Play Time

Emily had been talking about Julia all week last week and wanted to know when she would see her again. Julia is the girl at Emily's school. So we met her and her mom and baby sister at a park yesterday and then went to lunch together. The girls had a nice time and I had a nice time visiting with another mom.

These pictures were taken at 11:30 in the morning and Emily was already beet red. This is the park where you can feed the ducks but once again . . . they weren't there yesterday. So we tried to feed the geese but they weren't interested. But Julia and Emily had fun throwing bread in their direction.

All spread out . . .

Our kitchen was a disaster area this weekend as Joe and I were working on different projects and this is the only room in the house to spread out . . .
We are still hoping against all hope that someone will buy our house so we can move . . . we've given it until July 31st. If nothing happens by then we are starting plan B which is "work with what ya got". Otherwise we might be moving in September and I don't have the personality type to handle doing that so close to Baby B's arrival.

Here are the burp cloths I finished last night for a baby shower I'm going to Sunday. I love burp cloths . . . they are so cute to me. I have fun making them: . . . now I've got to get motivated to finish a top I started for Emily so she can start wearing it!

Night at the Zoo

They had a members only night at the zoo this evening. We enjoyed seeing the animals without it being so hot and it wasn't that crowded either. They had little activities throughout the zoo and a schedule to see different animals being fed. Towards the end we went back to the front of the zoo and got to see the elephants and lions more than we have in the past and with very few people . . . so that was a treat. Here are the pictures from this evening:
This was Emily's first time drinking by herself out of a water bottle. She did pretty good:


Here is that same crazy bird walking around with a mouse hanging from his mouth. Emily loved chasing him back and forth across the glass window. She kept hollering out "hey bird . . . hey bird". It was funny.The animals seemed more active tonight than they are during the day. The komodo dragon was moving around . . .

. . . and the panda bear wasn't sleeping but was up eating and walking around . . . . . . and this is the most we've seen of the tigers before too. They were playing around with each other and this tiger walked right up to the front of the glass to get a drink of water. Emily was sitting right up against the glass and just sat there and watched him drink. It was pretty cool.

Birthday!

Today was my birthday and it was a very nice one! We went to dinner at a restaurant of my choosing this evening and when we got there Joe had invited 2 other families to join us. What a treat (since I am the social butterfly of the family) . . . thanks Joe! And thanks to the Eldridges and Lydas for helping make this evening special.

When we got home there was a present on my bedside table. Joe got me the "directions gizmos" that everyone is using these days. Yea! I've been secretly wanting one of these for a long time because I hate having to look up directions on line and printing them out before leaving the house.
I also got several cards from friends and family and lots of well wishes today . . . and one of my favorites, which is people calling me up and singing "Happy Birthday" to me. Thanks to everyone!

I took these pictures of Emily the other day. These were some old socks that I gave Joe a LONG time ago for Christmas one year. Emily uses them as gloves now:

Fun trip

Joe surprised me on Saturday by telling me that he actually had off work on Monday . . . I can't even remember the last time he had this holiday . . . so I said we have to do SOMETHING fun because when was the last time we had a 3 day weekend . . . so on Saturday night we looked up hotel prices to head to NC to go to the B i l t more House. We bought our tickets and booked our hotel and headed out Sunday morning. We were excited because it was our first road trip with Emily (yes we lead boring lives).

We got there Sunday afternoon at checkin and Emily had fun jumping on the hotel bed and pretending to take a nap:
We told her on the way up that we were going to North C@rolina and I think the whole time she thought we were going to visit someone named that. We walked around downtown A$hville and then ate dinner at a gross restaurant : ) Joe said he wasn't going to let me live that one down for a while so I figured I better post it on the blog.

That evening we went swimming in the indoor pool. Emily LOVED it. She kept trying to take off in the water without us so she handled swimming this year a whole lot different than last year.
She even got in the hot tub with Joe for a little bit. Her favorite thing to do was dump water on Joe's head with her water bucket:
Emily enjoyed watching TV while we got ready Monday morning to check out:
On Monday we went to the B i l t more House. This is our 2nd time to tour the house (we went with friends about 9 years ago) and I'm still amazed at the luxury these people lived in, in 1900.

We went on the tour and halfway thru Emily was ready for a break and we were all hungry. So we found out that you could get voucher's for the tapes we bought and could re enter and finish the tour anytime that day (good to know!). So we ate lunch and then let Emily run around the "front yard" and the gardens and then finished our tour:

Emily decided to take a break here and hang out for a few minutes:
By the end of the garden tour she had decided she was tired of me taking pictures and refused to look at the camera anymore : )
We stopped at the winery on our way out and then headed home. Emily went 2 days without taking a nap and did pretty well for a 2 and a half year old. We had a nice time together!

Baby Update

We had our ultrasound this morning! Emily asked what all the pictures were on the screen and we told her that was the baby in mommy's tummy. We did find out what we are having . . . do you want to know . . .


Emily is going to have a baby sister! We are excited. I hope Emily has a wonderful relationship with her sister . . . one that will last a lifetime. The doctor said the baby looks healthy which is very good to hear. The ultrasound and knowing what it is always makes it more real to me.

We asked Emily what names she liked for her baby sister and she said, "Um . . .let's see . . . I like B . . . B Wilson". We realized later that she was giving us letters and not names because she also said she liked W. So our baby's nickname for now is "B".

We ask that you continue to pray with us for a healthy pregnancy. I also want to thank everyone for their comments about yesterday's post. I love hearing from all of you and appreciate the words of encouragement!

Little Girl

I don't think I'm cut out for potty training! I'm such a wimp. It's been a half a day and I couldn't wait to put her diaper back on her for her nap! Ha!

I wanted to start out the first day with having Emily sit on the potty until she actually went so she would at least know what it felt like. I've spent the last few weeks listening to several other mothers tell how they trained their kids and took in any advice they had. It has been very helpful for me to hear all the different viewpoints. We did the whole excitement thing of picking out pretty big girl pants and all that . . . but she decided she didn't like the rubber trainer pants I put over them. I don't really blame her because they are so bulky and the elastic on the legs were tight. So the idea of her having accidents without it going all over the carpet or couch went out the window in about 2 seconds. Anyway, we had breakfast and I had her drink as much milk as I could get in her, and then after about 15 minutes we made our first trip to the bathroom. We read books and hung out for about 5 minutes. About the time I was going to get her up she went. It was fun to watch the look on her face when she realized what she was doing. Yea! We went a couple of more times with success . . . and then it all went down hill from there. I would take her to the bathroom. She would sit for a little bit and tell me she was all done and then 2 seconds later in the kitchen or outside she would flow a river all over the place. Of course those were the two times that she didn't have the trainer pants on because she kept begging me not to put them on. Anyway, we sat on the potty several more times this morning but nothing happened. She did have fun playing in the water in the bath because I had to hose her down after her accidents.

I kept telling myself over and over again this morning that parents all over the world for years and years and years have gone thru the same thing as me. I do think for Emily that trying to go so often isn't going to work out. And I'm going to have to break down and buy Pull Ups which I was trying to avoid. But I wanted to give this morning a shot just to see how it went. At least she knows what it feels like now to actually go. I'm not the kind of mom who can handle having accidents all over the floor and not be bothered by it. I can't do it . . . so I shall spend the money on Pull Ups. I'll also back off a bit and not have her go to the bathroom so much . . . I was just trying to get her to feel that sensation as much as possible this morning in the hopes that something would click. I wanted a potty training prodigy : ) : ) : ) I'm sure you can't blame me!

So we'll still make our trips to the bathroom but with less frequency and with Pull Ups on until it does "click" in her head what to do.

And so begins this new journey in parenting . . .

In happier fun news I got this cute video of Emily last night. I LOVE the way she says "Little Girl" and have been meaning to get it on video before she starts saying it correctly. The other day when she got up from her nap she asked me where Joseph was. I asked her who that was and she said Daddy. So I told her my name as well. So for the past few days she has been saying, Daddy is Joseph and Mommy is "Jiffider" and Emily is a "little geel". So cute. So I asked her if I could get it on video. To do that I had to help her out with the dialogue because she gets shy in front of the camera. And the second she was done she wanted to see herself on video. Enjoy!