Captain of the bath tub

Riley is taking his role as co-captain very seriously and he is making sure that when Zee's boat gets in the water, everyone will know their assigned seats.  Take a look at the video of Riley making seat assignments!

Glow stick bath rave

Last night Riley attended his first rave party - in the bath tub! He had a great time waving the glow sticks around and making quite a mess, but boy did he have fun!  It was a challenge to capture the party in the dark and every time I turned on the lights to try and get a picture, he insisted they go back off.  I may have set a bad precedent so we'll see if the lights ever stay on for bath time anymore.

Pantsless Dance Party

Sometimes, for no reason at all, you just feel like you've got to dance!  This moment - in all it's pantsless glory - just so happened to be one of those times.  Riley felt the move to groove... just imagine how much better his moves would have been with music!

Snow day

As the entire East coast is shoveling themselves out of feet of snow, we are enjoying ourselves and making the most of the fun - and manageable - levels of snow that we have.  Riley went out to help Chris shovel and did the best that he could with his bucket.  And yes, that bucket is doing double duty with sand and snow this year.  Turns out Riley loves his new snow boots and wears them all day at school.

And as a special treat, we scooped up some snow, put some food coloring in it and let Riley at it.  Don't worry, I was very careful where we made our snow selection and picked the snow that had not already been colored.

Life is busy!

Just a quick note to say that I haven't forgotten about the blog!  Life is super busy - in a good way - and chugging along at a very fast speed.  I read an article this week saying that you have fewer than 1,000 weekends with your child before they turn 18 so we are making the most of our time together and really enjoying the fact that we have time for family fun while everyone is in town!

Sunday Funday

With the History Museum and the Library under our belts yesterday, today we headed to the Children's Museum!  We had only been there once before but Safta and Zadie got Riley a membership for Hanukkah so we checked in and are ready to make the most of our yearly pass!

You can't imagine how many things there are to do in just one museum - and we didn't even make it to the 3rd floor with the water tables!  There is building and climbing and cars and buttons and balls and arts and trains and lights and slides and noises and puppets and sand and... 

It is the perfect places to spend a rainy or cold afternoon and just like we got a ton of use out of our membership to the other museums last year, it will be nice to switch it up and learn every inch of this building.  Maybe we can switch off year by year to keep it fresh.

Even though I wanted to spend more time in the art room, Riley was on a mission to re-explore all the fun things he remembered from last time.  And boy did he have fun!  In a museum where you are encouraged to touch everything you possibly can, it is pretty much a 2-year-old heaven!

All of that and I can literally see him learning things in front of my eyes.  He was playing with a mini circuit and once I showed him to connect the red and black wires, he wanted to test them out on everything - trying to get all of the lights to light up.

He even took a pass at climbing up the "You Must Be 5 Years Old to Climb This" net.  This is about as far as he got on his own, but with a few pushes and shoves from mommy - who felt like a monkey - we made it to the top and Riley took the twirly slide on his own.

So thank you Safta and Zadie for this awesome gift!  I know we will have fun exploring the Children's Museum and we can't wait to show you around if you ever find yourself if the neighborhood!

Where in the world is our family?

With the whole family being in all four corners of the globe, Riley and I are finding things to do on our own to keep us busy until the troops return home.  We went to the library and what did we find but a giant globe!  We took a few minutes to point out where every single member of the family is and now Riley has a better idea.  On the way out, he even said "Daddy is on a long plane (ride)" which is kind of what I tell him every morning when he asks where he is.  We pointed out Israel, South America, Alabama, California and New York.

From there, we made our way over to the history museum - making sure to use up the last few months of our membership before our hanukkah gift from last year expires.  With the appropriate dinosaur shirt on proud display, we suited up, took to the dirt and brushed the teeth of the dinosaur bones that we found in the pit.  By now, Riley is a museum pro and knows exactly where he wants to spend his time, where the buttons are that he is allowed to push and which elevator he likes to ride.

On the way out to the car, we took our time enjoying the "warm" weather and the sunshine - both a true pleasure to experience on the last week of the year!