And the award goes to . . .

Well I actually did it! Today at a blueberry farm I won the Mother of the Year Award! We met Emily's friend Julia and her mom and sister at a local blueberry patch this morning. We picked the HOTTEST day of the year to go and it didn't take long for all of us to be drenched in sweat. We picked berries for about 30 minutes and Emily said she was ready to go. As we were walking back to pay for the berries we had picked, Emily suddenly started crying and telling me she wanted me to carry her. Well I just thought she was having one of her typical 3 year old drama meltdowns. I told her she was a big girl and needed to walk for me because I had Abigail on my back on the baby carrier Rachel was letting me use. She started crying really hard at this point and told me her stomach hurt. So I picked her up and in the middle of my speech to her about "drying it up or we were going straight home instead of eating lunch with Julia", she threw up all over me and her. Wow . . . what a great mom I am! To pay me back for not showing compassion to my sick child when she needed me, she did manage to get a fair amount of puke on me. Nice . . .

We went to the bathroom and cleaned up as best we could. I even clogged their sink a little when I washed all the puke off her arms. At first I thought she had eaten a bad blueberry but realized that it was because she was so hot! Abigail was even getting limp on me from sweating so much. Goodness! Luckily I had a change of clothes in the car for Emily.

Rachel stood in line to pay for our blueberries and paid a whopping 47 cents for both our buckets : ) Needless to say we aren't great blueberry pickers. Here is our stash that we made it home with:
I have a new respect for all those great people out there who pick our fruit for us that I buy at the store!

Here are Emily and Julia on their way to pick berries:
After Emily cooled off she was back to her normal happy self and asked if we were still going to the mall to eat and ride the merry go round . . . so we did. We ate lunch and got on the merry go round, but as I was trying to get her up on the horse to ride she changed her mind and decided it was too high up. So me, Abigail, and Emily sat on the bench on the merry go round . . . and just went round and round : ) When Julia got off the ride she said, "Emily I rode the elephant" and Emily said, "We rode on the bench!" with a big happy grin on her face like it was the best thing ever!

New Skills

Abigail has been trying several new skills this past week. I've all but given up on feeding her baby food because if she can't pick it up and feed it to herself she's not interested! I tried to feed her pears the other night and she constantly grabbed the spoon from me. So she now eats cut up bananas, sweet potatoes, carrots, and peas . . . and of course mounds of cheerios. Here she is after dinner one night. It makes for a big ol' mess but at least I don't have to sit there and spoon feed her! As you can see this night was so crazy that I didn't even take time to get a bib. Dinner time can be so CRAZY some nights:
I also gave her a cup of water to see what she would do. She actually got some water out. The couple of times she did it surprised her a little. She spent most of the time banging the cup on her tray:
The girl isn't crawling yet . . . but she has learned to scoot. I caught her this morning trying to make it to Emily's room:
Here is a video of her in action:


And last but not least I captured my sweet girls playing together in the hallway the other day. They were playing together so sweetly. I love little moments like this:

Happy 4th!

Yesterday we celebrated the 4th a day early in the Marietta square. We met our friends Jason and April and Riley. April's sister Misty and her two children, Jordyn and Landon, were also with them. We had fun eating lunch together and walking around the square and letting the kids play:

Emily went down this big slide but then the next ride she got on she got to the top and then didn't want to come down. I think because it was closed in and there were lots of kids around. Jordyn tried to help her down but she wasn't budging. So I told the worker that my daughter wouldn't come down and that I needed to go in there and get her. He looked to be about 16 or 17 years old and said, "well I'm really not supposed to let you do that." And I was like . . . "well . . . she's not coming down so what do you want me to do?" Bless him . . . I did get to go in there and get her. All the kids were surrounding her and trying to make her feel better and one little boy was trying to help her down. They were all so sweet. Crazy girl!On the way home Emily fell asleep and then Abigail took a really late afternoon nap at home, so we decided to give it a go and head to the fireworks. I gave the girls a bath and then we headed up there right at sunset, so we only hung out about 5 minutes before the fireworks started. After a few minutes though Emily decided the fireworks were too loud and wanted to go home! She sat in the car and watched the rest thru the window. Abigail enjoyed just being there. Emily decided next year we needed to be further away so it won't be so loud : )

While we were waiting to head to the fireworks Emily wrote her first E on Joe's puzzle!
So this proud mama had to get a picture of it. I don't know if you can see it but look closely. It's on the bottom row towards the left:
Today on the way home from church Emily said she didn't feel good and when we got home she asked if she could sleep in her bed. So I checked her temp and it was 103 : ( Kids sure do get sick fast . . . anyway, she went upstairs and slept for 2 1/2 hours. While her fever was down this afternoon she played some but then by this evening was back to feeling yucky again. I hope it's just a little bug that goes away soon and that Abigail stays fever free!

Happy 4th everyone!

Away from Mom . . .

Two days a week Emily goes to an in home day care while I work. Today was the first day Abigail went with her. So I had all these plans when I picked them up today to nurse Abigail right away and hold her until bedtime thinking she was going to be all upset and clingy tonight. That girl was fine . . . she was bouncing happily in an exersaucer when I picked them up and was smiling and cooing all the way home. During her bath she giggled and laughed and played on the floor while I gave Emily a bath. I'm really glad she had a good day today because it makes working a whole lot easier . . . looks like I worried for nothing! Here she is right before bed time tonight:
In this picture it's like she is saying . . . I fooled you mom!

Updates

Last week I took several pictures to put on the blog . . . but never quite found the time to sit down and actually post them. Here are just a few things that happened last week. I have a basket downstairs of Abigail's toys and Emily enjoys bringing her things. Last week she went a little overboard . . . but Abigail loves Emily so much that she just watched her bring her all these toys with a big grin on her face:
However, Abigail is well aware of what her toys look like and LOVES to go in search of ANYTHING she isn't supposed to have. She kept trying to get the books off the bottom shelf of the book case and also tried to get Emily's soccer ball:
She also discovered the DVD player this week and kept trying to punch all the buttons and did manage to get some of my cookbooks off the other bookshelf. She isn't crawling yet but that hasn't slowed her down. She just rolls wherever she wants to go and can get there really quickly. Here she is rocking back and forth on her hands and knees so she should be crawling soon:
Several weeks ago our friend Carey help us find this princess book that her daughter enjoyed playing with. I tell you . . . this is the best $15 we've ever spent. Emily plays with this book ALL THE TIME. She carries it with her in the car and takes it to each room in the house. It entertains her so well:
And I FINALLY got this outfit done. It's been sitting on my sewing machine for over a month now. I finished the pants a long time ago but couldn't get motivated to finish the top. But here it is!
I made her the capri pants and top because she prefers to wear pants or shorts . . . but wouldn't you know it . . . the past couple of days she has wanted to wear a dress. I can't keep up with this girl!

Lately she wants to wear her "big shirts" because she has been big into getting herself dressed with no help. She can't get most shirts over her head so she really likes the big t-shirts like this one because she can put them on by herself:
Saturday morning she came to our room and announced, "I got dressed all by myself!" She had gotten up, gone to the bathroom, and then got her clothes out of the dresser and got completely dressed in her shorts and big t-shirt and then came to wake us up. Big girl!

Last Thursday Joe and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary! We had celebrated a little earlier by going to see a movie together while my parents were in town last weekend and could stay at home with the girls. The last movie we went to see together was last year for our anniversary : ) Thursday was just a regular work day . . . but Friday night we did enjoy grilling out beef kabobs . . . they were yummy!

New Toy

PawPaw and DeeDee worried about a gift they had given Emily for Christmas that didn't work. So because everything has to be even among their grandchildren they gave us some money for Emily to pick out a new toy : ) So we went to the toy store yesterday and Emily picked this out with her money:

She has changed their clothes about 50 times already.

My mom also showed me how to make these hooded towels. They are so easy! I wanted to have some big towels for the pool with their names on them so now we are set to go:
Abigail is almost ready to crawl. She keeps getting up on her hands and knees and rocking. I haven't caught her on camera yet but hopefully I can soon. She always does it when the camera isn't close by. She also cut her 2nd tooth yesterday!

Grillin'

My parents came to visit this weekend and got us a grill for our birthdays! Dad showed me the ropes:

Dee Dee and Emily played cards while we grilled:
We went to our local farmer's market Saturday morning and bought some yummy veggies to grill.
Everything tasted so good! Abigail even wanted to try them:
We had a great visit! Thanks for the grill. I'm going to try to grill some chicken tonight . . . yum!