gobble gobble!

No family pic - of course - we're far too unorganized to remember to take a picture of the three of us. At least we did remember to take pictures at Thanksgiving dinner. Emilia had a grand time ignoring Alara and we were thrilled the Cankurtarans and Edie were able to join us.

On Sunday we took Emilia to a birthday party. The girl has a busy social schedule! Sunday was her friend Sofia's birthday. She had a great time enjoying some different toys and sharing a cupcake with her Papa.

The dress - it was a little long. Thankfully it's getting hemmed in time for Thanksgiving dinner!

An attempt at a family pic - clearly not so effective since Marcus didn't even make it into the picture and Emilia is scowling!

The birthday girl enjoying her cake. It was impossible to get a pic of the two girls together.

dc trip pics - finally!

The computer has been on the fritz for the past couple of days so I've been behind on my postings. We were up in DC last week - drove up Friday (Emilia, MamaMama & I) and got there around 4 p.m. or so. Marcus drove up a little later and joined us around 9:30 or so. He had hoped to be able to spend a long weekend with us up there but alas, there's apparently some sort of banking crisis going on right now - who knew. Poor guy drove up on Friday night and left Sunday morning at 8. Tia Marga said it was because we barged in on him in the living room disturbing his quiet reading time but I'm sure that wasn't the case! :)

In any case Emilia had a great time visiting with her Grandpa, Tia Marga, Jacksito, Nana, Ricardo & Gaby. There wasn't a whole lot of napping going on unfortunately but she was a trooper nonetheless and even did well at two nice restaurants for lunches. Of course I had all these terrific plans to take a ton of photos and of course I came back with a whopping 15 of them. The best are posted below.
It was a very long ride to DC!

The spoiling began right when we arrived at Tia Marga's. Here Emilia discovers two new friends Grandpa had ready for her.

Emilia slept in Nena's room. She really enjoyed checking out all of Nena's cool stuff.

Enjoying a delicious lunch at the Carlyle with Nana & Mama Mama.

I believe she started asking Nana for her Christmas present - smart girl!

Evidence of kisses at EatBar.

Emilia loves emptying out my purse. I however, do not enjoy having to load everything back in!

The weather was really cold in DC - thankfully we had her nice warm winter coat and her mother is pretty handy with a pair of knitting needles!

We can't wait to go back in a few weeks!

snip snip

Today was a big day for Emilia because she got her first haircut today. A couple of Emilia's friends had gotten their hair cut at a kid's salon called Doolittle's so we made an appointment and off we went. I thought for sure it would be pretty slow in there but the place was hoppin'! Full of mamas with their babes getting their hair cut.


Um... get me outta here!

Hey - this car thing is kinda cool!


Getting sprayed down - a little nervous looking

Geez those scissors look sharp!

Emilia got to sit in the red car and was kind of stunned by the amount of fun stuff they had for her to look at and entertain the babes which is probably a good thing since that way they don't squirm in their seats too much. Emilia was a trooper - her stylist, Michelle, was very impressed with how still she sat while her hair got snipped. They just took a little off the back and straightened out the top a bit as well. Despite the fact that she probably only cut about 50 hairs I can definitely see an improvement in how nicely it lays. Plus her curls in the back are even curlier now! (probably helped by the little bit of styling mousse they put in her hair). Since it was her first haircut they gave her a keepsake card and envelope with her picture and her hair trimmings (or most of them - some of them were so little they almost disintegrated when they were cut).




Check out those curls!


Happy to report there were no tears (at least from Emilia, from her overly emotional mother though, there were plenty of tears in the privacy of the car :) and afterwards Mama Mama treated Emilia to a yummy lunch at the deli in the mall.

15 month stats

Pics from Blowing Rock - November 1, 2008

Height: 30 inches (50th percentile)

Weight: 22.8 pounds (50th percentile)

Head circumfrence 18 inches (75th percentile - girl's got a big head like her mama!)

Number of teeth: 9 1/2 (four front teeth on top and bottom - top right molar (the first one!) and part of the bottom left molar).

Signs she recognizes or does... several... milk, water, food/eat, more, please... all the ones I know. I need to check with Emilia's friend Kate, who's the signing fiend, for more signs to teach her.

Some skills: can feed herself with a spoon (very messily, but still), runs everywhere, crouching down, picking up small items and putting them into a jar or cup, knows where to put a barette or how to use her comb, NEW: brings a diaper when she needs a new one.

Words: Mama, Papa, Hey..(for Mama Mama - poor woman!), Hi, byebye, bubbles.

Overall Emilia got a clean bill of health from Dr. Walker at her appointment today. We got back the results of her allergy testing which were anything but definitive unfortunately. According to this test she wasn't allergic enough to anything to raise a red flag. The pediatrician pointed out though that it just means that her allergies didn't come up on this test and that on a skin test or other allergy test she may come up allergic. What it does mean is that we've got the go ahead to try a little milk so we're going to start with some regular yogurt and see how she tolerates it. Hopefully she's outgrown her milk allergy or is outgrowing it. I'm really excited about that.

Otherwise her feet (which were sort of turned out - called "windswept") seem to be turning back towards center, her skin is clear and she's in the pink of health. We opted out of the flu shot since she's not in full time daycare and thimerasol is still used in the vaccine. We also postponed the first MMR shot so today she only got 1 shot - the first dose of the chicken pox vaccine.

ScanFest 08

Over the weekend we went to ScanFest in Uptown which is an annual Scandinavian "festival" that's held here. It was a small, very orderly affair. Emilia got to try some Finnish bread and watch some traditional dancing.

Traditional dances.

Checking out the dancers.

Smile of approval.

The best picture of the day - we howled with laughter at the looks on their faces!

a nightly routine

I don't know exactly how this started, but every night when Marcus comes home from work, Emilia insists on taking off his shoes and socks (kinda gross, I know, but totally cute). I finally managed to catch at least part of it on video...

On a quick aside - Emilia said her first word in English today - "bubbles!" I'm guessing she picked that up at school since at the close of every day they blow bubbles. So sweet - my bilingual baby!

ba-rocking her vote

That´s right - she exercised her constitutional right at the ripe old age of 14 months. The line wasn´t too terribly long - only about 30 minutes - but fortunately I had plenty of snacks on hand to keep her happy.

Waiting in line - and not super happy about it.

Hurrah! She voted!

oops!

So I just realized I made a mistake when I posted the code for Emilia's school pictures. Instead of putting in the information I mentioned before, under email address type in mcmdgs@carolina.rr.com and for password type in: cholamax. You should then be able to access her school pics.

trick or treat