, it was decided, would be the day. 

I woke up early on Thursday tossing and turning. I hadn't really considered that smoke bombs may not be okay in Maryland. Everyone I knew that did gender reveals was from Utah. The smoke bombs were from a Utah company. In Maryland using the weed killer Roundup is illegal. People are real uptight about certain things and I was almost positive smoke bombs would be something they'd be uptight about. I searched all over and while I didn't find anything that said smoke bomb specifically there was something about things that give off smoke being considered fireworks and fireworks are illegal. A colorful smoke bomb isn't exactly something you could do discreetly and we don't really know our neighbors that well so I started frantically looking up other ideas. I wasn't going to just give up on the gender reveal that had made us wait an extra two days for the results! Oh and by the way, by this time Britt has known the gender for a good while. She looked at it as soon as she could! Knowing that we would have to wait for the smoke bombs! I really wanted to still use the cauldron because I'd gone to the trouble of getting one, which wasn't all that easy. Finally, I stumbled upon a great idea. A baking soda volcano type reveal where the foam oozes out of the cauldron. 

It was at this point that I was presented with another problem. The cauldron the person used on the example video was basically just a large cereal bowl size. The one I had purchased was a 15 liter cauldron! I had wanted something with a bit of a presence for the smoke to come out of, but now I was tasked with filling the whole thing with vinegar! Well that's when things got creative. I needed to create a smaller bowl within the giant bowl and have the stuff ooze out of that one. So I put a little box at the bottom of the cauldron that was just the right height so the smaller container (we ended up using a mug) would line up perfectly with the top of the cauldron. Then we would tape cling wrap to the mug and to the outside of the cauldron so the foam would roll off the side of the cauldron and not just drop from the cup to the bottom. It was quite the journey to get there, and Britt recorded a few of our efforts. (videos yet to be stolen from Britt's phone...)

When all was said and done I thought our reveal turned out pretty well and I think it was pretty cute! Will I ever do that again? No. But it was fun! Honestly, I'm not sure how great it is to find out the sex when you are so early in the pregnancy. I was still in a very hormonal, tired, nauseous state, and I had been really hoping to have a girl. So, the news of the boy, was a little hard to swallow at first. I had just been picturing such cute sisterly moments for Riley and the baby and in that moment it felt like I had to grieve the idea of her having a sister. I can't trust any other baby to be a girl. From a lot of families that I've seen once you go boy it's just boy, boy, boy. I was trying to be excited about having a boy, but Ben told me it looked like I was about to cry all night...so apparently I wasn't succeeding. At this point I am excited about the cute little baby boy coming, but I think next time I will just read off the results with less fanfare so I don't have that moment of hoping for one color and seeing another. 

If you listen to the very last second of the video you'll hear that Riley took a bit to get on board with the whole little brother thing too. Haha yep, learned my lesson. Gender reveals are just too much pressure to put on a 50/50 gamble. Baby boy, although we may have had other thoughts we are excited to love on you and learn the ins and outs of raising a little boy! Riley has lots of friends with little brothers and has been practicing being a good older sister. She loves to try and make the babies smile by jumping around and acting silly for them. We can't wait to have a little, sweet newborn in the home again. I'm just dreaming about those sweet snuggles. :)