Emmy cuts a playmat

Titles I considered for this post:

Who knew she liked Amy Winehouse?
We don't know where she gets her moves
Embarrassing footage to show at her rehearsal dinner

Earlier today after Emmy's morning nap, she was sitting playing on her playmat while I was buying her Easter shoes, windshield wiper blades, and grass seed online. I had turned on the TV to one of the music channels so we could have some music in the background (there's only so much one can take of the Kindermusik CD on repeat). I had it on one of the "popular music" stations and Amy Winehouse's Rehab came on. I was absentmindedly singing along a bit when I looked up and saw this:



Thank goodness the video camera was sitting right beside me so I could capture it. Yes, I'm singing along in the background because she was dancing more when I was singing before I picked up the camera. Perhaps not the most appropriate song, but hysterical nonetheless. I'm surprised the camera isn't shaking more because I was dying laughing. Oh, she'll hate us one day for capturing this on video and showing it to everyone we know. We love you Emmy, and your cute dance moves!

Even when she's sick

Even when Emmy's not feeling well, she's such a happy girl! I snapped these a couple of weeks ago when she was in the middle of a bout of congestion. Stuffy noses for babies are no fun! It was adorably pitiful to hear her breathing at night...it often sounded like she was "fake" snoring. Fortunately she's doing much better.

I realize I have some catching up to do on here! We've been crazy busy the last few weeks preparing for two huge performances with our choir that has involved extra rehearsal time. Plus, I've been out of town for a bachelorette party, we went to two weddings (and sang in one of them), hosted a wedding shower out of town, had an FRG meeting, and I can't even remember what else. The rest of the spring will still be very busy with more trips, weddings, Charles' Change of Command, and birthdays (Emmy turns ONE in five weeks and five days, ack!!). Emmy has had a LOT of baby-sitters lately, as you can imagine, but she's done very well. She is such a good baby.

We're also putting in a raised vegetable garden in the back which we are both super excited about. And we have plans to do some additional work to the back yard this spring (sod!) so that we can enjoy it more, and have it looking better. There is additional work to do once the front grass greens up later this spring and early summer to fix the damage done by the sewer line repair. Constantly in the back of our minds is the knowledge that in about 18 months this house will be on the market. But we won't talk about that just yet...

Happy Spring everyone!

Eating is fun, yum yum yum yum

The title is a line from one of the songs on Emmy's Kindermusik CD. We love that song!

Anyways, I thought I'd talk about what Emmy is eating these days, since I know that you're all dying to know.

Fortunately, eating is getting better and better! I had my doubts for awhile...how could Charles and I give birth to a child who didn't like to eat? But she's gotten the hang of it and eating really well!

So far she's had...oatmeal, brown rice, sweet potatoes, peas, green beans, zucchini squash, acorn squash, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, broccoli, carrots, beets, potatoes, asparagus, avocados, apples, pears, bananas, plums, kiwi, blueberries, strawberries, mangoes, peaches, egg yolks (scrambled), black beans, chicken, cheese, and yogurt. She's also had a tortilla chip dipped in fresh salsa and she liked that a lot, so I guess she likes tomatoes, onions, cilantro, etc. And probably the salt that was on the chip. :)

The child LOVES yogurt. I mix it with her oatmeal cereal every morning and add some fruit and she eats it up. Then I will often give her some yogurt with fruit for "dessert." She will lean over the bowl and hold her mouth open while you shovel the food in. It's hilarious! Here is an attempt to take a picture a couple of weeks ago, but it just doesn't really capture the moment as well I would like.

She will eat most anything mixed with sweet potatoes, too. And, organic sweet potatoes are naturally sweeter than regular sweet potatoes, I think, so she REALLY likes them! She also surprisingly loved asparagus. I pureed it until it was a little chunky and added a bit of lemon juice and grated parmigiana cheese and she gobbled it up. I'm glad it'll be in season soon so we can eat it a lot! She also really seems to like ground cinnamon and ground ginger. I add a sprinkle of both to some of the squashes and even butternut squash she's developing a taste for. That was definitely not a favorite at first.

Besides butternut squash, she wasn't a fan of spaghetti squash, broccoli, beets, or peaches at first, but I've kept offering them to her and she eats pretty much anything we offer her now. Even if it's just a couple of bites each time, she's learning to like everything, which makes me happy!

I still cook everything without salt or sugar. The exception being when she had some chicken and black beans out of my chicken tortilla soup. She really seemed to like that! I do season things with pepper, lemon, parmigiana cheese, ground cinnamon, and ground ginger.

So far she doesn't really like to feed herself small pieces of carrot, grated, apple, cheese, cheerios, etc. Mostly, she'll just play with them. She prefers her food off of a spoon, thank you very much. Hopefully she'll start feeding herself some before long.

It's time to baby proof

No, Emmy isn't crawling yet. Don't worry, we'll be sure to let you know. As a side note, she is scooting around to reach toys, etc. A couple of weeks ago she heard Charles come in and she scooted herself around to see him and scooted forward a few inches. It was the first time we'd really seen her make a significant and deliberate move towards someone/something so suddenly and it was adorable!

Anyways, it is obviously time to start thinking more the direction of baby proofing so we're prepared. I'm pretty sure her crawling is going to throw us for a major loop. Yesterday morning while I was taking a shower, I realized that suddenly she was very quiet. I usually put her on the floor in the bathroom when I'm getting showered and ready in the mornings and she has a few toys and books to play with and sometime she'll get on her tummy and pull on the tub mat and play with it. But, usually she's babbling, or if she's tired crying, so when I realized I hadn't heard her for a second I opened the door a few inches to take a peek. And, there she sat, with the cabinet door open under the sink. WHAT? How did she do that? So I abandoned my plans to shave my legs and hopped on out of the shower. She couldn't reach anything in the cabinet yet and the most dangerous thing under there is probably Windex, but I didn't want to run the risk.

Then while I was putting on lotion, etc. (e.g. primping) she managed to open the drawer where we keep medicines. Great!! I can see that "no-no" is going to be a frequently used word in our house before long.

So this weekend it's definitely time to take the cabinet locks, outlet covers, etc. out of the closet and start getting his house ready for a baby on the move. Oh my gosh, she's going to become a toddler sooner than later. I'm unbelievably not ready for that. Where is my baby going?

I don't have any new fun pictures to put up, so here's another one of her Mohawk. Don't you just want to eat those cheeks?


10 years ago today Charles and I were on our way home from his fraternity formal. It was our first "date" of sorts, only I thought we were "just friends". Well, now look at us!

Layla Grace

I've been obsessively checking Twitter today because last night Layla Grace's Mom posted that she wasn't doing well at all. Finally this afternoon her parents put out the message that their precious girl died this morning. Say a prayer for the Marsh family today. These poor people have been through a lot. And, say a prayer for all the other families with children suffering with Neuroblastoma. Let's hope that a cure is on the horizon. It seems that Laya Grace has touched tens of thousands of lives, and her story has brought a lot of awareness to this cancer so common among children.

You can go to www.laylagrace.org to read about Layla's story.

Again, we're hugging our precious girl very tight today.

10 Months Old: These photos are getting difficult

Emmy is 10 months old today! Isn't she the cutest little cupcake?

Taking these photos has become very difficult to do by myself. Let's take a look at a few...

Rags wanted in immediately this month. Plus, Emmy's eyes are closed.

Hey, there's that sign again...

This is fascinating!

This one turned out pretty well, but when I put the sign back beside her, I put up the Nine Month sign again (each piece of posterboard lasts us 4 photo shoots)

She loves playing with her feet, and chewing on her shoes.

And then my camera died. So, we went for a walk, played, and then when Charles came home, we tried again. And there it is, the money shot. Happy 10 month birthday, sweet girl! Tomorrow would have been your Great-Grandpoppie's birthday. Man, he would have thought you were something else!

And, happy first day of work to Aunt Beth and to "Uncle" Tony, who started new jobs today. Congrats!

I can hardly believe Emmy is 10 months old. It's been a year this week that they put me on full bed rest. (I was only "limited activity" for 3 weeks before that). I'm so glad to be on this side of things!

Now, back to watching our Terriers on TV and hoping they win the SoCon tournament!

We paid people good money to make this mess

As I previously posted, we had some plumbing problems a couple of weeks ago. Well, the big hole to repair the sewer line turned into a giant trench to replace the sewer line. (Good-bye master bath re-do.) SIGH. Don't get me wrong, the folks who did the work really did a good job. They saved the sidewalk (thank goodness!) and they attempted to save the sod. Not to mention, we did some price checking and they gave us a REALLY good deal. However, they are plumbers, not landscapers, so we have a big mess in the front yard that will look like this at least until this summer when hopefully the grass will green up and start to fill back in. We've worked so hard on the yard and it's a bit sad to see this.

The good news is, we'll never have that problem again! Too bad I don't think "new sewer line" is a big draw when selling a house.

The Hole

The Trench

The aftermath

What's that you say? No pictures of Emmy? Well, she and rags are playing in the photo above, but I realize it's really small. So to keep our readers happy, here is a cute photo of her asleep in the carrier on Charles' back after a walk last week.

Growing, growing!

I realize I never gave an update after Emmy's 9 month check up earlier in February. She was 13 lbs 14 oz and 24 1/2 inches long. She is still small and less than 5th percentile, but she is following the growth curve, which means she's growing at the right rate, she's just tiny! Dr. J was very pleased with her developmentally, and that's what matters. Plus, her head is 10 % so she's got a big noggin. :) I'd expect that by now she's over 14 lbs and we continue to look at her and go "she's so big!" It's hard to believe she's come this far. I think she's been going through a growth spurt here lately, too, because she has started waking up again in the middle of the night and eating. She was sleeping through the night and in the days leading up to that she wasn't eating much at all when she did wake up. Now that she's eating 4-6 oz between 2 am and 4 am I'm guessing she needs it!

Her hair has also been experiencing a growth spurt the last couple of weeks. In fact, it's long enough that Charles gave Emmy her first Mohawk after her bath the other night. Hilarious!

She's our growing girl. We're so proud!

Holding our baby tight

A couple of days ago I noticed a friend of mine on Facebook had posted a link to a blog and commented that she was praying for the family of Layla Grace, "an angel being called home too soon". For those of you not familiar with Facebook, people regularly write "status updates" that may say anything from something about their family to what they ate for dinner. If you are friends with that person, their update will appear in a list that you see when you log into your account.

Anyways, for some reason I remembered seeing that link and yesterday while Emmy and Charles took a nap I went back to my friend's page and clicked on it. Then I sat there and read Layla Grace's story and cried my eyes out. She is two years old and has sage four neuroblastoma, an aggressive "monster" of a cancer, her family calls it. In late January her parents found out that the tumors were not better following months of massive chemo and a bone marrow transplant, but in fact there were more tumors. The doctors gave Layla Grace two months, but months turned into weeks.

I know people who have lost babies and children. I know people who have suffered other terrible tragedies. Just a few days ago two of our friends mourned with friends of theirs the sudden and tragic loss of their eight year old daughter (named Emmie) in a car accident. I read with pain about Haiti and the recent quake in Chile, not to mention the terrible suffering people here in our own country endure on a daily basis. All this to say, I hear about those things and I pray and cry and I wonder why. But for some reason, this story of Layla Grace has stayed with me long after I've closed the computer.

I cannot stop thinking about her parents, who are as I write this are sitting beside her bed at home in Texas watching her die. She is hours, if not minutes, away from leaving them. I cannot even imagine, especially after watching her suffer through painful treatments for nine months. Yet their strength and their faith they write about utterly amazes me.

I don't know, maybe it's because there's something about the shape of Layla Grace's face I saw in photos on the blog that reminds me of Emmy. There are a couple of faces I see her making that I thought "So cute, Emmy makes a face like that!" Maybe it's the way her parents have shared her story and the honesty with which they write about their precious daughter's struggle, I don't know, but I cannot stop thinking about this family.

Social media continues to amaze me. I don't know this family, I seriously doubt I would ever meet them in the future, but I have been thinking of them and saying a prayer for them since yesterday, not to mention following their story on Twitter. I don't "tweet" but it's possible to read people's Twitter comments (sort of like perpetual Facebook status updates!) and so I know what they have most recently said is happening. They mentioned on their blog that they first started the blog and the twitter page as a way to keep their friends and family regularly updated. They said returning all the calls and text messages they were receiving was draining, and I can imagine! But the one person shares the site with another person and soon they have over 25,000 people following their story on Twitter. That's a lot of prayers and caring people, for sure!

So, in this age of "newfangled" technology, I am moved in ways I couldn't imagine, hurting for these people I've never met. And I'm watching my healthy nine month old baby girl happily playing on the floor and I'm hugging her a little tighter.