Getting Ready for Easter!

Emma and I met my mom at Hobby Lobby today were we found these cute bunny ears and Easter Baskets. Emma was too cute, so we had to take a picture. Unfortunately I only had my camera phone, so that is why the quality isn't the best. We will be meeting up with Jessica and Sophia for the Ahwatukee Easter Parade where I think these ears will make another appearance!

Little Random Things

We have been keeping busy with a little bit of everything. I was sick a couple of days last week and Emma and I had to miss out on a fun play date at the Children's Museum; but thankfully it doesn't look like I passed on what ever I had to her.
Emma's love of books has grown over the last couple of weeks, and we have been busy reading, reading, reading.
Emma learned to wave Sunday night. She started out by just raising one hand up. By the end of the night she was opening and closing her hand also. She hasn't been that excited about doing it the past couple of days. I think we need to have some visitors so she can wave to them!
She has also been very busy moving around the house and pulling up on everything. I try and let her explore as much as she can, but I am close by ready to snatch whatever it is she is putting in her mouth! Her crawl is still more like an army crawl then the traditional crawl. It is so funny because when she pulls herself, she always grunts. We keep telling her if she got up on all fours, she would have an easier time.
Here are some random pictures of things I have been able to catch her doing. Enjoy!



One of the best things about the weekends. After Emma eats breakfast, we wake Daddy up and snuggle in bed. The snuggling part only lasts about 5 minutes, because Emma is ready to explore and use our head board has a drum!


Since she is moving around very quickly, whenever I have to leave the room, I put her in the play pen. The other day I came around the corner and this is how I found her. Standing! This is the only time I have seen her do this. She is so tall, that being on her knees gets her high enough that I don't think she has a reason to stand!


Always crawling over to her toy box and playing with the toys inside.


The lighting isn't the best in this video, but it I thought it was so cute! My mom got her this glow worm, and when I brought it out tonight, she started kissing it! Emma is not one to give kisses easily. SHE decides when it is time for kisses and if we give her one when she doesn't want one, she will let us know!



And last but not least, the first signs of dancing came out last night. Again, with her moving around so much, I needed to find something to keep her entertained when I am in the kitchen cooking. We had gotten this toy for Aidan's first birthday, and Amanda said he loved it so I thought we would try it. It is very cute and every time the music would play, Emma would start bouncing.

Emma's Stubborn Side

About a week ago, Emma discovered how to sit up on her own.  Since she has learned how to do this, it has made going to bed and down for naps a little more interesting.  She will sit up, talk, and protest until mommy or daddy come in to rescue her and lay her back down.  The last couple of nights she has been getting up more and more in the middle of the night.  Because of this, last night I thought it was time to "remind" her that she can go to sleep without us coming back in after we had said good night.  So for about an hour we listened to her protest and push buttons on her mobile.  Don't worry.  She never got hysterical.  She would just protest for about a minute, the quiet,  then repeat.  After a while of her being quiet, I thought I should go in and check on her.  This is how I found her...































She stayed in her sitting position and just laid forward!  I don't know if she won't lay down by herself because it is dark and isn't sure where she is at, or if she is making a stand!  No, we didn't let her sleep like this.  After we took pictures, we pulled her legs out and she stayed on her tummy.  What a cute little stinker!

Pictures and Sushi

On Monday my mom came over and we took Emma out for a "photo shoot". There were several locations we wanted to check out around our house, but time went by very quickly and Emma was ready for lunch, so we only made it to one stop. For the first one, I think they turned out ok. I was even able to take the camera off of automatic for one option! (Only 20 more options to go!) I learned some new things, and thought of other ideas that I want to try next time. I am excited because in March Jessica and I are taking a photography workshop, so I should learn some new things then. We did have one mishap in the very beginning. Since Emma isn't standing on her own yet, I asked my mom to bring out one of the rocking chairs that my brother and I had when we were little. So we found what we thought was the perfect spot, set up the chair, placed Emma in it, and I started taking pictures. I got one picture taken and Emma slid off the chair and face planted in the dirt. She of course was very upset. She had a mouth full of dirt, dirt all in her hair and on her face, plus she had little scratches on her forehead, nose, and cheek! We got her cleaned up the best we could, gave her some water, and luckily she was ready to go again. Every shot after that, my mom was right there ready to catch her. There is even her arm and shadow in some of the pictures! Because of this too, I feel like for right now anyway, that I definitely need someone else to go with me to make sure Emma is safe.
In a hours worth of time, I took over two hundred pictures! It is a lot of work to go through them all. My hope was to get them edited and then put them up on the blog, but since I don't know what I am doing in Photo Shop, it is taking longer then I thought. So I thought I would just put these up (unedited) so you could see them!






















Last night Emma and I met up with the girls for our favorite combination of Sushi and Sweet Potato Fries. Of course the food was yummy and all the babies did well even though it was a late night. When we first got there, I think Emma was a little overwhelmed and we had major poutty lips and tears. But after she got use to everyone she was doing her famous wrinkle nose, talking, and smiling. Here are a couple of pictures before we left. I decided to let her hair be crazy and she wore this cute dress and green shoes my mom had gotten for her. You can see more pictures from the restaurant at Jessica's and Jenni's blog.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Playing Catch Up

Since I haven't been working at the hospital anymore, I have wanted to find different ways that I could volunteer and help out in the community. Especially after having Emma and realizing how lucky we are on so many different levels the urge has grown stronger and stronger. I also want the "giving back" idea and helping others to be something that Emma grows up with and as she gets older have her participate in what ever ways she can.

From working at the hospital, I knew that the Ronald McDonald house needed groups to cook dinner for their families. All of the families that stay there have a child/children that are patients either at St. Joes, Phoenix Children's, or Cardon Children's. Some families stay only a couple of days, while others have been there for a year. So I recruited the ladies in my family and on Saturday we headed down to make dinner.

We needed to plan a menu for 40 people and we were told that a lot of groups make pasta dishes, so if possible to make something else. We decided for our first time to make a taco bar complete with rice, beans, and nacho cheese. It was a long night and I was exhausted the next morning, but we had a great time and everybody from the families to the employees were wonderful, helpful, and very friendly. It is something that we will continue doing and are already working on ideas for our next night!

We had this cute sign greet us when we walked into the kitchen.

I thought it would be fun if we all had aprons to wear. Shelly was nice enough to go out and buy extra aprons to make sure everyone had one!

Grandma getting some help with her apron

My cousin Jessi and Grandma on meat duty

My Great Aunt Nanie and Mom handling more meat and chopping.

My Aunt Jan and me chopping tomatoes and onions

We provided a craft table with Valentine stuff for the kids to do when they were done eating.

The spread.

The Chefs

Early Attempts at Crawling!

9 Months and Doctor's Appointment

The same with every other month, it is hard to believe that another month has gone by. We celebrated with a trip to the doctor's for her 9 month appointment. Thankfully everything continues to look great and there is nothing to be concerned about. The only small thing we will work on, is trying to get Emma to take a little more formula though out the day. She is only taking about 10oz and at this age she should be taking 16oz. Since she has continued to gain weight, grow tall, and eats plenty of table food, Dr. Yin said not to stress about it. She is getting all the nutrients she needs, she just wants to make sure she is getting enough fat for brain development. Dr. Yin also said that Avocados were a good food for this and luckily it was one of Emma's favorite. So we will try to get more formula down her and let her eat more Avocado!

Speaking of weight and height...She is just over 19lbs which puts her in the 70th percentile, 29 1/4 inches (95%) and her head finally caught up and she is in the 50 percentile for head circumference. She had to get two more vaccines and a heal stick to check her iron levels. Even with taking less formula her levels were perfect. Even a little on the high side. Our next appointment will be her 1 year check up!

Emma has been doing lots of new things this past month. The newest being that she can now pull herself up to her knees in her crib, and then get herself in a sitting position. It is very cute to walk in and see her peeking over the rail or sitting in the middle of her bed! We will be lowering her mattress now! She is also moving around a lot more, and even though she isn't officially crawling, she does this part inch worm part army type crawl. I don't think she knows yet that she could move around the house with it, she just uses it to get to whatever it is that she wants. She has started clapping and even did a fake sneeze the other day. (Anything for attention!) She also gets upset and we can see the future of temper tantrums when we take a toy away from her. She is showing all the classic signs of stranger anxiety and being clingy to me. Her babbling is growing and growing and she clearly says mama and dada. (Just not purposeful yet). The other fun thing she started doing this weekend is making the "b" sound when she gets her books. And as you all know from the last post she is officially off all baby food and eats a variety of table foods as well as drinking out of a sippy cup for everything but her bedtime bottle.

Even though she drives us nuts at times with no naps and her little stubborn streak, we are enjoying every minute and love this little girl to pieces!

Change in Plans

When it came to Emma and baby food, my goal was to have her done with it when she turned one. I wasn't even sure if this was a realistic goal, but thought I would make it any way. It seemed like once Emma started doing "table food" she kind of ran with the idea. Slowly but surely she was doing less and less baby food and more and more table food. She even decided she didn't like her bottle any more and had to start using her sippy cup for formula. Luckily she will take her bottle for bed time because that is when she is getting the bulk of her formula for the day ( a whole 6 ounces!). I had decided that Emma would finish up the baby food we had left at the house and then I wouldn't buy any more after that. This past weekend is when she decided she was done. I would feed it to her and she would spit it out. So all the baby food is cleaned out of the pantry and I am racking my brain to try and make sure she is getting a variety and not depending on the convenience of the frozen/pre-packaged meals. If anyone has suggestions I will gladly take them!

I have to admit, for breakfast we are going the frozen route and she will have mini pancakes or waffles with yogurt or applesauce. Lunch is some 9 grain bread, turkey, and a fruit. Her snacks consist of anything from puffs to cheerios to graham crackers. Dinner is usually some sort of version of what we are having, or noodles, chicken, and a veggie. She LOVES avocado, green beans, and cheese. Since cheese adds to her tummy issues, we really only give it to her once or twice a week. Unfortunately we don't have a Trader Joes or other speciality grocery store out by us. Now that Emma is officially eating table food, I see a trip to one as part of my week next week!

Trying Spaghetti for the first time

Not too sure what to think of it...

Maybe I like it...

All done! She had a much easier time if I fed her the spaghetti with her fork!

This dinner was a hit! Her favorite avocado, beans, rice, and Mexican Chicken. Yum! Notice the new cup? She was starting to struggle with her sippy cup so I wanted to see if she could drink out of a straw. She loved it and I was able to get her to drink a lot more water this way. So off we went the next morning to buy all new straw cups. Unfortunately they are all too tall and a little heavy for her to drink out of in her high chair. She would basically lay the cup down and then try to bend over to get to the straw! She got so frustrated with them that we had to go back to a different type of sippy cup. Maybe in a couple more months she can go back to the straw cups!

A Day at the Zoo

We had a great day at the zoo on Sunday! The weather was perfect and it was so nice being outdoors. It was exactly what I needed to re-energize!
When I worked at the clinic there was about a 2 year span where it seemed like we were all pregnant. I am sure the guys we worked with loved it! But the neat thing is that we all have kids that are any where from 2 days to 1 year apart. So a play date was planned at the zoo to finally get all the kids together, and I think there will be more get togethers in the future!


This was Emma when we first got to the Zoo. For some reason she had a tough time getting back on her schedule after London's Run, so she didn't sleep well the night before. She was a crabby and sleepy baby in the morning! I told her if she continued being crabby, I was going to leave her with the monkeys!


Saying hi to the ducks


Checking out the Orangutans. Right after this picture was taking, it sounded like the orangutans were having a huge fight. From what I can tell, it looked like the male was holding onto the baby at the bottom. The baby "escaped" and ran up to the females at the top of their home. The females didn't want the male up there and they let him know it!


The baby safe with its mom


Next we headed into monkey island where you could see these little guys close up. We got there just in time for lunch! They were having popcorn balls with peanut butter. Yum!


Emma finally perking up some and having fun getting Aidan. By this time, Aidan was done being gotten!


Lunch time!


We had a "lake side view" and Emma loved watching the ducks while she ate!


After lunch, the sun was a little bright, so it was time to get our hat! This was the only sun hat we had that fit, so even though it didn't match, we had to make due! Nice shadows huh?! I need to get better and noticing this stuff and move as needed.


Checking out the giraffes


Quick water break


Laney is 18 months old and was so cute to see "toddling" around the zoo. She wanted to be out running around. At this point she decided she was tired and sat down with a snack the first chance she got. (notice the shadow again!)


Julia is about a month younger then Emma and it was great to finally meet her and catch up with her mom!

We had a great day at the zoo! It wore this little cutie out!