Who needs Step 2?

So this is what you do when it's been raining for 4 days straight in San Diego (which is like...um....never!) A little painter's tape and some cardboard can go a loooong way to keep an active toddler entertained (especially when she keeps asking to go outside).

We're hoping to actually break in the new bike seat we got her - until then, we're using the box it came in. Eventually we'll paint it to look like a little gingerbread house just in time for Christmas. Rainy days, staying in your pajamas all day and playing with cardboard rules! I think Emma enjoyed herself too, ha ha.


Here she is texting all her friends, telling them to come over for a box party! :)

Tree trimming and party girl!

Last weekend we picked up our Christmas tree. We got a little one (we have a little house, but also wanted one that Emma couldn't tackle) at a local nursery. Emma thought it was perfect, just her size!

The next day, Emma celebrated her friend Winter's first birthday! What a fun day. Winter had great entertainment. Miss Dana brought bells and drums and scarves and a guitar to play for all the kids! Emma loved dancing around and playing with all the props. She loved getting dressed up with her birthday dress from aunt Mary Kate!

December 2008 update

Since it's been a while, I thought I'd jot down what Miss Em has been up to lately. She cracks me up all the time. Every day she does a little something extra (usually goofy or sweet) like patting me on the back when giving me a hug or wanting to brush my teeth for me. Precious!

She has been saying 'mama' and 'dada' for a while, but now she'll say "Hi!" every time she walks up to me. It's too funny. It's in such a casual tone of voice, like, "hey, whut up mom".

She's learned "no". She doesn't say it - she just shakes her head. A lot.

She's perfected the pout. Turns her mouth into a big circle and sticks that bottom lip out. Big time.....even accompanies it with a nice little "waaaaah". Technically I guess it sounds more like, "waaaaaaoohhhh". And then turns to see if you're watching.

She keeps getting more teeth! After all four molars popped up (and we recovered from the interrupted nights) she got all four incisors popping through at the same time. Her mouth is almost totally full!

She's still got a great appetite and eats almost everything (except meat....still not big on that). Her absolute favorite food is hands down: BLUEBERRIES!! This girl could eat blueberries morning, noon and night. They've got magical powers for a cranky/fussy toddler - so I always have them in stock!

She's still *obsessed* with babies. Babies on the street, baby dolls, pictures of babies in books or magazines, real babies (like our neighbor's 4 month old). She still loooooves babies and wants to smother them (almost literally!) in hugs and kisses. Let's hope this tradition continues.

She and Parker are best friends. She particularly likes pulling up his lip to inspect his teeth. She'll make a growling sound and then run down the hallway for him to chase him. That brings me to my next one....

She loves playing cat-and-mouse! The slower you stalk her and the louder your roar, the harder she laughs. She'll run herself into a corner and then dance/fidget around until you capture her. Her favorite time to play this is right before bath time - as I'm chasing her around trying to peel off clothes!

She also looves being outside. She'll grab my keys or her shoes and take them over to the front door and make her clucking sound (not sure how, but that was the sign she chose to mean 'outside' for some reason). She gets giddy when we put the sweater and shoes on and she runs out the front door. I have to catch her in time so she doesn't tear down the front steps. Once outside she loves waving to the cars, picking flowers and spotting the birds flying. She's a fast runner too! I now understand what "chasing after a toddler" means. :)

One of the funniest things she does these days is make piles. She'll pick up 5-6 things in her arms at once (all different shapes and weights) and struggle to carry them across the room. Then she'll make a little pile with each piece, until she decides she needs to relocate the whole load to some other part of the room. It cracks me up what she likes carrying - mostly akward and heavy household items. She'll even grunt and groan if they're particularly heavy. But she loves overloading herself and making her little piles. Too funny!

In 10 days she'll be 15 months old!! I can't beleive it!

I am finally getting caught up!!

Ok, ok. It is time to finally update our blog. It's that time of year - things are just really busy and being gone for 10 days, working part time, a walking toddler, a photography class, a husband who travels and the holiday season approaching has made for very little downtime. And when I have it.....well I just want to veg. :)

Anyway - we had a great trip to Florida to visit Pache and grandmom Judy for an extended Thanksgiving trip. We chose to go for 10 days so taht we could beat the holiday rush on both ends. We had some trouble on both flights in the end, but I guess it's the price we pay for having every other flight we've taken home with Emma be mostly successful.

All the siblings were home for the holiday and we even got to visit with two sets of our friends. I was a total slacker when it came to pictures so unfortunately I don't have that many exciting pics. We had a wonderful time hanging out with Tia and Uncle Andy, Aunt Rachael, Uncle Josh and the rest of the crew. We had a delicious Thanksgiving meal and Emma had a BLAST showing off all her goofy tricks. One of my favorite parts was our trip to the Tampa Aquarium! I love aquariums/zoos and this one is truly one of the best I've ever been to. It's PERFECT for kids - everything is at knee height and there are so many interactive exhibits. At one point, they brought out real penguins and all the visitors got to sit up close and personal. They were literally a foot away from us! Emma loved it and so did mommy!

This is how close they got to us!

video montage

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!


Busy Bee from Eeks on Vimeo.


Sorting from Eeks on Vimeo.


the plane! the plane! from Eeks on Vimeo.


silliness from Eeks on Vimeo.

Happy Halloween!! We had a great Halloween, and our neighborhood totally came alive!! Wow! I think every single house within a 6 block radius was open and welcoming. Tons of kids at all ages everywhere. How fun!

We went trick-or-treating with the twins up the street - Lily (ladybug) and Jorin (dinosaur). Emma has never been afraid of anything in her life. But that dinosaur costume really got to her. She was scared for a good half hour. She finally warmed up to him, just in time for us to hit the neighborhood haunted house!

Emma is giving Lily a kiss. She is getting really good at that! We are also working on giving hugs too. Mom's nerdy costume was Pippy LongWitch. Not terribly creative, but it was the best I could come up with!

Emma is the walker in the group, so getting a picture of all three of them together is not an easy task!

This haunted house was AMAZING! The owners spent the better part of the last month putting it all together. It was a full maze through their backyard (although you could barely tell you were in their backyard)- they had floors, walls and ceilings completely covered with halloween decorations, lights, sounds, etc. I would have LOVED this as a kid!! Emma was fascinated by all the lights. It was kid-friendly so nothing jumped out at you. It was really cool!

Saying goodbye to the talking head before we left! Trick or Treat!!

Happy Halloween!

walking and kissing

I intended to take a short video of emma's crazy walking skills. But in the end, I got a great video of her kissing skills. :) Love. Her.



the kissing bandit from Eeks on Vimeo.

Happy Fall!!

The Santa Ana winds are finally dying down, and it's starting to feel like fall around here. We had a wonderful time yesterday at our friend Winter's house. She and Emma met in utero (hospital tour for mom's) and they're pals in napping crimes. :)

Thank you to Tia for the beautiful fall dress!!

How PRECIOUS are these two???

birthdays and black eyes

Finally getting around to posting this. It's been busy here at Popsicle Central. Three different people have caught the cold! I think we're finally on the mend now. If only the weather would decide which direction it was going to go!

So we spent a week back east celebrating Emma's first birthday with family and friends. She ended up having more than one celebration, what a lucky girl! To make things more interesting, Emma decided to start walking on the trip. And everyone knows that with walking comes bumps, and bruises, and yes, the occasional black eye. So she had a little black eye under her right eye (see below) for her birthday celebrations. She's a tough girl, though. I think she was almost proud. :)

"I'm so excited! I get to have FOUR birthday cakes this week!"

On Friday night, we had her first birthday cake and singing at cousins Morgan & Tommy's house. She loved everyone singing to her, and hanging out with her fun cousins!

We had a Virginia celebration on Saturday, the 27th. Thank you to Aunt Sarah for the beautiful party dress! We got to hang out with G.G., and Tia and Uncle Andy, our special, wonderful Emma (for whom little Emma was named), friends from New York, Florida and Portland, cousins and more! It was great, and Emma loved being the center of attention (before taking a nice long nap in the closet. hey, she slept like a champ!)

On Sunday, we had a birthday celebration for her in Maryland with family. She had a beautiful Princess Cake handmade by Aunt Kelly and cousin Morgan:

Gammie created an amazing birthday Princess party for her Precious Angel. It was a fairytale dream! Just look at this spread!

When it came time for Emma's cake, she was a little tired, but she's still a party girl through and through. She loved her birthday treat!

The wonderful legacy of her first birthday, is that she was able to share it with THREE other generations!! That's right, she had two paternal great-grandparents at her party, and we had to capture it on camera:

What a lucky girl she is. She got lots of wonderful books, clothes, baby dolls, games, puzzles, handmade sweaters, two necklaces, a handmade book by Aunt Kelly and more. The best gift of course, was just having our loved ones around us to help celebrate this little treasure. I think she enjoyed herself immensely and we look forward to many more! Thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make her day so special!

For the rest of our trip, there are simply too many pictures to post at once, so take a look at ALL of them here:
http://eeks101.smugmug.com/gallery/6164504_GM5h3#388568957_Mhntk

enjoy!

relocation package

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. :)



Movin' from Eeks on Vimeo.

One year visit!

Emma had her 1-year appointment this week with our wonderful pediatrician who, after 2 minutes in the examination room said, "my, she sure is a busy little lady". That's our popsicle!

She weighed in at a healthy 20.5 lbs (43%), stands 29.5 in high (63%) and head circumference was 17.5 in (37%). She did have a lead test due to our older rental home, but everything came out in the clear. Our doctor said that she's doing great with her signing, and walking and interest in books. Hooray! The one thing we do have to work on is getting her off these bottles. She'll drink just about anything we give her (milk, soy milk, rice milk) but it HAS to be in her bottle. Oy. So that's our next challenge!

To commemorate the occasion, we took a picture of us at our favorite post-pediatric coffee-break spot: Bird Rock cove. Here she is at 4 days old:




and here we are a year later! Happy Birthday little star!

Birthday Extravaganza part 2

We spent a week at home celebrating Emma's first birthday with as many friends and family as we could visit. We started off the birthday celebrations in Virginia with mom, Tia, Uncle Andy and a great group of friends and family. Thank you Aunt Sarah for Emma's beautiful party dress!! It came off after the cake, so half the pictures are of Emma running around in her bloomers. She loved being the center of attention, that's for sure!

Stay tuned....

Emma's first birthday celebration post coming soon!