Warning: video may not be suitable for people without a sense of adventure.
Maryland traffic court, docket number 99332.
Single female suspect was cited for reckless driving before fleeing the scene. Her street name is "cray cray". Visible markings include freckles and a "rock star" sticker on the top of each hand. Witnesses report seeing her pick up neighborhood boys for joyriding in a convertible. She is considered armed with Capri Sun and goldfish and dangerous to your sense of humor. This girl only knows one speed, so proceed with caution.
If u have any information, please call our hotline at 1-800-I-HAVE-A-MANIAC.
I happened to catch this the other day, and I played it for the Emster. We're both obsessed. Not only with the song, not only with Nikki Minaj, but also with Sophia Grace, who is surely going places.
Emma and her dad share a bond over old country music. Or as Roger would say, the GOOD country music. Whenever they drive together, you'll catch them singing along to vintage Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and even David Allan Coe (oops). I finally caught a little of her repertoire on our way to school this morning.
And don't worry.....I had my eye on the road. I promise. :)
Actually, I use this to my advantage when unloading groceries from the car....she can sit and scan the pics & videos. It keeps her occupied while I run things in. Little did I know that on this particular day she learned how to TAKE her own video.
I FINALLY got the HD video on my mark ii figured out and thought I'd give it a shot tonight. It really is pretty fun to know that I can take a video and stills using the manual features of my camera. In other words, I can adjust the aperture, ISO and shutter speed of the video settings too! So, for tonight's example, I had really low light, but I just adjusted a few things and was able to capture what my point-and-shoot video probably wouldn't have. Kinda fun!
There's always a price to pay for technology, and in this case, the HD videos take up an ENORMOUS amount of space. The clip below takes up almost 600MB of space. Compare that to one, unedited jpg coming straight from my camera at 2MB, you can see how I will eat up hard drive space fast! It seems I have to go through an extra step of converting the video in order to upload it to my smugmug...and in the process of converting/compressing it, I think the quality got reduced, bah!! I'm not sure I'm doing it right, so I'll keep trying.
It's still pretty cute. Here's Emma's rendition of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear". Some of you probably know this book by heart, but if you don't, the "woman, woman" part is funny, because it's supposed to be a teacher. :)
You can expect to see some changes around here, since I'm doing a lot of consolidation. Despite my track record over the last year or so, I love having a blog. In fact, more nights than not, I lie in bed thinking of funny and clever things to write about (this is usually whilst trying to fall asleep. Isn't that always the way it works?!) I want to get back into making regular occurences, but I think I'm going to stick to one blog (my photo blog) for the clever wit, and use our neglected smugmug account to fill in alllll the gaps. You see, I got to a point where I was taking SO MANY photos, that to stop and pick a few, edit a few, and come up with something interesting each time got to be overwhelming to me. And if I got behind, the perfectionist in me wouldn't allow me to just skip over stuff so I just did nothing. I know, brilliant plan.
Anyway, to anyone who might still be reading this blog, just know that there is tons of stuff to check out still. I am in the process of backing up allllll my photos onto our Smugmug page (you can check them out here if you have a *lot* of free time). This solves my problem of having to pick anything in particular or 'significant'. It's our day-in-day-out pictures, so that I don't feel like I am missing anything. I am combining photos from my camera, photos from Roger's camera, photos from 2 video cameras and from my cell phone. This way I can get the whole shebang to document our life. It will serve as my virtual scrapbook, with this one thrown in for variety.
Shamefully, I have been walking around with over 300 pictures and videos stored on my Blackberry. Sometimes, the phone is just easier to grab! It never really occurred to me to do something with them. I kinda forgot about them, but OH! I can download them onto my computer! In about 2 minutes! There are some great stories in these files. Weeding through the last 18 months of crackberry pics/vids, I came across this little video from last March. It's hard to believe this was almost a YEAR ago but it's a classic. Tia (my sister) and Margot came to visit us, and Margot had just turned 6 months old. Emma and Margot took their very first bath together (first of many) and it was one that neither Anna nor I will ever forget. These cousins are exactly 2 years apart in age so it's going to be fun using these videos as blackmail when they get older and even CONSIDER stuffing pillows under their covers and sneaking out...
I'll set the stage for you. Picture it, Sicily, 1941....ok just kidding (a little Golden Girls reference for ya). Since they were bathing in the big tub, Margot used the bumbo to keep her stable. Well, the bumbo was also Emma's bath "toy" and she wasn't real interested in sharing it. But she did, and Margot got to sit next to her in the bath. However, every time Emma would get upset and raise her voice, it would scare Margot, who would then get upset and start to cry (and raise her voice). Emma finally got to sit in it at the end (yes, she still fits into it!) We made this little video to send to Gigi so she could see them interact. You might want to grab your volume controls so that you can adjust accordingly. It starts out really loud and then quiet and then loud again. Hope you find it as amusing as we did! :)
From 4.5 awesome days in Park City, Utah!! The trip was a blast and Emma was a fantastic traveler. For going that far away, for such a short trip (and a 2 hr time difference), she really held her own. There were fifteen of us staying at the condo too!! Girlfriend is now a bona fide 'party girl'.
I didn't take my SLR camera with me, but we got some wicked good videos on our point-and-shoot. Did I mention Emma was awesome? She went ice skating, snowmobiling, hot-tubbing, bus taking and overall enjoyed everything we threw at her. What memories we'll have of this trip!
I think I was the luckiest one of all, because I did all the skiing!! Emma was too young for ski school - they don't start until 3.5 years. Roger had a bad back from shoveling our way out of Snowmageddon 2010 AND a round trip drive to Miami. He and Emma hung out while mama learned to carve her way down Park City Mountain, thanks to the olympic training she received, courtesy of one Katie Fabian. You rock, girl!!
Here are a few EKH digital shorts:
In this video, Emma is proudly displaying her pink butterfly goggles. She wore these EVERYWHERE. It was the cutest thing ever. The first thing she asked for when she woke up in the morning was, "goggles!" followed by "hot tub!" Roger had planned on taking her on the Alpine Sled - a gravity-assisted roller coaster. After psyching her up and waiting for it to start, the cautious employees made the call that there was too much snow to operate. She looks so bummed, doesn't she?!
Since the Alpine Sled was a bust, Roger took her over to the ice skating rink. She rocked it!! She even helped her new friend Dani take a lap around the rink with a walker. Dani was younger than Emma, but Emma was trying her best to help Dani by putting her arm around her back. After the video, Dani got sad/frustrated, which you'll hear about in the next video.
This video makes my heart just BURST. I cry every time I see this video. My little girl is ice skating!!! All by herself!! I can't stand it. I am so unbelievably proud of her. She is willing to try anything. I would never have pushed her to do anything she didn't want to, because I can completely respect a healthy dose of fear. She didn't bat an eye. In fact, she asked to do it. I just adore her adventurousness and confidence. I hope I can continue to encourage and empower her to try new things and feel strong and independent. Ok, I took my mommy goggles off now. :)
A big group of us went on a 2 hour snowmobiling tour. It was sooo much fun. Emma was pumped the whole ride over and couldn't wait to take off. Every time we stopped, she'd say, "more!"
Shout out to our peeps!
Always Miss Independent, Emma wanted to work the throttle. BY. HER. SELF. :)
She had sooooo much fun that she decided a quick nap was in order. The guide even warned me it could happen, but I thought, "Oh no. Not my kid. Never happen." Well, here's proof:
Finally, nothing like ending an adventure packed day with a people packed hot tub. She would have stayed in here allll night long if we'd let her.
More pics to come! But lots of great highlights! I'm so excited for next season so we can get her on some skiis. :)
I think June gets the award for one of the busiest months we've had in a long time. I have a whole month to catch up on with blogging!
After Dad & Josh left, Gammie and Poppa came to visit. They got to visit Emma on her last day of school and participate in her graduation. Here she is with her diploma:
Here is Gammie presenting Emma with a new book. She knows how much Emma loves the touch-and-feel books. This one is called, "peekaboo! I love you!"
So the Emster finished school, I finished work and celebrated my birthday all in one week. After Gammie and Poppa left, we all traveled to Houston to visit Sarah, John and baby Jack. We got to stay with them in their gorgeous house! It was reallllly hot that weekend, so poor us, we had to spend most of the days at their incredible neighborhood pool - complete with baby pool and water slide. Emma couldn't get enough of the 'wawa'. It was the first thing she asked for in the morning, and the last thing she talked about before going to bed. She would have swam allll day long. There were so many pictures, so I decided to compile a slideshow (make sure you can read the descriptions):
We couldn't pass up the opportunity to get some video at the pool too. Luckily, our point and shoot is waterproof so we could take it in the pool with us. Fun! You can catch Emma enjoying the water slide (note the HUGE smile on her face) and chanting 'more! more!'. We'll definitely have to get this one some swimming lessons soon, she is FEARLESS.
It's been just as busy back at home. In fact, we're having so much fun that Emma has decided to stop sleeping. Lucky me! I kid, I kid - I think she's cutting her 2 year molars. We've been enjoying the summer with great weather and being outdoors as much as possible. This includes a little outdoor painting (note the various stages of undress):
yummy watermelon
trips to the playground with friends,
Here she is playing with her friend, Shae. Emma and Shae were born on the exact same day!
more pool time and...I got to finally break in the portable studio I got for my birthday. I love it! I can't wait to use it more. Emma was happy to help me do some test shots, and she's sporting her very first ponytail (or 'ponie' as she calls it). :)
That's all folks!! It's the last day of June, so tomorrow starts another month of great fun! We're headed to Vermont to celebrate Opa's 60th birthday and then to New York for our friend Justin's wedding. We'll be back soon!
It's been a rough week here. After Emma got the Rotavirus, Daddy got it, and then Mommy got it. Oy! The only one who had a spring in his step was Parker, although he sighed a lot, no doubt frustrated that he was being neglected.
I had planned on posting these earlier in the week, but they seem fitting now. I think we're all on the mend now, but it's been a looooong week. So here's our goofy household letting off some steam.
Pardon my obnoxious narration - but Roger caught me off guard with emma's 'outfit', so I was a little hyper :)
First there was "Baby-in-a-Bucket". Make way for the new & improved Toddler-in-a-Trader-Joe's-Shopping-Bag (swung by our friend and neighbor "Miss Jean", or as Emma affectionately refers to her as "Mean"):
Just a few videos to show you the many sides of Miss Busy. She is a very busy girl! Always on the move, and still obsessed with anything that flies. Her daddy taught her a few dance moves and she loves practicing them for the camera. Enjoy!
Poor Parker. He probably feels second-rate these days. First he had to give up some prime real estate when Emma was born, and we had to reduce his stately pillows from three to one. Now, he's having his food and drink relocated at will. Luckily, he's a mellow dude. But if we ever wake up to find a giant poop log on Emma's rug, we'll have an idea of who the suspect is. :)
So basically, Emma's latest obsession is mastering the difference between "in" and "out". This provides for hours and hours of endless fun. During bathtime, we use stacking cups, and she has figured out how to get the small cup inside the bigger cup and so forth.
I hid her paci inside the 'secret' hatch of her LeapFrog table. When she discovered it, you would have thought it was covered in gold. So here's a little preview of our in-out-in-out escapades.
And excuse the stage of undress. It was a hot day, and we were rockin' out to The Who.
aggressive driving
