We've Moved

New blog site: http://family.cozi.com/ereno/

Email me if you don't have access.

Wow! It's been awhile, huh?

I just realized the last entry was 6/22. I will now hang my head in shame...

More to come soon.

Today was good. Riley made the cutest scuba mask at school. He was very proud of it and showed it to John as soon as he got home from work. We went to the library yesterday and practiced our whisper on the librarian. She was quite impressed. We also got some longer books so Mommy has incentive to read more without going fuzzy when we read Dr. Suess for the umpteenth time. We checked out Misty of Chincoteague, Ralph S. Mouse, and My Father's Dragon. The dragon book is an unknown, but Riley insisted we needed a dragon book and we saw that one first. It is cute, but it had some older child concepts like running away from home that made us stop and have a discussion on why Riley would never run away from home. So far, Ralph S. Mouse is the top winner. We've turned off the TV and have been reading during dinner and before bed.

On another note, I received 22 boxes of carpet tiles for our bedrooms yesterday. That was kind of fun since the very nice FedEx guy was giving me grief about my shipment taking up his entire van.

Oh, and the zebras are still with us.

The Zebras

We now have three zebras living with us. They have wings and can fly. Daddy's zebra sleeps all the time, but Mommy's zebra and Riley's zebra like to fly around and get into mischief. In fact, most of the time when Riley gets into trouble it is actually the fault of Riley's zebra and not Riley. But that's okay because somehow being able to tell the zebra you really shouldn't do this or that helps Riley realize he probably shouldn't do it either.

So far Riley's zebra has sat on his head and given him crazy hair, got stuck on the ceiling fan, threatened to splash water on Grandma, and chomped on our bottoms. These zebras are really big about chomping on bottoms. It all started because Riley was in the bathtub playing with his letters that stick to the side of the tub. He asked me what started with "Z" and my reply was zebra. Now Riley is very, very ticklish on the back of his legs right under his bottom. I was trying to get him out of the tub, and I said "Oh no, the zebra is going to chomp on your bottom!" while I tickled him on the back of his legs. One thing led to another and now we have zebras.

I'm not sure how long the zebras will be around, but they are kind of fun.

Daddy has been told!

I thought you might enjoy this picture of Super Riley and his sidekick Super Hoodoo. To the rescue of Daddy in distress...

On Friday night John called me at 9:00 PM and asked if Riley and I would meet him in Weatherford with a gas can since he kind of ran out of gas. On the way there, Riley and I had a lengthy discussion of cars, trucks, why they need gas, does the gas go in the trucks' tummies, why doesn't Daddy just go get more gas, etc. When we met him, Riley started asking John "Daddy, why did your truck run out of gas?". John's reply was "that's what happens when you are talking on your phone while driving instead of paying attention".

Riley's response with absolutely no prompting from me: "Daddy, you're supposed to pull over your truck and stop and then talk on your phone".

Daddy, you have been told by a three year old.

All Spread Out

I'm still in Houston, Riley is in Cartwright, OK and John has been all over North Texas. Riley is having a blast with Aunt Vickie, Uncle Brent, and Hydro. John has been working way too hard, and I'm still finishing up my project at work. The plan is for us all to be reunited back at home by tomorrow night. Yeah!

The Dog Days of Summer

This is how we spend our days in the Texas heat. Kickin' back with some of our friends in the pool...

This is actually Riley and Aunt Vickie's dog Hydro. Hydro, our dog Hoodoo, and Riley are convinced they are one pack of puppies.

The House Is Still Standing

What a birthday! I'm in Houston for work (yeah), but I got individual voice messages from almost every family member singing me Happy Birthday. How cool is that! :) I also got lots of well wishes from my coworkers in addition to some gorgeous flowers and delicious brownies.

Later in the evening I got a voice message from John saying "The house is still standing, but a lot of your apples are gone". That took me by surprise considering I had no idea the weather was bad. It ends up there were several tornadoes that may have touched the ground around Brock and Weatherford. Our neighborhood suffered minor but impressive damage - one house is missing most of its shingles and our neighbor's big trampoline was thrown 400 yards south of their pond. Our house is fine although I did lose some of the apples I've been so excited about. Small price to pay. Our 100 year old church in Brock may have structural damage - it seems slight but they are keeping people out until they can be sure. John spent some time hungry in the kitchen of Olive Garden - they had all the patrons go to the walk in fridge when the tornado warnings sounded.

Interesting morning

This morning we discovered that someone had missed the turn at the top of the hill and drove through our fence. Then they proceeded to drive along the fence on our property and go through our white metal gate perpendicularly. At that point they must have either woken up or come out of their drunken stupor because they tried to get back on the road but succeeded in going over the road and into the ravine on the other side. The ravine is deep enough that John completely missed seeing the grey truck still in the ravine. I happened to look in the ravine after dropping Riley off at daycare. I called the sheriff and they sent an officer out. He reported that the truck had been reported stolen last night. So, now we have more fence to fix. Careful what you wish for - John and I had just been talking about moving the entryway to make it easier for trucks and trailers to get through!

On a much more fun note, our "Auntie Jill" came and visited us recently. Jill and I took Riley to the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Fort Worth where Riley got to ride a bucking bronco. There is live footage in the attached video. Y'all enjoy!

Potty Training

And yes, that is a Pull-Up on his head.

My ever so resourceful son has designed new headwear.

Potty training is going very well considering we've had some odd problems - like getting the concept that pee actually comes from him and is not provided by Mommy. I decided to try a trick I heard about where you pour warm water on him when he is sitting on the potty to cause him to go. Yeah, that one backfired.

Now our biggest problem is getting Riley to tell us when he has to go instead of us taking him to the potty every hour. We visited a really neat new preschool today, and we explained he has to go potty all by himself before he can go to this school. I think he actually understood, but I think he also felt a lot of pressure. We had the biggest meltdown I've ever seen shortly after when we couldn't play on the preschool's playground. So, we went to a city playground and then had pizza at the place right next door. We ended the night on a good note, so we'll see how tomorrow goes...

One day you're on top, then next day...

This morning Riley told me "Mommy I am mad at you". I go from getting coffee brought to me, to this. Granted this was my own undoing because I made the mistake of mentioning we were going to Grandma's house this weekend. "This weekend" is not a concept easily grasped by a three year old. So I immediately made the black list when I insisted we had to go to school one more day and then go to Grandma's house.

Fortunately life was OK when he got home from school in the afternoon.

This picture is from earlier in the year, but I thought you might get a kick out of seeing The Cool Dude.

Hello Again!

Surprise! The Ereno family has not disappeared!

I got really, really busy, but I am hoping to make this blogging a habit. To get started...

Riley brought me "coffee" this morning. It was so sweet! He now has a big boy bed and no gate on his door, so he is in the habit of coming to my bed to wake me up in the morning. This morning I kept telling him I was tired and "five more minutes". He left for a few minutes and came back with a Playdoh container full of little plastic toys and told me he made me some coffee. How cute is that!!!

Mardi Gras 2009

Once again, our family trekked to Shreveport, Louisiana to enjoy the Mardi Gras parade put on by the Krewe of Centaur. The whole group included Lainie, John, Riley, Vickie, and Gary (Granddad). Every year we have a wonderful time catching beads, cups, and toys. This year was just as great as before with Vickie winning "best beads" contest with a rubber ducky pendant on a set of beads (and no, she didn't have to flash anything - this is a family friendly parade!). Riley was really tired because he didn't take a nap until 30 minutes before we had to leave. He spent most of the parade with his head on someone's shoulder, but as each float went by he would perk up, raise his hand, and say "Throw me, Mister!". We caught him a stuffed dog (quickly named Mardi), a stuffed bear, another stuffed dog, a football, and a ball. Granddad in his wheelchair also managed to leave the parade with his fair share of beads.

We also enjoyed some really great food. At night, the adults took turns watching Riley and having fun losing their money in the casino. All in all, a wonderful trip and we all swore we'd be back again next year!

I Share With You!

Lately, Riley has been learning about sharing and he really enjoys practicing. If he's drinking something, he'll say "I share with you" and then "You sip" and then "I sip". It's really pretty cute.

The funny thing is we discovered there are hidden nuances to the concept of sharing. I was eating a cookie and I meant to hide it from Riley. However, I was talking to John and not paying attention. I sat down right next to Riley with the cookie in my hand. All of a sudden I hear a forceful "I sharing with you" and the cookie was yanked out of my hand. Technically he was right, but the finesse and etiquette was lacking.