Nov. 18, 2010 - I love cereal

On Sunday morning I saw Riley grabbing the box of granola off the cabinet (when did she get so tall?) and I just assumed she would reach her hand in and grab some cereal. It never dawned on me that she would dump it on herself and start eating. But as you can tell, she was very happy with herself.

Yummy!

Apparently I need to get breakfast on the table faster because everyone was hungry. Daddy decided cereal off the floor looked like a great idea.

Walking down the path of the Japanese Botanical garden in Hayward, CA. We've lived here for almost 6 years and I just discovered this beautiful place.

Riley kept moving the rocks around, perhaps she knew something the gardeners didn't?

Looking at the fish in the koi pond

The koi were huge!

Japanese-styled gazebos were throughout the garden

Lots of challenging obstacles to climb

She liked the little trees

Running around the garden was so much fun

I feel like Riley’s development is going at warp speed. A few stories to demonstrate…

She alters her tone depending on the book she is reading. When Riley “reads” Dr. Seuss, she is loud and very rhythmical. Even though she isn’t using real words, you can imagine that this is what she hears when we read “Green Eggs and Ham” to her. She sounds completely different when reading “Daddy’s Lullaby,” a story about a daddy putting his baby to bed. She reads that one quietly and uses appropriate words she knows: “Shh, shhh. Quiet baby.” When she is reading prayer books she says "God" often and "Amen" at the end.

She is learning her “ABCs” (although its usually acbc or some combination of the first few letters) and how to count. This weekend she was stepping down from a pillow and without any prompting said “1-2-3!” and jumped down on 3. We were very impressed.

Riley’s vocabulary is amazing, I think she learns a few new words every day. She is also starting to put words together. She mastered “Please” long ago (because it gets her what she wants) and has recently started saying “Thank you.” My favorite thing to hear her say is, “I love you.” Hearing her sweet voice spontaneously tell us she loves us is so touching.

But probably the biggest indication that we are doing our jobs as parents is that Riley is starting to understand the concept of the Illini. She correctly identifies her Illinois books and toys as ‘llini and cheers "Yay ‘llini" when we watch football. We couldn’t be more proud.