Overalls

I'm a sucker for a kid in overalls. I think THEY ARE SO CUTE! So of course I had to get a picture of Emily in her overalls today:
Here she is being a ham and holding the snowman she glued together at school today. I guess their teacher gave them some creative freedom on how to glue their snowman to the page:
Her thing lately has been to end everything she says with "right der" or "for a few mo' minutes". For example, every time I say it's time for bed she says, "play with toys for just a few more minutes" or "Emily's milk right there and mommy's water right there". She says "right there" with great emphasis. It's hilarious. She has also started answering our questions with "uh huh" really drawn out and with extra syllables. I sure am going to miss her talking like this one day!

More Talking

Emily has become much more talkative in the last couple of weeks (if that's even possible!). She tries to say complete sentences now and you can tell she is trying to mimic the way we have said things in the past. It's so amazing to listen to her and watch what she does. This past week we gave up having her pacifier in the car. Before she had her "green paci" in the car, and for bedtime and nap time she has her "purple paci, white paci, and A&b&rn Kigers paci". So we are down to sleep time now. Every time we got in the car last week she informed me, "no green paci in car, only paci at bedtime." At some point I want to transition into no pacifiers so we'll see how that goes. I'm still trying to decide if I want to have her go cold turkey or go down to just one paci in the bed and then eventually get rid of that one too. We'll see.

She also had her 2 year checkup on Friday and I'm happy to say that there was no crying during this office visit! She weighs 23 lbs 11 oz and is 36 inches long. She is in the 90% percentile for her height and 15% percentile for her weight. So still long and lean. She also had a vision test that she passed . . . although the white and black flickering lines they kept displaying during the test gave me a headache : )

Speaking of headaches, when I went into her room the other day after a nap she pointed to her head and said she had a headache and then she covered her eyes . . . I don't think she knows what headache means . . . just another attempt to mimic me. I don't even realize half the stuff I say and then I see a mirror image of it a few hours or days later from her . . . it's so wild . . . and the girl doesn't forget a thing!

Robert gave her a tea set for her birthday so she's been having fun laying the dishes out and having a tea party:

We also made our 2nd trip to a local kid's play area for Caroline's birthday party. The first time we went back in August, Emily went down one little slide. But this time, she wanted to get on all of the slides and jumping areas. So here we are going down the big slide on Saturday. You should have seen me trying to climb up those little stairs in the middle while trying to hold her too. Not a pretty sight! But the slide sure was fun:

And finally, here are my first attempts at using my embroidery machine. I've made two t-shirts and 3 burp cloths so far. It's taking me FOREVER to hoop the garments but I'm sure that will get easier with time. As you can see on my first t-shirt I didn't get Emily's name very straight. But that's why I did hers first : ) I realized with Emily's shirt that I would have switched the colors to make her name stand out more and I would have made the name bigger . . . so practice makes perfect:Here is the shirt we gave Caroline for her birthday which thankfully turned out better than the attempt I made on Emily's shirt. You should have seen me with this one before it started sewing the name. I must have checked the spelling of her name 50 times before starting . . . I was so paranoid I was going to mess something up that I started 2nd guessing everything . . . what a hoot!:

Here are some burp cloths I did for a friend who had a baby recently. Bliss . . . if you read my blog . . . stop here . . . your gift is in the mail. I sewed ribbon on the bottom of the cloths and then embroidered.

This one is my favorite. I LOVE pink and green and love the fringe on the bottom that you can add . . . it's so fun!:

Emily's Birthday Party

This past Sunday Emily turned 2. We had a full weekend of festivities with family and friends to celebrate! We first went to the Aquarium on Saturday morning. There were 1.5 million people there that wanted to see the aquarium as well . . . so it was a wee bit too crowded for our tastes . . . but the kids had fun:

Then that evening after naps we had Emily's Birthday Party:

Tara made the Birthday cake:

Robert insisted on eating the eyeball from the cake!
Thanks everyone for making Emily's party so great!!!!

And because we are gluttons for punishment we decided to go to the Children's Museum on Monday. My sister and I tried to keep up with 5 children in a crowded play area. The museum is fun and the kids had a ball . . . but it sure was hard keeping up with where everyone wanted to go. I liked the museum because they allow you to pack a lunch and eat there . . . instead of the fortune that we spent eating at the aquarium on Saturday. Here are a few pics from the day:

Taking a rest and reading some books:

We spent most of our time at this slide. This was Emily's favorite spot:

This was the only time that day that all 5 were in the same place at once:Taylor checked everyone out at the cash register for a long time! Sarah LOVED having Taylor to run around with at the museum.

2 Years Old!

Emily is 2 Years Old Today!!

We had an Elmo party for her on Saturday. I will post those pictures later:

Having Fun

Yesterday afternoon I put a pillow in Emily's bed for the first time just to see how she likes it. She slept on it yesterday and last night. She looked like such a big girl sleeping on a pillow when I went to cover her up last night!

She also enjoyed taking her baby for a walk yesterday in her stroller and walking in my shoes. Notice that she was still wearing her hat:
And this morning for breakfast she had to wear her Birthday hat again : )

Here are a couple more pictures from last weekend. Below are my mom, cousin Alice, sister Michelle, cousin Laura (holding her daughter), Aunt Betty, and me at the dessert party for Paul and Anna:

And this picture was taken last Sunday at my sister's house. My dad was entertaining Emily and Sawyer while lunch was being prepared. They were rolling their cars back and forth across the table:

Crown

They celebrated Emily's birthday at school today (she will be 2 on Sunday!). When I came to pick her up she had on her Birthday hat. Her teacher told me that so far she has been the only child to want to wear their birthday hat on their celebration day. Emily wore it all day at school and when it would fall off she would ask the teacher to put her crown back on : ) We rode home with it on and I had to get a picture!

Last night she decided that she wanted to run. She looked at Joe and said, "run". . . and then proceeded to run into the kitchen then around the couch and then down the hall into our room and kept doing that over and over again. She must have had some extra energy she needed to get rid of.

Dancing

This past weekend we went to my cousin's daughter's wedding in Birmingham. At the wedding all the kids enjoyed dancing as much as the "big kids". One of the bridesmaids got on her knees and slow danced with Sam. I wish I had caught it on video but by the time I got my camera, everyone had moved to the middle of the dance floor in a big clump. Sawyer later asked my sister if he could dance with a princess . . . how cute! I couldn't get Sarah on video because she had moved to the middle of the clump and had a ball dancing with everyone. Here is Emily and Sam dancing to the music.

Friday night we went to a dessert party with the bride and groom and family and friends. Sarah and Emily wore matching outfits:

Here are Emily and Sarah with my cousin's children:
and we got to meet my brother's new girlfriend Mandy. We think she was pretty brave to come to a wedding and meet our ENTIRE family for the first time:

Got Caught

Last week I was in the kitchen and Emily was playing in the living room. Every now and then I would hear her say "whee". Then silence for a little bit and then "whee". Something told me to go check it out and this is what I found her doing:

I know I know . . .

. . . . I'm sure you all are getting tired of hearing about my sewing projects, but I'm so excited about actually enjoying to sew after trying so many years and flopping . . . so please bear with me. This time I got to repair some pants for Emily. In the past these would just sit in her closet because the pants were gargantuan on her. I honestly think the pants got mislabeled. I was going to pull out the elastic and fit them to Emily's waist but the company sewed the elastic all the way around attached to the pants so I couldn't do that. So I "cinched" up each side of the waist and also cut off the pants and made a new hem because they were so long. Now she can wear this ADORABLE vest, shirt, and pants . . .

I tried to tuck the shirt in but it keeps coming out . . . so the picture looks a little sloppy. Emily enjoyed coloring this morning before school:
Last night my sweet hubby brought me flowers. They are so pretty. Thanks Joe!!!!I went to bed at 9:00 last night which is really early for me. I had a terrible headache . . . and was emotionally drained yesterday. Our friend Karen lost her husband suddenly Tuesday night and I couldn't stop thinking about them yesterday. Brad was only 33 years old. He leaves behind his sweet wife Karen and their two precious boys: Philip and Evan. Please lift this family up in your prayers. They will need it in the days and years to come.