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. :) 

Say What You Need To Say

 Riley says the darnedest things. Here are a few I've written down for all to enjoy. 

We've enjoyed teaching Riley how to pray. It's the sweetest to hear her little voice praying for you. I love that she will often include everyone she can see in her prayer. One day I noticed her start praying on her own. Trying to encourage the action I folded my arms as well. She promptly said, "Don't want mama to do it with me." Well then. 

When we were first teaching her about prayer we would often tell her it was a beautiful prayer. For a while after she said amen she would immediately say, "That was a BEAUTIFUL prayer."

Sometimes when Riley yells at me or chooses to do something I'd rather her not I'll tell her that I feel sad because of it. Never wanting to deal with unhappy emotions she will often give me a hug and tell me I feel all better. One day when I was really feeling over it I told her that I was still a little upset after the hug. Never deterred she said, "But Bo's happy!" 

I say that it's time for bed, Riley says she wants to play for one more minute, but I say we don't get one more minute tonight. Riley goes over to Alexa and says, "Alexa set a one minute timer." Then to me, "I get one minute to play." 

Riley loves to know everyone's name. When we interact with someone she doesn't know she asks me, "What's her/his name?" Once when I told her the name was Brie she said, "Brie! Just like Fancy Nancy!" She also insists on knowing the names of all the characters in her books. :) 

Sometimes when I pour Riley cereal I'll accidentally put a little bit too much and I'll say, "Oops that was a lot." Riley will respond, "Keep the lot!" She has even started saying that when I don't say anything, but to her the amount in her bowl looks like a lot. 

Riley was playing with her Paw Patrols and they were going to the beach. In response I started to sing a song that goes, "Lets go to the beach, beach, lets go get away." Riley looks at me concerned and says, "Let's go to the beach, but let's not runaway." 

Riley was trying on my sunglasses, but I told her that they were too big for her. She said, "Sunglasses are too big. Mama is too big so you can wear them." Good reasoning there kid.

It cracks me up every time this little girl says, "Oh my gosh!" She says it with such passion and it's usually because she has seen someone wearing a favorite cartoon character. Like, "Oh my gosh! It's Anna and Elsa!"

We are all about body positivity and awareness over here. We try to tell her all the proper names of body parts and talk about them if she is curious. One day she pointed to me and said, "That's mama's chest." I confirmed that she was correct. Then she looked down her shirt and said, "Chest is not there." 

Riley has started not falling asleep during her nap time occasionally. That means some days she's extra tired. If we get to the end of the day and she's overly emotional I'll ask if she needs some time by herself or to go to bed early. To avoid having an early bedtime she'll try and convince me that she's okay. If she accidentally lets out a sob again she'll tearfully tell me, "That wasn't crying that was laughing!" 

Sometimes the things we try to teach her can backfire. In order to try and help her handle different situations we'll say something like, "Wasn't that so nice that he shared with you? Sometimes kids are good with sharing, and sometimes they aren't," or "It's so fun to have dessert huh? Sometimes we'll have dessert, and sometimes we won't." The other day I said something to Riley that she could see was correct so she says to me, "Mama is right! And sometimes she's not right!"

We also try to teach her that mistakes or accidents are okay and we just clean them up without getting too stressed. Well she learned the lesson a little too well when she said, "It's okay to break everything!"

Another example of that, "If you make a mess in this house we need to make another one."

After the minute timer that means it's time for bed goes off, "That was someone else's minute."

"It's so funny that dogs lick people!" Said with absolute glee.  

"We can't bring Owen this time because he's in Pennsylvania." "He's in Transylvania?!" So random the vampire knowledge she has because of the Vamperina books. 

"Cross-stitching like Mama," while playing with some strands of grass.

"It's a little tricky, but I can do it!" That's right girl!

Britt asks her, "What was your favorite part of the splash pad?" Riley, "The water!" 

Britt played me a new song by Lil Nas X. Riley immediately start dancing and says, "I LIKE this song! It's like (starts jumping around)."

Evidence of how many books we read to this girl is the way she'll phrase things like, "'That's so funny', says Mama." "'Please don't do that', says Mama." 

After I told her I was going to jump in the shower, "Mama don't jump in the shower!" Good to hear those bathtub safety lessons are sticking. 

I had just commented the other day that I hadn't noticed Riley being in the "Why" phase yet. Then we were driving home one day and I said something like, "What in the world are you doing?" To a motorist that was driving in someone else's lane and being very confused. Riley then asked me why I said that, I explained I was confused what a driver was doing, why are you confused, because they weren't following the rules, why weren't they following the rules, and so on. 

A few days later, "Yay everyone's following the rules!" 

The deep effect of the cicadas. When she was playing that Mickey and Minnie were going to the beach. She moved them from one blue part of the rug to another and explained, "He went to another beach because the other one had cicadas in it." 

One of her cuter habits is asking us all, "How was your day?" For a while whenever we asked her how her day was she'd say, "So well!" 

Spoken about a dog, but the racial energy in it made me a little nervous that she'd be overheard. "He's so cute! That's because he's so white!" Haha I will say that she still doesn't totally understand because correctly so I'm gonna blame it on that. 

In order to try and calm down and eliminate future tantrums I tried getting Riley to understand that sometimes I don't realize that something I've done upsets her and I'd be happy to reverse it if she just explained to me calmly what she wants. So I'd start a lot of sentences with, "Oh I didn't realize..." She would eventually start using that against me in moments when I definitely did realize I was taking away something she wanted. She'd prompt me saying, somewhat anxiously, "Oh I didn't realize you wanted that to stay there!" 

We do set meal times for Riley and she doesn't eat between them. (And when I say meals, there are snacks included in that...it comes down to 5 meals so don't feel too bad for the kid.) So she knows she's not supposed to just grab food off the counter. Every once in a while I'll leave something out she can get to. The other day it was some peanut butter crackers that had been part of her previous meal. As she snuck a few she came over to me and assured me she was, "Just having my leftovers!" 

Alright these next two come with a crude warning, they do talk about potty things :)

One day she just said to me, "Pees are yellow, poops are brown, and toots are orange." She has since recited that to me numerous times and it cracks me up every time. I don't know how she decided on the color of toots, but there you have it.

Whenever I ask her to put all her pees and poops in the toilet she ALWAYS has to clarify, "But just one at a time!" Yes, I'm not asking you to do it simultaneously dear I just don't want to go to the toilet three more times before bed. 

If any of the attitude in these previous comments surprises you just see below for proof that she really is this sassy and hilarious. :) 

Opening up!

It's kind of torture writing this as we are in the middle of a new wave of COVID, but it's good to remember in the last two years we've still had plenty of good times. So in the summer when we were all vaccinated and the cases were slowing DC started opening up! We decided we had to take advantage and had some very eventful weekends! 

One of our main goals was to go to the beach! We didn't want to drive too far or end up somewhere too crowded so we just went to a small beach about an hour away that allowed you to reserve a parking spot so we knew there couldn't be too many people. Over all it turned out to be a really good beach for us. It wasn't exactly that white sandy beach you picture, but it was good enough to play with our sand toys and make some fun sandcastles. Riley wasn't sure about the water at first, the waves were really throwing her off at first, but eventually she had a fun time playing with the seaweed. The one thing that was incredibly unexpected was the wall of dead cicadas between the beach and the water. There was literally a foot thick barrier around all the water of the dead bugs. We figured they are so dumb they fly out over the water, run out of energy, fall into the water, die, and get washed back on shore. It was pretty gross...cicadas were really the worst surprise of the summer. 

Trying to be instagram models. They've got a rough life man, they can't care how absolutely ridiculous they look.

Another sign of things opening up was nursery starting up again! Riley finally got to experience nursery! The teachers hosted a little playdate with the nursery kids, and I captured this adorable moment of Owen and Riley playing house. 

Museums!! Britt and I hit up the museum of African American History on a Saturday that Ben was working. That was quite the trip...overall it was enjoyable, but it wasn't exactly a museum that Riley was interested in. We walked through the floors that looked the most interesting, it was an enlightening and thought-provoking exhibit for sure. By the time we were leaving Riley was really ready to be leaving. 

The next museum weekend we planned when Ben could come and we went to the museum of Natural History. It was so fun! We went while they were still requiring you to reserve a spot so we got the rare experience of walking through the museum without hoards of children and strollers all around you. When Ben and I tried to go to this museum the month we visited DC in 2019 and we couldn't even move through the museum it was so crowded. So this trip was a literal breath of fresh air. 

Pretty sure that's a giant sloth behind them....I don't really remember. It was a long time ago. 

It's crazy to see us without masks in these pictures. That was a great few weeks....

When Riley found these statues she wanted to stay here the rest of our visit.

Seeing the dinosaurs from her book in real life! 

At each display they have representation of which fossils are real fossils and which are just casts. This T-rex eating a triceratops was almost all real.

The next section we looked at was a bunch of stuffed animals. It was unclear to me if the animals were all actually taxidermy or fake, but a real quick google search says they are all real! 

This little guy is a close relative of the first mammal on Earth! Riley just thought he was a cute mouse.

Britt demonstrating the totally normal human pose the wall chose to use to represent a human. 

This was Britt's favorite fish. This is a female fish. The male fish are a lot smaller and attach to the female as a parasite, getting all their nutrients from them. 

This fish was thought to have been extinct back with the dinosaurs, but then in 1938 they found a living one!

Britt being a very useful paparazzi. :)

After the museum it was time for a famous DC brunch! This was by far our favorite place we've gone to. All except for these pancakes pictured below. They were advertised as strawberry and creme, but the creme was lemon creme! It said nothing about lemon on the menu and the taste was so overpowering! Other than that the dishes were delicious!! 

The last museum we visited in our push to get out and experience DC was actually one in Virginia. This Air and Space Museum is a giant plane hanger with a TON of planes with lots of history. There were a lot of planes from WWII, from the US, Japan, and Germany. That was probably my favorite section, some interesting information. 

I had no idea this was the real Discovery space shuttle while we were at the museum! I assumed it was a giant paper mache replica because it did not look like it could've withstood 30 trips to space!! For real, the outside material looked so weird, I should've asked the nice old man on the TV answering questions what it was made out of. 

Also, check out this fantastic picture of how they delivered the Discovery to the museum.

This plane actually comes up in my crossword puzzles a lot! This is one of the planes that dropped one of the atomic bombs.

Playing at libraries!!! That has changed my life! Seriously, I can't believe Riley and I were surviving without the library for so long. 

Well here I leave you, reflecting on all the wonderful things that came back into our lives as COVID became less of a threat, and wondering if they will be taken from us again.....