2 Years Old

Emma G. is two years old; how can that be? This will be the last "official" monthly update for her. Over the past month, Emma has continued to amaze and her vocabulary grows by leaps and bounds. Seriously she repeats everything these days. Brad had her do the whole chorus for "Jingle Bells" yesterday morning. At two years old, she can tell you her name although it comes out "Emma Gace Mackenberg" but that is a mouthful for a two year old. She can also count to 13 and will count objects so she understands what she is doing. While we know her comprehension is very good, if you tell her something, she will often respond "Huh?", which can be frustrating because we know she knows what we are talking about. I guess that is just part of being two! Just last week, we moved Emma into her big girl bed and she is doing great at nights. I think the novelty of being able to get out of bed is hampering nap time but hopefully that will wear off. I just might have to remove everything from her room in the meantime. Emma loves clothes and I mean, she loves clothes! I let her pick out her outfits several times over the weekend and she always grabbed items that coordinated well. Playing dress-up also seems to be a favorite nap time activity.
We have been taking Emma up for the children's message during our church service for a while now and she does great with it. We just recently started taking her to the Parents and 2's Bible Class after service and she is having a great time. They sing songs, have a Bible lesson, and then do an related art project. This was only her second week in Bible Class but they open with the same song each week. All day yesterday, she was singing "Open, shut them, open, shut them", which is the first part of the song. She still loves to draw and will make little circles. She also likes to scribble and then tell you that she wrote her name or Josh's name. Emma is definitely getting quite the imagination as well. She had a piece of potato skin from her mashed potatoes and was telling us that it was a dog but far and away, her favorite pretend activity is having a tea party. She loves the tea set that she received for her birthday and makes us lots of tea throughout the day. When Brad was home with her last Monday, he said he must have had about 50 cups that day.
Finally, Emma had her two year check-up yesterday complete with three shots even though I was only anticipating one. They finally had the Hib vaccine, which there had been a shortage of at her 15 and 18-month appointments. She also needed her seasonal flu booster and since they had H1N1 on hand, I decided to have her get that as well. She was a hurting unit when we got home but some Tylenol and ibuprofen eventually kicked in and she was good to go and had a good night of rest. The check-up went well and Emma is now up to 25 lbs 6 oz (35-40th percentile) and 35 1/4 inches (80-85th percentile). Over the past year, she has gained 5 lbs 7 oz and 6 1/4inches. She continues to track right on her growth curve. Here are some new photos of the big, two year old!