Emily

Emily is 2 years, 3 months, and 1 Day Old Today!

This is the dress I made at the sewing class I took in B'ham with my sister a few weeks ago. I finally got around to hemming it and putting buttons on the dress last night:

I let the day slip by yesterday without a post of Emily on her milestone. It didn't hit me until this morning that today was the 19th. We had a relaxing day yesterday and had friends over for dinner and had an enjoyable evening. Sarah Anne turned 4 so we gave her a shirt for her birthday:
The girls had so much fun playing last night. It was fun to watch them run from Emily's room, to the living room, and the kitchen playing with toys. The adults enjoyed talking with each other!

This morning I got an updated picture of the 3 of us:

Lately when we pray together at night, Emily thanks God for all the people at the grocery store. I don't know where she got that from but so far she has prayed for them for 3 nights in a row. Maybe God is prompting her to pray for those that need it : )

Trampoline

Yesterday I needed to go to a sewing class and Joe was working late . . . so our neighbor kept Emily for us until Joe got home. They had a small trampoline at their house and they said Emily loved it. They got some pictures of her last night and gave them to Joe when he picked her up . . . of course Joe was on line last night trying to find that trampoline so he could buy her one : )

This is my absolute favorite picture of her. She looks like Rocky when he runs to the top of the steps:

Playground and PlayDoh

Yesterday we went to a local park. It's at a church so I assumed it was just for the church but someone told me it stays open all day long and is for anyone to use. It's a great park that is fenced in and is really close to the house. Emily enjoyed all the slides. When we first got there, there were only 2 other boys running around. Emily kept running after them and saying, "Hey guys, here I come" and would try to catch up with them. They didn't pay her much attention though. They did go down the slide with her one time when she managed to catch up to them:


Slides are still her play of choice. I try each time to get on a swing with her but she will have none of it. That's so wild. She has never liked swings. Joe doesn't like them either so I wonder if it's a genetic thing.

Emily also got to play with PlayDoh for the first time yesterday. She got a couple of packages of it in her Easter eggs Sunday, so yesterday I pulled it out for her. Of course the first thing she tried to do was eat it. I said, "this is NOT food." So for the rest of the afternoon she would look at me and say, "this is NOT food" and keep playing. We made some snakes, a dog, and some snowmen. But Emily really just liked tearing it up into little pieces:
We have been dealing with "No" and running away when we tell her to do things. I've tried popping her on the leg, losing it with her (which I know isn't right) and it's done nothing. So Joe and I decided to start taking away her favorite toy and putting it on top of the TV in the living room for the rest of the day where she can still see it but can't have it. I'll just pile the toys up for every No until the next morning and she can have them back. We'll see how that goes. Any suggestions from you guys would be great! And if you hear "wailing and gnashing of teeth" coming from Marietta it might be me and Emily having a bad day : )

Easter Egg Hunt

This Sunday we went to an Easter Egg Hunt after church. I was so excited because we didn't get to go to the Marietta one a few weeks ago that rained out. Emily was all dressed up in her fancy dress that DeeDee made, and sadly I never got a picture of us all "gussied up" on Sunday. Right after church I changed Emily's clothes so she wouldn't get her dress dirty. Anyway, with this being our first Easter Egg hunt we weren't prepared for what happened. We lined up under the preschool sign that they had and took a couple of pictures of Emily waiting for the hunt to start:

Then we followed the line towards the direction where the eggs were waiting. The director said something but we couldn't hear her since we were towards the back of the line. Then all the kids took off. But because we were walking down a narrow pathway we had to slowly wait our turn to start running for the eggs. When we got there . . . there were no eggs . . . and all the kids and parents in the front were clapping and going thru their stash . . . what! Joe saw two eggs hidden in some bushes that no one saw in their zest to grab all the ones in plain site (in about 25 seconds I might add) so Emily dug around to get the two eggs left:

I was so disappointed. My mind was quickly trying to figure out how we were going to let Emily go on an Easter egg hunt since this one started and was finished before we even realized it. Then a sweet little girl from church came up to Emily and started putting some of her eggs in Emily's basket . . . that was so sweet! We thanked her very much . . . and although I was sad that Emily didn't get the excitement of getting them herself, I was thankful she was going home with more than 2 eggs. I made sure to find the little girl's mom to praise her daughter's ability to share. That's really hard for a preschooler.

By the time we were walking back to our car they were letting the older kids go to the back of the yard for their hunt. I was tempted to let Emily run with them . . . but I stopped myself. We had been invited to the Barnes house for lunch so we headed to their house for a nice afternoon of fellowship and a meal . . . thanks LeAnn!

So lesson learned . . . when you go to an Easter Egg hunt . . . be in the FRONT of the line. Knock people over if you have to . . . just kidding . . . but only a little : )

That afternoon we went outside and I hid Emily's eggs for her to go find them, i.e. toss them around the yard for her to run after them. She had fun doing that . . . and she really LOVED opening the eggs to eat all the sugar inside. One of the eggs had Pop Rocks in it . . . um . . . who did that? Why would you put pop rocks in eggs for preschoolers. Anyway, we told her it wasn't candy and threw it away. I told Joe I was amazed at how quickly Emily has learned what candy is. At Halloween she just liked playing with all the packages in her pumpkin and dumping them out and putting them back in. By Easter she wanted to open and eat all of the candy at once : )

Here is a video of Emily singing. I love to hear her sing and this video does not do her justice. She was shy in front of the camera and was really only singing because I asked her about 50 times to please sing for mommy. Listen to the deflated "yea" at the end of Jesus Loves Me. That's how she felt about me asking her to sing for the video. But at least I got her on here to remember how cute she was when she is a teenager : ) If I really want to get her voice singing I just need to crack her door open at night and record her after she's gone to bed. Joe and I stand outside her door and laugh because she always sings songs at the top of her lungs when she goes to bed.

Petting Zoo

A local toy store had a petting farm outside their store today. It was a BEAUTIFUL day and Emily enjoyed petting and brushing all the animals. It's hard to believe that on Tuesday of this week we had on coats and sweatshirts and had snow flurries and today it was sunny and warm and time to wear sandals!

I felt bad for the animals having to stand there while we all descended upon them . . . but it didn't stop me from taking Emily to enjoy them . . . I hope these animals are well loved and taken care of:
This poor little baby pig was trying so hard to eat his lunch but kept getting knocked around while the little crate they were in kept moving . . . poor baby was starving:
This chicken was a hoot. She just kept walking up and down the sidewalk like she owned the place. But she was smart enough not to go into the street. I was afraid she was going to peck us to death but she let everyone pet on her like she was a family pet:
They also advertised baby ducks, chicks and bunnies which I was excited about but those were exclusively for the professional photographer that was there if you wanted pictures taken . . . so Emily and I looked at them thru the glass window. Of course the real reason they had all the animals there was to bring you to the store with all the nice toys to play with. That place was a mad house. They had sample toys all thru the store so Emily ran from station to station and played with everything. Here she is enjoying the trampoline. I was so proud of myself because I didn't spend any money. But I did see a ton of stuff that I was looking for during Christmas and Birthday so I will have to remember them for later.One group of girls were playing at the kitchen station with the ice cream cone sets. There was an ice cream cone stuck over to the side that they didn't see. Emily walked up and picked it up to play with it. The little girl turned to me and said, "We are playing here right now". I said, "well that's o.k. you can share the toys". Where was that girl's mama . . . anyway, she turned around and started playing. When Emily dropped the cone to move on to the next station that girl picked it up quickly to add to her stash . . .

All in all we had a good time!

Weekend at the Zoo

Emily stayed with my parents on Friday night and Saturday so my sister and I could go to a sewing class together in Birmingham. Emily had a blast . . . . they had zoo weekend so my parents took her there on Saturday. One of the most exciting parts for Emily was she got to ride a school bus for the first time. They had buses running from the parking lots to the zoo and Mom said Emily got all excited when they boarded the bus:


My mom also finished Emily's easter dress so she wore it this Sunday in Montgomery. At church she kept twirling it around and when someone would say hello she would point to her dress and say, "I have on my purple dress and my white bow":
I have to put buttons on and hem the dress I made in the class so I will post that one later. I just hope I can remember everything we did to make another one! My brain was fried by the end of Saturday but I learned a lot.

Temporarily Replaced

We got Emily a play pizza last night. She LOVES IT! So much so that last night when I had to wake her up to give her some cough medicine, the first thing she said when she opened her eyes was, "Mommy I want my pizza". She sleepily took her medicine and went right back to sleep. Then this morning I barely had her door open and she jumped up and said, "Mommy I want my pizza". She usually asks where her daddy is . . . but his whereabouts have been temporarily replaced for a toy pizza : )

Emily has an Easter Egg Hunt at school today so she wore her bunny shirt that I appliqued last week:
I have had to "grow some patience" with Emily lately. I've learned that toddlers LOVE to do things for themselves, but have mercy they "dilly dally" around so much! All I hear all day long is: "No Emily do it" and then she has to put back whatever I started and then do it herself. Only she might see a toy along the way and start playing with it or decide she wants some milk or she starts trying to take off her shoes . . . or whatever . . . oh my word! It now takes 30 minutes to load laundry in the washing machine, it takes 15 minutes just to get Bud some food, it takes 10 minutes to get in a car seat, and the list goes on and on . . . .Lord give me patience : )

Her teacher told me Tuesday that they had asked Emily not to climb on the table. One of the teachers turned around and Emily watched her like a hawk while she attempted to climb on the table again. The other teacher said, "Emily" and she jumped down off the table and said, "I sit in time out". Looks like we have a sneaky child on our hands! She knows what is right and wrong but does it anyway while she thinks no one is looking. So on the way to the car, I asked Emily if she obeyed her teachers today and she said, "No, Miss Nisa said No No climb on the table but I did and sit in time out." That girl knew EXACTLY what I was asking about. She's a smart one . . . we are going to have to keep an eye on her!