45 weeks

I'm 45 weeks old!

She did NOT want to take her bear picture earlier in the day

What a cutie

She loves storytime and sometimes will just crawl over, pick up a book and "read" by herself. (note the book is upsidedown)

Henry and Jessica came over on Sunday to watch football and celebrate her birthday (Henry made the pie!)

Bears vs. Packers. The Bears have resorted to pulling hair (referee Seamus O'Grady missed the foul) but STILL couldn't win the game.

Henry showing Riley how to properly play a toy trumpet

Looking outside at the rain and fallen leaves

Da Bears!

Bears fans

She loves musical toys

Poor Seamus, she's headed directly for his tail and that look on her face is all trouble!

New game: remove bow from package, throw it, crawl and get it, repeat. She can entertain herself for quite a while doing this

Its much easier to go up over the coffeetable legs than around them. When will her obsession with playing under the coffeetable end?

What a great age, she helped me purchase and wrap her presents and will never be the wiser.

Babies learn and progress so quickly, I wish I had this ability! Crawling has pretty much reached warp speed. I can't believe it was just a few weeks ago that Riley was content to sit in front of a mirror and play with her toys. Now we've got gates blocking the stairs as she explores new rooms. She's just starting to pull herself up onto things. While she hasn't managed to pull all the way to standing yet, I'm sure it won't be long.

Riley continues to try new foods, although something that is her favorite one night is rejected the next. She loves things I never ate until I moved to CA; mangoes and avacadoes are a consistent favorite. She's lucky to have so much fresh produce available here in CA! She also surprises me on things she happily accepts, like fish. I'm happy she enjoys such a healthy, easy to cook source of protein. But she also has her issues at the dinner table. She sometimes won't accept new textures. I'd like to stop making her baby oatmeal and have her eat real oatmeal but she won't go for it. Her current trend is to store food in her cheeks. I really hate this. Sometimes her mouth gets so full she inhales food and chokes. Or we don't realize how full her cheeks are when dinner is over and put her on the floor to play and end up with peas all over the rug. So we've slowed mealtimes down even further (eating can easily take an hour already) to make sure our little chipmunk finishes her stockpiles. I never dreamed babies would do such things!