Halloween is coming!
Posted on: October 20, 2008
And Riley is dressing up as her favorite princess of all – Belle!!!
We tried on our costume tonight and there are a few pictures on the Flickr link to the right for you to check out. She was so happy and tickled to look like her favorite princess. “I’m dancing!” she exclaimed earlier!
Long time coming
Posted on: October 12, 2008
Hello all!!!
It has been a while since we last updated but trust me, it has been busy busy busy at our house! Except for when we were at the beach but even that was a busy time!
Riley is now two. Two years old and running strong. She is the light of our lives still and just a joy for the most part. Hey, she is two and with two comes trouble. Of course trouble for her is what other people dream of as a good day! Yes, we are spoiled and know it when it comes to Riley. Which makes it hard for us not to spoil her as well.
We had a wonderful summer, with the trip to Milwaukee, Mark’s trip to Canada, Luci’s visit, my trip to JadeCon /Indianapolis, a visit from Grandpa and Grandma Hagenbuch with Meghan and Madison, and our trip to the beach with my extended family. It is hard to believe it is over and there is a chill in the air with the leaves changing color. I constantly look around and wonder where the time has gone!
As for Ms. Riley, she is now singing, talking in basic sentences, counting to 20, and is in love with Thomas and his friends. She loves to play, especially with her trains and Belle is always around as well. She loves to play with her kitchen and tea set, she loves balls and sandboxes, and she loves puzzles and reading.
Well, it is well past my bedtime, but wanted to say hi and let you know too that we’ve uploaded a ton of new pictures from our beach trip. Click on the link to our flickr account to the right.
Cheers!
Is this normal?
Posted on: July 7, 2008
- In: Video
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Are all almost-2-year-olds this savvy with their shopping skills?!
June Update
Posted on: June 26, 2008
What a month – lots of travel, fun with house gremlins, family time…and pictures! Riley got to spend a lot of time with Mommy over the past month as Dadda was traveling up North, eh – for the annual Canada fishing trip and then cousin Becki’s wedding in WI. Riley got her first airplane ride and all reports seem to reflect that she was quite the good little traveler. Here are some of the highlights:
- Dadda drove up to MI in early June for the Canada 2008 excursion to the Ivanhoe River where a good time was had by all (including the thousands of mosquitoes and black flies that showed up without invitations!); we had an exciting flight into the lake as the wind was blowing a tad on the high side of the scale so there were lots of dipsey dos in the plane; on the plus side John (our pilot) was busy so we got all of our gear (and beer) flown in on Saturday instead of having to wait until later in the week! Sunday and Thursday provided some of the best fishing I can remember – Captain Horhay took Dadda to school on Thursday putting about 6 fish in the boat before I even had a bite! Horhay was also the Big Fish 2008 Prize-winner and took home a nice Crosley Washer game set.
- After Canada and a few days of down time, the next trip was a drive to WI for the wedding; we stopped in to see Aunt Joyce which was a nice surprise for her and a good visit for the family; traffic and construction made the trip to WI a bit on the slow side, but we got to the hotel in and met up with Mom and Riley who flew in earlier in the day; we had a nice dinner at a local German restaurant and met up with some of Mom’s friends – we got to tour a good bit of Glendale (or some other part of Milwaukee) on the drive over as Dadda got a bit lost – we got the extended tour of a nice outdoor mall, complete with the Salsa music festival though – bonus! The wedding was quite nice and you can check out some of the pictures (and a couple of videos!) over here.
- Riley made out like a bandit at the wedding and afterwards – she is now the proud owner of a shiny new Maize and Blue tricycle which she proudly calls Riley’s bike! We’re working on getting some pictures up of her sitting on her new pride and joy (she’s not quite big enough to reach the pedals but she loves being pushed/pulled around the house, deck, sidewalk, etc.)
That’s all for now, check back soon for some new pictures and the like, sorry about the lack of posts – but it’s tricky updating things from backwoods Canada with no Internets and electricity!
Riley Update
Posted on: May 21, 2008
Boy, it’s been a long time since Dad has dusted off the keyboard and provided an update. Sorry for the delay, but here is some new content to keep you occupied and informed for the time being:
- Riley had minor surgery on May 19th – her ENT specialist replaced the tube in one of her ears and removed her adenoids. Mom and Dad didn’t realize that this surgery required her to get an IV and a breathing tube! But all went well – the doctor said her little adenoids were very infected, so we’re hoping this will be a big quality of life improvement for Ms. Riley;
- When we brought her home, she was still a little confused and shaky from the anesthesia, but after some down time (and a little bit of ice cream) she was ready to head outside to “Blow bubbles!” – one of her favorite new activities. This go around she actually worked with Mom and created some bubbles on her own. Usually she walks around with the bubble wand, a bink in her mouth, and tries to blow but no results. She ate a regular dinner, choked down her antibiotics, Zyrtec and some pain meds and slept through the night. It was back to day care the day after the surgery – little Miss Riley is quite the resilient kiddo!
- Riley is picking up on new things at a fast pace – she can now count to 10 and get through her ABCs with a little hlep from an adult; she likes to count 1…2…7…8…10, but if you prompt her with the ‘3’ she goes straight through; she’ll start to sing the ABC song by herself too – but usually skips out around G or H and zips ahead to W…X…Y…Z; she is also singing most of Happy Birthday on her own, although if you ask her it’s normally her birthday that she is ‘celebrating’, although she will add in other people from time to time; Riley is also now the proud owner of at least 1 Subaru (If you ask her who’s car Beth’s Outback is – she’ll usually answer “Riley’s car”; so far Dad’s Tribeca is pretty safe) and a house – when she starts making mortgage payments Dad will let her take this credit;
- Mom and Dad are doing well – we’ve survived the NC weather excitement of late and were very fortunate that none of the tornadoes or strong winds did anything more than blowing down some small branches; we’re getting more rain this year which is nice – we can wash cars and water the yard on a limited basis this year, hopefully the wet weather keeps up for the summer this year.
That’s all for now – don’t forget to check the Flickr page for the latest in photographed cuteness!!
19 months old
Posted on: March 8, 2008
Hello everyone!
Riley is 19 months old today and continues to amaze us every day. Her vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds, she can definitely count to five and sometimes ten. She recognizes her name if you write it and can spell it. She still insists on calling “i” “dot!” though. She’s so cute doing it I can’t complain though. Another thing she has taken to loving to do lately is put socks on her hands and using them like puppets. I love how she plays and has such an imagination even at this age! I can’t wait for the weather to cooperate for us to take her to the zoo– she is going to go crazy seeing the animals! She loves monkeys right now– and makes the funniest monkey noises too.
Today Riles is having daddy time– mom is actually coming to you from Taylor’s Tires. After hitting the consignment sale this morning, I took a chance on getting some new tires for the Outback and was lucky enough to have a laptop with me and free wi-fi so the wait hasn’t been too crazy. It’s one of those things you keep going “oh next saturday” and then forget and then repeat so when I thought of it I decided to go on and take care of it.
So yeah, nothing terribly exciting to share. There are a few new pictures on the Flickr site, just click the link to the right to get there. Maybe even some more later- maybe even some more little mini-movies!
Well, hopefully will be leaving soon so going to keep this short. Just wanted to point to some new pictures and let you know we’re all healthy, safe, and happy here. And still just amazed at this little miracle we were given.
Oh! One more thing to share… it is consignment sale time here and last night we got a mini-magna doodle for Riley. She fell in LOVE with it. So a regular one is on the list, maybe for Easter. 🙂 She just loves scribbling and watching it disappear. I love playing with them too!
Pictures Galore!
Posted on: February 10, 2008
Thanks to Grandpa & Grandma H. we have a good bit of new photographic content for your viewing pleasure! The images come from a pretty lengthy span of time – April 2005 through the present – so you can see just how much Baby Boo has changed since she was born.
Things in NC are good – the weather is still trying to make up its mind whether it wants to be spring or winter. It makes things interesting when you don’t know if it’s going to be in the 70s or 30s on any given day. We got a bit of rain recently, but our part of the state (and actually most of NC for that part) is still in a pretty severe state of drought. We thought about trying to help get rid of some of the extra water in Three Rivers when the flood hit recently, but things just didn’t work out.
Riley has her 18-month check up soon, I can’t believe that she’s a year and a half old already. We’re working with her on animal names (she’s pretty good with the sounds already and is picking up on the names pretty quickly too) and counting. If we can work it out we’ll work on a new video to share with some of her new skills and sayings. Hope that all is well with our friends and families, feel free to shoot us an email or leave some comments.
As if spelling wasn’t enough…
Posted on: January 22, 2008
I’ll try and get a scan in after she’s down – or ask Mark to later—
But you tell me what her teacher was going on about in her art from this morning.
They wrote her name in the top corner (it’s a big sheet) and this is what she did at the bottom.
Now, I’m biased, but her teacher saved it for me and all the other teachers were excited too. Plus they were going on about how she knows so many letters and they even scrambled them and she would still know which one was which.
I think we’re in for it… what do you think?
**if you’re scratching your head, if you look at the scribbles, the kid WROTE HER NAME. No, seriously, she did! Not _perfectly_ but hey she’s still getting the idea of which end of the crayon to write with easier!
Seventeen months and 2 weeks old.
Update – 1/25/08 – Dad tried to give the ‘signature’ a scan, here’s the best result that he could come up with:
For Your Viewing Pleasure
Posted on: January 14, 2008
- In: Video
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Spelling with Riley from Mark Hagenbuch on Vimeo
Spelling with Riles
Posted on: January 14, 2008
- In: Video
- Leave a Comment
Mom and Dad decided that to make up for our sad lack of regular posts, that we’d get a little creative with the laptop and see if we couldn’t share some video of Ms. Riley. What follows is the result of said experiment, enjoy the show and feel free to suggest future topics! Hmmm, it looks like I’m going to need to make the video a separate post, so stay tuned for the new content.
Life With Riley 