Learning from a Pro

Our dog Bud has always enjoyed digging tissues out of the trash and tearing it up into little tiny pieces. It seems that he has taught Emily this little trick. She has enjoyed digging the tissues out of her trash can and tearing them up. I found her this morning having a great time. Bud got in on the action too and helped her tear up some of it.
I love this picture! It's like Bud is Emily's bodyguard and trying to scare the cameras away from the scene of the crime : )

Crazy Girl!

Emily was wired today. She was into everything. I was on the phone and noticed that she had gotten quiet. I found her in the bathroom with her hand in the toilet. Crazy child! Here's a picture I took of her today.
Joe got home late last night so she didn't get to see him yesterday. She got his picture off of the refrigerator and said "Dad-dy" over and over. She was very excited when he got home tonight. She has added more books that she likes to read and brought this one to Joe when he got home:

Favorite Book

Until recently Emily mainly liked to just pull all of her books off of the book shelf in her room and make a mess. I would try to look at some of the books with her and she would just crawl off and start playing with something else. But the last few weeks she has been drawn to one particular book called "Bright Baby Animals". She will go find it and come to me and I'll put her in my lap and we'll look at it together. It's just different pages of animals but apparently that is now her book of choice. I guess she is taking after me in my love of animals!! It has been fun to watch her go get the book and drag it over to me and attempt to get in my lap while she is holding the book. She enjoys flipping the pages after I've told her what each animal is. Fun times!!

On the Go

Emily has been having so much fun with her new walker. We went up and down the hall a ton of times this morning. She would walk until she ran into a door frame or the end of the hall and would immediately turn around and look at me as if to say, "OK mom turn me around so I can go again!"

Here's a video:

She also learned some new "tricks" with her refrigerator ice cubes and the balls from her toy train. This morning while she was playing I was reading a Parents magazine article about how to handle 1 year olds : ) I looked up to see what she was doing and she had her plastic balls from her train in the refrigerator and the ice cubes from the fridge were stuck in her train. So I had to rearrange everything for her.

I also wish I could show you all the birds in our yard today. I heard a ton of chirping so I looked out the window and there were about 75 black birds in our yard . . . there were tons of them! I went to get my camera and when I pulled back the shades they all flew away : ( It would have been such a cool picture!!!

Learning New Skills

Emily has recently acquired some new skills. Just this week she learned how to put the "ice cubes" in the ice machine on her refrigerator and push the button to release them. She has also learned how to open up two of the pop ups on her Mickey Mouse pop up toy. Joe also assembled her walker today that her Uncle John gave her for Christmas and she walked a little bit with it tonight. Here's a video of her new accomplishments:

Toy Clutter

If you know me well you know that I don't like clutter. Well I'm having to learn to handle toy clutter in my life now! Emily's favorite thing to do now is to just pull all of the toys out of the two baskets that I have and make a big ol' mess. She doesn't necessarily play with one thing . . .she just likes to pull them all out and have them everywhere. Here she is having a grand time!!!!

She also enjoys opening the dish towel drawer and dumping all the dish towels out on the kitchen floor : ) I love her!!!

Emily's Birthday Party

We had Emily's 1st Birthday party on Saturday. My friend Tara made a cake for Emily and one for all of us to share. We had a great time!! Here are some pictures of the afternoon. She used the design from the plates for the cake.






Top Row: my brother Robert, Joe's brother John, me, Joe with Emily, Tara, my sister Michelle
Bottom Row: Joe's mom, my nephew Sam, my mom, my niece Sarah, Taylor (Tara's daughter), and my dad.



It also snowed all day Saturday so when we finished opening presents Taylor, Sarah, and Sam built a snowman:





I had to add this picture in here. Emily pulled the Kleenex box down and had a great time pulling all the tissues out of the box!!!
Here's a short video of her eating her cake: