What's New in Emma's World...

...this little guy!

Joshua Ryan

August 28th, 2009

12:27am

6lbs 11.5 oz

18 1/2 inches

21 Months

It is hard to believe that Emma is 21 months old and that last month was her last as an only child since Junior will be gracing us with his presence before she is 22 months old. Emma is getting to be such a big girl and I just love seeing all the changes. She is developing her hand/eye coordination and those fine motor skills have really come along. She loves buckling herself into her seat at the table or in the cart at the grocery store. She has worked on the car seat buckle but that one is a little tough. At least she can't get them off yet. Her vocabulary continues to develop and we have found that when she does start to have a bit of a tantrum, it is a lot easier to reason with her and talk her down.

Emma can be quite a little ham at times and she knows it. She was making some kind of funny face in the car yesterday on the way home. Both Brad and I started cracking up, which made her grin so big and then try and come up with something else that would make us laugh. Emma continues to be a big helper and will go get you shoes if she notices you need them or find a towel if some water got spilled for example. She will be quite the helper for us when Junior arrives. We are still working on the potty training although not pushing it really hard. She gets so proud when she does use the potty and while she has alerted us in time a few times, most of the time it is right after she has wet her diaper. We'll take it though because she is recognizing that she is wet and that is a start. I do foresee our toilet paper bill rising in the future.

A couple of our favorite new phrases are "Watch me" and most recently "I did it". For instance, she loves to go up near the top of the driveway and then run down it since it slopes. She'll get up there and then say "Watch me". Then she takes off and when she gets to the bottom, she looks at us and says "I did it". Happy 21 months Emma!

Mad Skill

Emma found a basketball in the garage the other day, albeit a very flat basketball but thankfully Brad had a needle for the pump and was able to return it to a nice, bouncy state. Emma then demonstrated for us her dribbling abilities. Mind you, the driveway is slanted a bit so it took her a little more work to actually dribble the ball but she did great. I don't think she did it in this clip but usually, she holds the ball up in the air, says "Two" and then lets go and starts to dribble.



This second clip is just funny because Emma is trying her best to get the basketball to "Stay there" but as I mentioned, the driveway is sloped so there wasn't much hope of that.

Emma's Weekend

Emma had a full weekend. She started off Saturday morning with her usual bike ride with Brad. While they were down at the river, they ran into Dr. Stacie (Brad's former boss) and talked to her for a while. Dr. Stacie hadn't seen Emma since her birthday in November so she has obviously changed quite a bit. Since we were having such a beautiful day, we spent a bit of time playing outside on Saturday afternoon. Emma made some delightful sidewalk art with her chalk, which she was still impressed by this morning, and then she showed us her basketball skills (videos to come). That evening, Emma went to a birthday party at the Wonder Place for one of her friends from school. It was a guaranteed hit and I am pretty sure that she didn't even realize a birthday party was going on. She did get her first attempt at a juice box and I think that she ended up wearing more of it than she actually drank.

Yesterday afternoon, we all headed down to the park. It is amazing how much Emma's interest in the different items at the park have changed since we started going there back in March. Of course, she is older and is much more adept at climbing. We no longer spend much time on the swings at all. Instead the trips are dominated by climbing the jungle gym, swinging from bars, trying to climb up and go down the big slide (still a major no no), and swinging on the tire swing. Much to my delight or dismay (I haven't decided), she can get herself onto the tire swing with ease these days. She had a great time swinging around and was cracking up laughing so hard. However, she hasn't learned that she does need to take a few moments to get her equilibrium back after getting off and took several tumbles to the ground. It didn't stop her from getting right back on and getting dizzy again.

Finally, here is the belly at 37 weeks, 2 days.

Circus Day

As I mentioned previously, they had circus day at daycare a couple of weeks ago. We borrowed a leotard and some tights from some friends and I couldn't resist the little ballet skirt, which was only being held up by Emma's diaper. We got her dressed and shipped our little tight rope walker off to school for a fun day at the circus.

Playdoh

As it turns out, Emma loves Playdoh. I bought her some several weeks ago and we only had it out one time. However, since then, it has been sitting on the counter in the kitchen. Yesterday morning at breakfast, Emma looked over and said "I want Playdoh". I guess I didn't realize she knew what was in those little plastic containers but I really shouldn't have been surprised. Since we had some time, I indulged her and she played for a while before we had to head off to daycare and work. We got home early last night since I had gone to see the doctor and as soon as we walked in, she was in her seat going "I want Playdoh". She must have played with it for almost 45 minutes, which is the longest that Brad and I have ever seen her sit still. Just for comparison, when we picked her up from daycare yesterday, it was snack time and all the kids (minus one) were sitting quietly on a blanket eating their snack. The minus one would be Emma who was continually crawling off the blanket to go in search of who knows what but it involved looking under a table that obviously had nothing under it. Prepare now to be overloaded by Playdoh photos. Brad took a lot and there were too many cute ones to narrow it down farther than I already did.












In Junior news, as of yesterday, I am now 4 cm dilated and his head is way down. Come on little guy and make your appearance. Hopefully I won't be seeing my doctor next Thursday.

Wordless Wednesday - Cheese

Weekend

We were expecting a visit from our friends Anne, Sean, and Charlie on Saturday morning so Brad was going to try and sneak out of the house without Emma for a bike ride. What he found was that it is impossible to put anything over on her. She walked into the kitchen while he was filling his water bottles and immediately made the connection with biking. I can't remember what it was offhand but earlier that morning, she had made some reference to biking as though she knew it was Saturday and that is what she and daddy do on Saturday mornings. Thankfully it all worked out though and she was able to get in a ride with daddy and then have a nice visit with friends.

Last weekend I took Emma to the pool by myself since Brad wanted to get some painting done on her shelves. She was in the big pool, in the baby pool, in the big pool, in the baby pool, you get the picture. Also, Brad had failed to mention to me that she can easily open the gate on the baby pool so I couldn't contain her anywhere. Given that fun last weekend, I tried again this weekend and we had a great time on Saturday at the pool. She spent a lot of time in the baby pool playing with her bucket and shovel but we did do some swimming in the big pool as well. We tried to go again yesterday but things didn't go so well after an initial spill on the pool deck, which resulted in a bloody knee. We got in the pool for a few minutes after the bleeding ceased but Emma was more drawn to the playground so we headed over there. There was a little girl Nancy who is 3 1/2 playing with her grandpa. She kept saying to me "Watch me" to which my little monkey would then say "Watch me, Mama". She loves to hang from most anything these days and would say "Watch me" and then dangle from the low bar on the playground. When Bo and Grandma Kristi were here about a month ago, she couldn't reach the low bar by herself. I guess she has grown a bit. After playing for quite a while, we headed home and she had to go show daddy her "boo boo". I took her out of her car seat and she limped over to Brad. Mind you, there was no limping at the pool or on the playground but when she got home to daddy it appeared. It was funny because it would come and go for the rest of the night. What a total ham!

36 Weeks

Alright, we are at about the four week mark. I started my weekly appointments yesterday and much to delight, I am already 2-3 cm dilated and 75% effaced. However, while Junior is head down, his head is still pretty high. My doctor thinks I'll make it to next week's appointment but after that, things get a little iffy. Maybe I'll make it to 38, maybe not. I would certainly be okay with it if Junior decided that he wanted to be an August baby!

Today marks the end of the school year at daycare. Next week, all of Emma's old friends from the nursery will be moving into the freshman room with her. In addition to Emma, there are two other kids in the freshman room that will be staying put. On Wednesday of this week, they had circus day and Emma got to have some cotton candy, which I understand she really enjoyed. One of the teachers took some photos that they were kind enough to forward along to us.

Emma has been totally obsessed with babies these days, which is a good thing will Junior coming along soon. She especially loves to put her baby "night night". We got a little video of her in action. It cracks us up how the blanket has to be just so.

Wordless Wednesday - Dress-Up and Beware of the Belly (Mine not Emma's)

Our Little Gardener

We (I) have been remiss in posting to the blog but honestly, there really hasn't been that much to report these days and we have been bad about taking photos of our little toddler in action. We tried to make up for it a bit this weekend and caught the future horticulturalist at work. Emma helped me water the tomatoes on Saturday and was hooked. She wanted to give them "more" but I finally convinced her that they were not thirsty anymore and we would give them more water on Sunday. Once again she was eager to help and did a very good job splitting the water between the two plants. As you will note especially from the next set of photos, no plants or flowers under Emma's care will ever go thirsty.



There is an area in the front yard that has ceased to grow grass so Brad decided just to extend the rock border over to that area. Brad thought it might be fun for Emma to help plant a few flowers there even though it is getting towards the end of the summer. The pickings were slim but we did find some pretty vincas to brighten up the wasteland that is that corner of the yard. Emma wasn't as much interested in the planting as she was in the spade. She was of course a major help when it came to giving them some water and give them some water, she did.

Did you know that you need to open your mouth real wide when watering the plants?

Yeah!

Just within the last week, Emma's answer to everything has stopped being "No" and she has started throwing out some "Yeahs" only it isn't "yeah" but "yeeeee-aaaaaaaah". It is nice and long and drawn out like a true little Southern girl. It is too cute to hear but nice that we don't have to hear "no" all the time especially when she really means "yes" about half the time.

I need a new photo of the belly but just to update, I did have my 34 week appointment last Thursday. Of course, I waited over an hour to see the nurse practitioner and then spent maybe 5-10 minutes with her. I am not going to complain about the actual time with the NP because that just means, we continue to chug along with a nice, boring pregnancy. Bottom line: heartbeat was perfect, Junior is measuring perfect and I will see them again one week from this Thursday. After that, it will be weekly appointments until this little guy arrives. Brad has finished painting his room other than some little touch-ups. We also got the chair rail, which needs to be installed. However, before that is done, Brad is going to finish up Emma's closet and shelving. We also got Emma some new big girl furniture over the weekend, which should be delivered in about 2-3 weeks. I am not sure when we'll be brave enough to try out the bed but at some point in the not too distant future, it will be necessary since Junior is inheriting her crib. Our biggest concern is waking up at 2 am to find her standing at our bedside going "Hi Momma, Hi Dada". That is about all the excitement from here at the moment.