Emma's First Birthday

I realize that I have not been an active blogger about Emma's adventures, so I am going to try and catch everyone up on the last few months.

Back in July, Emma celebrated her 1st birthday. Being born on July 5th means that Emma will always have fireworks on her birthday, which will be pretty cool in a few years-- not so cool when you have to get to bed before they even start.  We celebrated on July 4th in Clear Lake with family and it was a fantastic day! The weather was hot which is what you want in the  middle of the summer. We got to swim, eat cake, and just have a fun day. Luckily, we had Amber and Steve (the family photographers) there. Man it comes in handy to have photographers in the family! Here are some of the great photos that they took.  

Things I want to remember ...

As most of you know, I love scrapbooking and most arts and crafts for that matter, but I haven't had time to scrapbook for about five years now (or blog for what seems like five years). Of course, I continue to purchase the materials without anything to show, but that is a whole other story!

Since I will some day have time to scrapbook all of these Emma pictures, I am using this blog, not only as a way to tell Emma stories, but as a way to remember these stories that are important to us during her life. There are so many little things that Emma does on a daily basis that I want to remember, but know that I will soon forget them as new things happen.

This post is about all of those little things that I want to make sure to remember because they are the things that are easily lost in the day to day activities.

Here are a few of these things:
Nice job Mom
For a while, when you picked up Emma she would pat you on the shoulder/back. It was almost as if she was saying, "Nice work, Mom"

Those Feet
Emma has the cutest feet ever-- okay at least as cute as most kids. I just love those feet!

Learning to Walk  
When Emma learned to walk she would walk sideways instead of in a straight line. Her new found mobility is allowing her so much more freedom. She has mastered climbing up and down stairs, climbing all over furniture, and running around (with some stumbles of course). She also loves to put her feet up on the table, her highchair, stroller, etc.


Starting Early
Emma is obsessed with phones-- cell phones, play phones, real (land line) phones-- but she holds all of them backwards and holds the wrong side up to her hear. Also, if you attempt to pretend to have a conversation she takes your phone and puts it to her other ear. This lasted for several months, but now Emma is finally figuring out to hold the phone correctly.

Testing Out Those Sounds
The final thing that I want to tell you about is all of the crazy sounds that Emma makes as she is figuring that whole thing out. She plays with her tongue and her teeth, blows bubbles, and each week it seems like she has a different sound-- growling, gubgubgub, mommommom, blubbing with her libs. I find myself smiling at all of them.

Mother's Day and Father's Day

John and I celebrated our first Mother's Day and Father's day this year. They were pretty low key days, which is just fine with us. Since we weren't able to make it to Iowa for either of the days, we took these photos to send to my parents. Of course, I never got around to doing it, so Mom and Dad, this blog post if for you two.  Happy Mother's Day and Father's Day to fabulous and wonderful parents! You are the best for sure!

9 months, 10 months, and 11 months

The monthly photos continue ... 9 months, 10 months, and 11 months.  

We ended up taking two sessions of photos for 9 months because we couldn't get a good one. Here are photos from each of the "photo sessions". 

Here stats at the last doctor's appointment in May were:

 17 pounds 8 ounces

28.25 inches

As usual we took our sweet time downloading the photos from the camera to the computer, so here are the 10 month photos and the 11 month photos. 

It is wonderful to look back at all of her monthly photos and see how much she has changed. Not only is her appearance changing (taller, more hair), but her mobility and ability to do things increases every day. She is really into climbing and tries to climb up on things, over things, and out of things. She loves to pull anything and everything off tables, book shelves, cabinets, etc. She even grabs and pulls things when she can't really see what she is grabbing.  

We are getting ready to celebrate her first candle in a couple weeks which doesn't even seem possible. How crazy our last year has been for sure! 

I love swimming and swinging!

Emma absolutely loves water, so we decided to sign her up for swim classes. She loves swimming and being in the water. Every week she has a huge grin on her face for the entire half hour lesson. We were able to get a few photos, but none of them are great. Here is one where she is "swimming" around with her flotation device. 

John also got her a swing for Grandma and Grandpa's house. Now she is just waiting to get sand for the sand box and her playtime for the summer is set! 

Dad and Emma after swinging.

Enjoying a beautiful early spring day. 

Easter

For Easter this year, we went and saw the Easter Bunny at Gerten's. Emma was not too thrilled to see the Easter Bunny as you can tell by her face in the photo below. She didn't dislike the Easter Bunny, but was it was more of a disinterest. This was not the most friendly Easter Bunny either, so perhaps that was part of it.  

Easter Bunny and Emma

After we took some photos with the Easter Bunny, I set Emma on the ground and John was able to catch her in this shot. There really wasn't even anything exciting going on, perhaps she was excited not to be standing near the creepy Easter Bunny. I love this photo because of how unscripted it is.  

For Easter day, we went to Mason City and this proved to be a fabulous day for photos!! Also, I would like everyone to take note that she is wearing a dress on both days of Easter weekend. That was for all of the people in Emma's life who think she should wear more dresses. It will probably not happen again for a while.    

"Now this Easter Bunny I like!" 

"I love my Mom" (yes, I am putting words into Emma's mouth, but I'm sure she would add say this if she was writing out the caption.)

Emma and Kajsa helping blow out the candle for Grandma's birthday. 

Look at them ... aren't they cute!

Slacking ...

I knew when I started this blog that I would not be great at keeping up with regular posts and sure enough this is true. I feel like so much has happened since my last post in March, but in reality not that much has happened.

John and I continue to try everything we know to keep awake during the day, since Emma still refuses to sleep in her crib for the entire night and she still wakes up every two hours or so (even when sleeping in our bed).  I realize that this is abnormal for most people, but it is our normal and we seem to be making it work. Even though, I am not sure how I manage to stay awake some days.

Emma is crawling like crazy and cruising around furniture like a pro. It took her a long time to actually crawl, but once she got it there was not stopping her. I have a feeling it will be this way with walking. She is very sturdy while standing and can move around from object to object, but doesn't really seem interested in walking. When she is finally ready, I am sure she will surprise us all and walk like she knew how to do it all along.

Emma is really starting to enjoy feeding herself even though only about a third of the food gets in her mouth and about half of that ends up in her stomach. I guess that is the way it goes.


The tooth count is 2.25. The front two teeth are in and there is a third one poking through. This has resulted in several nights and days full of tears and obvious pain.

Emma and I get to spend every Tuesday together and we have recently found out how much fun it is to find cheap toys at Once Upon a Child.  Here is a photo of one of our great finds- an activity table for $6.50. Thanks to Aunt Amber for finding it first and showing Emma how much fun it is.

Here are some other photos that I thought were cute and wanted to share: 

"Wearing my seat belt!"

"I am 10 on the cute scale"

Just removing all of the toys from her toy box on Saturday morning. 

 "I love to read, especially from Mom's Nook"

"I also love to pull all of the books off of my book shelf."