nothing special...

Nothing special to these pictures other than we were just having fun...

Marcus was putting the doors on our new media stand this morning (thanks IKEA!) when the silly one started having fun...

Step One Step Two
No time to photoshop out the glare.

2nd haircut for the ladies who lunch

Emilia's hair has been dribbling into her eyes long enough, so I took her over to Doolittles to get a little trim. She has a LOT of hair coming in, especially in the front; but the longer parts were just looking so ratty and it was all uneven in the end. In the end, I'm sure the stylist cut about 10 hairs on her head, but whatev... not like I was going to take a stab at cutting her hair. She was not thrilled with sitting in the chair but thankfully was mesmerized by Dora the Explorer on the little video screen. And her hair looks much better.

Showing off a side view of the new 'do.

Afterwards it was close to lunchtime so on a whim I decided to take Emi out for a Mama/Daughter lunch. I was a little leery about it since it's a roll of the dice whether Emilia will be happy and stay sitting or will be screaming and ready to run around the restaurant. I'm happy to say she did beautifully. I ordered her her very first real-cheese cheese quesadilla with a fruit salad. She was thrilled to see it came with a biscuit the size of a hockey puck. She ate half the quesadilla, almost all the fruit salad (didn't care for the green melon pieces and I can't say that I blame her) and a good amount of her biscuit. We laughed and talked and she was very worried about the baby in the restaurant who was crying and kept signing that she wanted to give him/her some fruit. Cutie. Definitely something we'll do again soon. The best part - she fell asleep on the way home from lunch and slept for almost 3 hours (we're still struggling with our sleep though today she did much better making it to 5:45a.m.)

Washing her hands with her wipe before lunch. If I forget to give her one, she reminds me.

Holy biscuit!

more videos than anyone will want to watch

So, since I have all this time now that we're waking up at 5 a.m. I spent some quality time on youtube uploading Emilia videos. Don't feel like you have to watch them all - this is primarily an exercise for the grandparents and tias. Enjoy the many dance moves of Emilia...

No actual dancing in this first one - she had been dancing but of course when I broke out the camera she stopped. Please note her shirt - she pulled her one arm out of the sleeve and then walked around like that the rest of the night and cried every time you tried to take her shirt all the way off or put it all the way back on. She's a nut.



Again, no dancing - but you get to hear my voice (why do I sound so shrill - never speaking again on these videos) and Emilia using her silly voice.



Check out the shaking of the booty in this one.



And finally...


Okay, this gets me off the hook for a little while in terms of videos, right?

back in the saddle again

I know we both look a little "rough" in this pic, but considering the hour, and the angle from which I was taking the picture, we look fantastic.

So in addition to being an early bird, Emilia wants to constantly be carried. This wouldn't be such a problem if she was back to being a 9 pound infant. However, at approximately 22 (I'm guessing here) pounds, it tends to be a problem. Also, I kind of enjoy having the ability to move both of my arms. In desperation the other morning I broke out the baby bjorn which we haven't used pretty much since she started walking fluidly. It totally brought me back to when she was a wee little peanut and you could pop her in the bjorn or the sling and she'd ride around for hours in it, happy as a clam. We were (are) really big into the whole attachment parenting/baby wearing thing and apparently they find comfort in going back to it. So it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that my 18 month old girlie rode around in the bjorn yesterday for a good 40 minutes, clutching pink panda and her banana pretty much the entire time. Note to self: next time invest in the upgrade to the bjorn that has the additional back support. Ouch.

In lighter times - November 2007. Who is this baby????

Don't we look lovely and not at all tired?

early bird

Emilia has not slept well at all this week. I think the latest she has woken up this week is 5:30 (except for today, Saturday, when she woke up at 6). I'm going on the assumption that her "eye" tooth on the lower left is coming through and is bothering her. Also, she hasn't been eating well at dinner, which means she's waking up early because she's starving. Friday morning she woke up for the first time at 4 a.m. and then was up for "good" at 5... prompting an impromptu photo session (and, I'm ashamed to admit, a 10 minute Curious George TV watching episode. I know, I'm a bad mother. Ugh.)

Emilia insisted on putting on (or having me put on her) her new shoes. I tried to find a picture of this style online, but no luck. They're super cute though - pink, green, white and baby blue - super stylish for Spring! :)

We read a lot of books Friday morning.

her dress

Cute, after breakfast pic from the other day.

Back in April 2007 when I was approximately 400 months pregnant I knit up a little dress for Emilia. I remember thinking she would wear it for her 1st birthday party. (What was I thinking? A knit dress at the end of August in the South - yeah, right!) It was far too big for her then anyway. Well, yesterday I finally put it on her and even I have to admit it looked pretty darn cute. The flowers need to be tacked on to the dress a bit better and I may even make another one with sleeves for the winter - or have Mama Mama make one - we'll see.

Offering a slice of pizza from her kitchen.

I was trying to capture her dipping her chips into the chicken tortilla soup we had for dinner last night. No luck - must work on photography skills.

Giving kisses and cuddles to pink panda and blue bear.

Pink Panda and Blue Bear live in her crib and have been her companions forever. She's got a couple more "special" stuffed animals that are our "go-to" friends like Oatey and Panda and White Bear (original names, I know). I'll get pics of them as well.

chimbas

Over the weekend Emilia has fallen in love with having her hair in "chimbas" or piggy tails. We've done one and two chimbas - I think two looks best. She actually cries when you take them out at night and she starts signing (not that there's an official sign that I know of, but we made one up) for you to put them back in.

Rare Mother-Daughter pic

all you need is love

Happy Valentine's Day!

Her Valentine's Day card she made at school.

music together part 2

Some videos from this past week's Music Together class.

playing (or not playing) the bell...




Then there's this one where instead of playing the bell, she's chomping on the stick to hit the bell.


And then, there's always some dancing to be done...

move over mary lou retton

Here comes Emilia!

On Thursdays after my workout, during which she hangs out with Miss Jean in Childwatch at the Y, I take Emilia to her "gymnastics" class. I put gymnastics in quotes because it's not like she's doing any tumbling or cartwheels or anything. Basically they set up all these different mats, wedges, etc for the babies to basically run around and climb on. There's also a massive trampoline that empties into a huge pit full of styrofoam squares for them to jump in to. The pictures aren't great because Emilia is obsessed now with taking the camera out of my hands whenever she sees it so she can look at the "bebe" in the picture window.

all smiles under the arch

rolling around

Playing with the hula-hoop. In the backround is Kyrie on the tumble track with her Mama.

Standing on one of the wedges. Last week she fell off of one of these and took a nasty tumble. Fortunately the floor is a gymnastics floor so it's bouncy and she didn't hurt herself, just had a nasty startle.

puzzle love

I've mentioned before how much Emilia loves her puzzles. She has this cushion-y floor mat on the floor of the playroom/TV room that she plays on a lot and yesterday she realize that it's a puzzle as well. (Please note, I actually remembered to put her in a dress, inspired by her little girlfriends who often wear dresses for no "special" reason. Must remember to do this more often as though legs need to be seen more by the public. Oh, and the dress is size 6-12 months - weird that it still fits!)

And in honor of this past Sunday's Super Bowl, a picture of Emilia from last year on Super Bowl Sunday. Gasp!

double dipper

Here's some fascinating video of Emilia dipping some pita crisps into her hummus. This is noteworthy because, generally speaking, she doesn't like to get her hands "dirty". In fact, it kind of freaks her out a bit. So I've been pushing her into Art classes (no luck there) and encouraging her to use markers (great - more laundry) and these special crayons that she can write with in the tub. I guess it's starting to work because she now LOVES to mark up her hands with marker (so much for marking the paper!) and now will dip her foods - hurrah!

In other news, she's been a bit under the weather and was diagnosed with bronchitis. Fortunately it doesn't look like she's got either RSV or reactive airway again thank goodness. She's on a better antibiotic right now than she was before that doesn't seem to be upsetting her tummy too much. However you know she's under the weather because she's sleeping at wierd times (like now - noon - no lunch, nothing - just sound asleep) but a little less crabby then she was when she was really sick.