Riley at 2.5

If I’m going to get back in the swing of writing, I’d really like to be documenting my big kid’s life more. Don’t get me wrong – her life is WELL documented from a photographic standpoint. But I find that I stopped writing things down when the “baby book” phase ended and she turned 1. (Side note: we didn’t have a true baby book, but had a calendar that encouraged documenting a few things each month along with all of the classic “firsts”).

So without further ado, Riley at 2 and a half is …

• The sweetest, happiest little person I’ve ever met.
• Insanely demanding, whiny, and unreasonable.
• She loves: books, music, dancing, coloring with markers, “cooking” in her kitchen (usually sushi, pancakes, and pizza), playing in her sand table, playing on the playground, talking about her friends
• She hates: trying new foods, eating full meals, being told “no,” naps
• Some funny (or just fun) things she has said recently:
  • Momma, I help you blow the lawn?
  • Don’t put lotion on my haircut! (referring to her painted toenails)
  • This is you birthmark? We go to the store, you buy me a birthmark?
  • That’s so silly. That’s silly buying birthmarks at the store. We buy grapes at the store! Grapes and avocado at the store.
  • *pointing to my brother’s mustache that he has had her entire life* What’s this? This? It’s my mustache You mustache? Yeah *touching her lip* I no have a mustache. I only have eyebrows.
  • She calls Lucky Charms “yucky charms”
• Her favorite foods are: Lucky Charms, chili, and Wegmans’ peach applesauce pouches.
• She had a growth spurt in the last few months. Now she wears 3T clothing and size 5 shoes.
• Her favorite color is pink (go figure)
• She potty trained in 1 weekend and has had a grand total of 4 accidents in her life (it’s been just over a month). She stays dry at nap time and almost always overnight, though we still do pull ups overnight because she won’t poop on the potty and just waits for her pull up.
• She is sick all. the. time. I am fairly certain she had fewer than 10 truly healthy days between November and May. We just recently got a week or two of healthy and now we’re right back in another cold/cough. Whenever she has a cold she goes on a preventative/steroid inhaler that makes her impulsive and a little angry. I can’t wait for her to have longer healthy stretches so we don’t have to worry about whether she’s going to impulsively smack us in the face all day.
• She is so sweet to her baby sister. She reads her books, strokes her face, and hugs her at any opportunity.
• When Kellan was born, Riley went through about an 8 week phase of being, for lack of a better word, bad. She was clearly reeling from the sudden decrease in attention. I’m glad she took it out on us rather than the baby but it was a tough season! She would throw food at every meal and say no to literally every request, but then she came out of it and was back to her laid back, happy, generally compliant self. Thank God.
• She wants so badly to be independent, but still needs help with things like dressing and going to the bathroom. That’s hard for her but she gets more independent every day!
• In April (2 years 5 months), she learned how to go down stairs by herself, and she has been gaining independence at a rapid pace since then.