Growing

Riley is getting to be such a big girl! It seems like every time I turn around she's doing something new. She's learned to crawl on hands and knees, she's eating chunkier foods, she's drinking from a sippy full time, and now she's started pulling up on furniture! That last one's pretty scary. She got a number of bumps and bruises over the weekend. Tyler and I walked into her room this morning to find her standing with her little eyes peeking over the bed rail. I'm glad we decided to lower her crib all the way.

Riley and I are coming to town for the Lung Walk on April 18th! I emailed Tina Barnard with the American Lung Association in Collinsville. She's in charge again this year and I volunteered to help out. I'll go in at 6:30 and Riley will join me later for the walk. Our family has been touched by asthma and lung disease and I'm excited to once again be working with an organization that's fighting back. After all, these are the same people who sent me to Camp Superkids (yes, I went to asthma camp) and it was an awesome summer!

Key West

Tyler and I had a great time on vacation! We were in Key West for three days and it was just enough time to see the sights, relax, and try some new things before we started missing Riley too much. The aquarium in Key West has a touch tank where we got to hold star fish, sea cucumbers, conch and horseshoe crabs. We even got to pet a shark (just a baby one)! We tried real Cuban food (yes even me) and Key West's specialty... Conch fritters. It's a little strange eating something after you were just playing with a live one in the aquarium. Our second day there we rented bikes to get around. The island is only 4 miles by 2 miles so we were able to get anywhere we wanted to go. We took a "Rum and Rege" cruise out to the reef the evening of the second day. We snorkeled for an hour (amazing) and then slowly sailed back to shore with some music, free beer, and a beautiful sunset. Every night we went down to Mallory Square. It's right on the water. Thousands of people gather there for the sunset and every night there were at least twenty street performers. You've got fire breathers, musicians, contortionists, and even a guy laying on a bed of nails! The rest of the time we spent visiting the street vendors, doing museums and tours, and just relaxing by the pool.

Riley and Howie spent five days with Grandma Simmons. They had a great time, but I'm pretty sure Grandma was ready to get back to work. That Riley is a handful now that she's on the move! She is army crawling all over the place! We've had a lot of fun being back home. She got to spend some time at Daddy's work on Monday and yesterday we went to the zoo. Now that we're members we can go whenever we want! We also went and bought a mesh baby bumper. The night before last there was an incident with a certain someones chubby little knee getting stuck in the bed rails. After a generous amount of baby oil (and quite a bit of crying) we were able to get her free, but Tyler and I put her to sleep in her pack'n play after that until we found something to keep her arms and legs in at bedtime. The mesh seems to be working great so far!

Riley Brooke