Wordless Wednesday - Hot Fun in the Summertime

This photo has now been entered in the Summer Fun Photo Contest at http://www.5minutesformom.com/3898/win-500-in-our-summer-fun-photo-contest.

Emma's A-Okay!

It is amazing how resilient kids are. By yesterday afternoon Emma was back to her old self. She woke up from her nap full of vim and vigor. If we didn't know any better, we wouldn't have thought she had any kind of surgery yesterday morning. She had a little tylenol yesterday afternoon just as a precautionary measure but slept fine last night and hasn't needed anything today. Brad took some photos yesterday just to show how okay Emma was (although it was not an easy task because she wouldn't stay put) and even captured her doing the army crawl across the room. I hope that I can bounce back as quickly next month after I get my wisdom teeth extracted.

Surgery Update

Emma's surgery this morning went very well. She was scheduled for surgery at 8am. They actually got started around 8:30am and we were discharged a little after 10am. Once the doctor got in there, he found that it was actually a brachial cleft fistula that ran up into the tonsil area. He said that the surgery was pretty well textbook. When we got back to the recovery room, she was taking down the pedialyte like there was no tomorrow. Emma was a real trooper the entire morning. While she was both tired and hungry, she hardly fussed at all. Emma is resting comfortably now at home and will hopefully be back to her old fun and games by tomorrow. We are very thankful for all the prayers said on her behalf this morning.

8 Months Old

Over the past month, Emma has learned to sit up all by herself and has mastered the army crawl (video to come). Also, just in the past couple of days, Emma has doubled the number of teeth she has up to four. It is funny though because it isn't the top middle two that have come in but the lateral incisors. While she still likes tags from time to time, that fascination seems to be waining but shoes, remote controls, and CD's are still major draws. Now that she is getting so mobile, we better get to work baby proofing. Happy 8 months Emma!

Surgery

As some of you already know, Emma will be having surgery this coming Monday to remove a cyst. She was born with what is known as a brachial cleft cyst in her neck. It is basically a little pit that must run up into the sinuses because it drains mucous. It is not serious and the surgery is done primarily so that she will not go through life with mucous draining from her neck. According to the doctor, the procedure should only take ~20-30 minutes and she will hopefully be able to go home the same day. That being said, it will still be the longest 20-30 minutes of our lives. The good thing is that by getting it done now, Emma will have no memory of the surgery and shouldn't have much of a scar. Just please say some prayers for Emma on Monday.

Wordless Wednesday - Helping with the Laundry

Photos from Our Visit with Grandpa Jimbo & Grandma Kristi

We had a very good time with Grandpa Jimbo and Grandma Kristi last week. We went down to the Big Dam Bridge one morning and then hit the Farmer's Market over the weekend. Mostly we just spent time playing. Grandpa and Grandma got a big kick out of Emma especially when it came time to feed her. She put on quite the show for them and has recently become a big ham for the camera. It used to be that she would turn away when a camera came out. Now she gets this big old grin on her face (if it is close to naptime, however, all bets are off on the grin). Emma definitely enjoyed all the extra attention and hopes that she will get to see Grandpa and Grandma again soon.

Visitors!

Emma is having a fun time right now with Grandpa Jimbo and Grandma Kristi. They are spoiling her rotten, which I guess is what grandparents are entitled to do. They haven't seen her since she was 8 weeks old so they have noticed a huge change in our little Emma especially now that she isn't crying all the time. We'll have some pictures to come later.

Emma Sat Up By Herself!

Emma has just started getting up on all fours and rocking back and forth. While Brad was trying to catch this on video, we ended up getting something else. Emma sat up for the first time by herself and the camera was actually rolling. The video clip is the second time that she sat up by herself last night. She was about halfway there by the time Brad started recording. Emma was so proud of her accomplishment as were her mom and dad.

Wordless Wednesday - Budding Photographer

Swim Time

We headed up to Missouri this past weekend for an anniversery party for some good friends of Brad's mom and dad. Congratulations Don & Berniece on 50 blessed years together! We stayed with Aunt Lesa and Uncle Chris and had a great time. Emma got to go swimming in a real pool and really enjoyed it for the most part. She wasn't too crazy about it at first after she tried to take a nose dive and ended up with a face full of water but before long, she was splashing and kicking and didn't care about water splashing in her face. Besides swimming, Emma also got to try some honeydew and loved it!

Zooming Around with Daddy!

Emma & Uncle Chris

Trying to Splash Aunt Lesa

Wordless Wednesday

Farmer's Market and the Flowers

On Saturday, we loaded the pink princess up into her new hot pink stroller so we look for some good, fresh produce at the farmer's market. There was a woman in front of us who had a tote filled with fresh flowers. Apparently the flowers were very interesting to Emma. At one point I stopped to look at some tomatoes. Brad also came to a stop as did the woman with the flowers. Brad got the stroller a little too close to this woman and next thing you know, he looks down and there is Emma gently fingering the flowers in this woman's tote. She was working with the flowers the same way that she does her tags; gently touching them and moving them around with her fingers. I missed it but Brad wishes that he had brought the video camera with him because it was too funny. Fortunately she didn't pull any petals off and the woman was never any the wiser.

The Pink Princess

Sleep Training

Happy belated 4th of July to everyone! We hope that everybody had a wonderful weekend. We spent out weekend working on sleeping. While we kept hoping that eventually Emma would learn to sleep through the night on her own, things were getting progressively worse, instead of better. Recently, Emma has gotten a bit too comfortable with the idea that mom will come rescue her and sleep with her as soon as she starts crying. While this works for her, Emma is a very restless sleeper so my sleep isn't so restful. That being said, we decided that the three day weekend was the time to start some sleep training. We had tried all the "no cry" methods previously and those were not working so it was time for "cry it out". I am not sure who the cry it out method is harder on, Emma or Brad and I. The first night Emma went down easily but woke around 2 am. We spent the next hour and 45 minutes alternating trips into her bedroom to give her a little pat and reassure her that she had not been abandoned. It sure did make us feel terrible to leave her crying when all we wanted to do was pick her up. The next night was a little better although it took about 40 minutes to get to sleep initially. Then Emma was up around 4 am and took an hour to go back to sleep. The third night was much improved although she was waking up every hour or two, Emma would only cry for a couple of minutes and then drift back off to sleep. We didn't even have to go into the room that night. Last night was even better. After 30 minutes of crying initially, she basically slept until five a.m. and then had to change positions but no crying and then back to sleep. We are cautiously optimistic that Emma is learning how to sleep on her own. Hopefully these improvements will keep up especially since we are heading up to Missouri this coming weekend.

Wordless Wednesday

Tags

In addition to her love of shoes, Emma loves tags. A toy with a tag on it is far more interesting than one without. Brad's mom joked that she should make her a blanket out of tags. Apparently this behavior has not gone unnoticed at daycare. They have one play mat that has a tag on it and Emma spends a great deal of time working with the tag. She is also very protective and not willing to share. Andi at the daycare was telling Brad that there are several other children with a similar interest but if Emma sees them coming near "her" tag, she rolls on over and positions herself so that she has the only access. No need to buy this child expensive toys. What is it about tags?