A Big Year...

Hello long forgotten blog! I'm so sorry that I haven't updated in nearly a year. It has been a BIG year! Tons of changes and new, exciting things went on this year for the Riley family. There is absolutely no way I can do each event justice with individual posts, so I thought I would do a big update to show you (and remind me) of all the things that happened this year...

• In the summer of 2012, Jonathan and I took our first big vacation by ourselves since our honeymoon. Since we never actually took a big honeymoon, we actually counted this as the trip. We traveled up to Montana to visit Yellowstone and Andrew got to take his own vacation and spend the week at Gabby and Papaw's house. I was so excited about the trip, since I have been hearing about the beauty of Montana since I met Jonathan. His family took several vacations to Cooke City when he was growing up, and I was looking forward to seeing it for myself. I have to say - it did not disappoint! The pictures do not do it justice! We spent a little under a week in Montana - we stayed in a log cabin in Cooke City. It was an amazing vacation and so nice to spend time together. During the trip we were already planning a return vacation! 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• One big change this year was that Andrew started school! We had heard good things about Eagle Wings (the daycare program for GISD students and teachers), and it has been wonderful for Andrew. I was terrified for him to start school - nervous about the transition and how he would handle it. I had also heard horror stories of first day/week tears! Luckily Andrew handled it wonderfully! He was so excited to start school and ran in to play the first day without any tears or hesitation. It definitely made the transition easier for Mommy! While we've definitely had some adjustments this year starting daycare - we've really had to work on time management in the mornings and we've dealt with our fair share of first-time-in-daycare-sickness, overall it has been a fabulous experience for Andrew. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Starting daycare has led to so many changes for Andrew. Looking at my last blog post (about things Andrew says) really brings to light all the changes we've seen this year. Andrew has gone from a young toddler (still very babyish) to a little boy in the course of the past 9 months. It's amazing the growth that we've seen. He is talking! Like, full-fledged sentences using pronouns and adjectives and everything! I remember being so worried about his speech last year, and now it's hard to get him to stop talking. While there are definitely moments where you have trouble understanding him, I would say that probably 90% of his speech would be understandable to a stranger. With his increased vocabulary has also come two major toddler milestones - the "why" phase and pretending. We've been very lucky thus far with the "why" phase -he's usually pretty easily placated with a simple explanation. We haven't yet had to broach too many difficult topics. The pretending is amazing! He has such a vivid imagination and wants you to play with him also. He's at such a fun age, and I love being able to talk with him to get an idea about what goes on in his head! He's creative and silly and tries to engage us by joining in conversations, even when he doesn't really understand what we're talking about. I'll try to update soon with a post about things Andrew says, because now the things he says are really entertaining - the mind of a three-year-old is an interesting place! 
• Andrew is in a big boy room! We knew that we wanted to move Andrew out of the nursery, and we decided to give him a new big boy room. Luckily we took the process slow - we bought the furniture last summer when he looked like he would climb out of his crib. We didn't end up moving him until right after Christmas, and it has luckily been so much easier than I had envisioned. He sleeps great in his big boy bed and his room turned out wonderfully! I had a lot of fun designing the room (thank you Pinterest!) and Jonathan was such a good sport to bring all of my Pinterest whims to life! 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Andrew is potty trained! I had my doubts about this one - he just didn't seem all that interested to me, but his daycare teacher kept insisting that he was ready and encouraging me to try the 3 day potty training method over a weekend or a break from school (yikes, scary!). Like I mentioned earlier, we kept dealing with sickness due to it being Andrew's first year, and they all seemed to happen on breaks from school. He and I were sick almost all of Christmas break, and he was sick the first three day weekend in January. He was sick during the first part of Spring Break, and then went to Gabby and Papaw's house to give Mommy and Daddy a chance to accomplish some much needed tasks around the house. Finally over the last couple days of Spring Break we tried to work on it - we put him in underwear and encouraged him to tell us if he needed to go. He did pretty well the weekend before going back to school - he would pee in the potty with only a few accidents, but he would NOT poop in the potty. I didn't feel like he truly "had" it yet. We decided that it seemed like a step backwards to send him to school in diapers, so we sent him on Monday with four changes of underwear and pants, a prayer, and a "good luck" to his teachers. In true Andrew fashion, he surpassed all of our expectations and did wonderfully! He's had a few accidents since then, most often when he is playing and doesn't want to stop, but overall I would consider him trained. We feel confident going places with him, and he's very good about telling us when he has to go. To all moms who haven't potty trained - here's what worked for us - bribery! Andrew was uninterested in the potty Skittles (I pretty sure Jonathan ate all of those!), but he was very interested in toys. I stocked up on cheap toys (Target dollar spot and those 5 packs of Matchbox cars) and I made a sticker chart. He got one sticker for pee and two stickers for poop, and I made a little chart with increasing amounts of stickers needed to earn a "potty prize". It definitely encouraged him to pee in the potty, but we still struggled with him wanting to poop, so we changed it to every time he pooped he earned a potty prize. He will still occasionally ask for a potty prize after he poops, and we give it to him if he asks. But many times he's just happy with the praise that he gets. I feel like I've said this about 10 times in this post so far, but overall the process was much easier than I anticipated. 
• And probably the biggest change this year for the Riley Family was this...
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I want to do an update later for Ben so that he can get his own post, and one for the family photos taken by the very talented Brian Tarver of Brian Tarver Photography, so hopefully I'll be more on-the-ball this summer!