Random Pictures

I haven't been blogging much lately. It's been hard to get some good pictures of Emily. She has been so clingy lately. We are now well into week number 3 of her just wanting ME to hold her and she wants me to hold her ALOT. What's up with that? She also has started whining alot too so I haven't been very patient with her lately (which I'm sure is contributing to the clinginess). So I need some parenting advice people! For example, this morning I put her on the changing table to pull her hair back into a pony tail at the top and all of a sudden she starts grabbing at me and trying to stand up and says "hold . . .hold". So I pick her up for a couple of seconds and tell her I want to brush her hair and put a bow in it, so I try to sit her back down and she starts crying and grabbing at me again. So then I thought I would sit her in my lap and try to brush her hair and she becomes this big ol' wiggle worm and starts rolling all over the bed I'm sitting on. So I go back to the changing table and this time I lose my patience and tell her to be still in a very stern voice and of course that starts an avalanche of tears. The other night in BJ's she doesn't want to sit in the cart and keeps trying to stand up and tell me to hold her. So I tell her I can't because I can't hold her and try to push that big cart. I keep trying to sit her back down while I'm going to get 1 ITEM in the store and she screams the whole way thru and crying "night night" (which is her way of saying she wants her pacifier) and crying "daddy". I don't know what to do. In my mind I'm thinking, "am I creating a whiny child by letting her cling to me and make a big deal out of such simple little tasks that should take 2 minutes". I've tried holding her and hugging her when she gets like that thinking she needs a little bit of attention, but it seems to be at such random times that I can't figure out what's wrong, and I don't know how to handle it. I don't want to contribute to her whining but I also don't want her to be in therapy as an adult saying I didn't hold her when she needed me : )

Any advice would be greatly appreciated it . . . now to some pictures.

Sawyer and Emily played at the children's computers at the library:

Here she is sitting in the toy box at my parent's house:

Here is a picture of Emily starting to whine (can you see the lip starting to poke out). I was trying to get a picture of her on her new stool and holding her new Bible we got her:

I sold my old camera to my brother and just got a new one. Here's the picture I took trying to test out the timer on my camera. Joe made this face right when the timer went off:

Fun time at the zoo

Emily and I spent a few days in Birmingham to visit my sister and her 3 children. Emily called them SaySay (Sarah), Sa (Sam), and Saucer (Sawyer). We went to the zoo and had a great time. There is a section at the zoo where the kids can run around in the water sprinklers and I wondered what Emily was going to do when we got there . . . well . . . she had a ball! After running around the perimeter for a little bit and coming back to check in with me a few times, she got right in the middle of it and loved it. Here's our picture from our trip:

Here's Sarah and Sam riding a camel:

Here's the baby camel:

The tiger kept walking back and forth in front of the glass. He was very intimidating:

A baby giraffe had been born recently:

This turtle was huge!!!:

Here are the water pictures:

18 Months Old!

Emily is 18 months old today!!!

We went to a park this morning that has a duck pond. We had a great time feeding the ducks. They patiently waited their turn for their piece of bread . . . kinda : )



Check out this video of Emily feeding the ducks:

First visit to the GA Aquarium

Emily went to the GA Aquarium for the first time today! Joe had off work so we decided at 8:30 that we were going to go and were out the door at 9:30 to head that way . . . I was proud of us!!! We FINALLY turned Emily's car seat around so I took this picture of her chilling in the back seat with her sunglasses on on our way to the aquarium:

She kept saying "Fiiiii" for fish

I wanted to get a picture of Joe and Emily in the penguin tank but the picture didn't turn out . . . but Emily had fun waiting in line with Joe:

I don't remember alligators being here last time . . .are they new??? They were cool looking:

Bed Head again

Emily looks like she had a great nap yesterday! Here's what she looked like when she got up. As you can see she was still holding on to all of her pacifiers that she sleeps with : ) She looks like the little baby off of the Addams Family Values movie . . . (great movie by the way!)

Visiting Grandma

We hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend! For the first time EVER Joe actually got a 3 day weekend when the rest of America celebrated a holiday! We wanted to post pictures of Emily's first trip to see fireworks but Joe spent the day in bed Friday with his head spinning from taking some pain pills for the first time for his back . . . lesson learned . . . don't take 2 pain pills the first time you try them : ) Once they left his system he was doing much better.

On Saturday we drove to Auburn to see Joe's mom. We had a great visit. Joe's brother was in town so Emily really enjoyed playing with her cousin Sidney. He showed her all his cool toys which she loved! Joe's sister and husband also stopped thru on their way home from the beach so we enjoyed lunch with them on Sunday.

Aside from being stuck in traffic on the way home Sunday and Emily having a meltdown in the car we had a great trip!

Helping in the kitchen . . .

. . . well not really . . . but Emily did enjoy putting these oven mits on while I was trying to clean up after dinner tonight. I was proud of her for getting them on all by herself!

Her bottom two teeth broke thru this week next to her 4 front teeth so she now has 18 teeth . . . all that's left to come in of her baby teeth are her 2 year molars!!!

I got excited the other day because Emily finally pointed to me in a picture and said, "mama" . . . she's been saying daddy for weeks and now finally mama!!! However, my excitement was a little deflated when she pointed to a picture of Christie Brinkley in my People Magazine the other day and said, mama . . . . I know I should be flattered . . . but hello . . . we don't look ANYTHING alike! So then I thought . . . well maybe she thinks all girl pictures are mama and all guy pictures are daddy . . . so I pointed to a picture of Tiger Woods and asked Emily who that was . . . and she said, "mama". Then I pointed to a dark haired man on the front of the Parents Magazine thinking she might say Daddy since he looked more like Joe . . . but she said "Mama" again in her sweet little voice. . .oh well!!!