Christmas and randomness

Christmas was great. Emerson was so much fun to watch with her toys and all the wrapping. She did get very overwhelmed a couple of times though, but for the most part she was great. Steve's parents got her a cute little table and chairs. She loves to sit at it. My dad got her a cute bookshelf. She has so much fun taking all the books out and sometimes putting them back in.

In case you are wondering, we are on day 23 of no milk. Emerson is seriously tough to crack. Over the weekend I tried taking her water away and making her only option milk in a cup. Around 4pm she started taking long sips of it and drank about 3 ounces. However, the next morning her diaper was filled with dark pee, so we gave the water back since she was seriously dehydrated...Any other ideas?

Also, for those keeping track, Emy is now 14 months old and has no desire to walk or even stand on her own. There are several things that she is doing now that are really impressive though. She can feed herself with a spoon (with mommys help scooping the food). She can point to a bunch of correct things when you ask her "Where is the bunny; santa; your feet; dada; the dog", etc. Emerson has also added a new dance move to her repitoire. She now loves to to a shimmy with her shoulder. It is pretty cute.

Here are some pictures from Christmas.

This was a few days before Christmas at a friends house. Emy was being extra smiley while they tried out their new camera.

Playing with her new shopping cart

Again, the new shopping cart

Again- She was REALLY excited about this toy.

Sitting at her new table.

Pulling ALL the books out of her new bookshelf. (Notice how the only ones left are on the top- she has not quite figured out how to get those yet)

Happy New Year's!

Duck Pond

Can you believe that Christmas is in 3 days? That is so crazy. Things are a little odd this year because we are not traveling out of town for the holidays. Our families are coming to see us. I am so thrilled to get to wake up on Christmas morning in our house, but still it just does not feel quite right without all the hustle and bustle of bouncing from house to house across the state of Texas.



Anyways, over this past weekend we were actually able to spend some family time together because I did not have orders to work on. So, since the weather was not too cold, we went and had a picnic at the duck pond. Emerson thouroughly enjoyed it. There was a lot of Oooooing and laughing on her part. Especially at the geese, but not if they got too close.




For those of you that are keeping tabs on our stubborn child, we are now on day 14 of no milk. Awesome! Seriously, how long can this go on? So, I am putting in another call to the pediatrician today to see if they have any advice. What does mommy want for Christmas? For her sweet little girl to happily drink milk from a sippy cup or any cup for that matter. Ah, to dream.




So here a couple pics from the duck pond.



Merry Christmas!

My weekend in numbers

24- The number of hours that I worked on etsy orders this weekend

16- The number of packages that I took to the post office yesterday

15- The number of bibs completed

12- The number of onesies or shirts completed

10- The number of blankets (all personalized) completed

9- The number of burp cloths completed

3- The number of trips to Joann Fabrics

2- The number of tutus and number of times I had a bobbin explode

1- The number of times my needle broke



All of this plus countless interrupptions equals a crazy weekend of sewing. It seriously is a Christmas miracle that all the orders are finished. I have a couple more to do in the next week that are not needed until January, but I am desperate to get everything out the door so I can have a much needed break.


What am I going to do with all my free time? Oh, I have big plans. I have all these new ideas for the shop plus things I want to make for Emerson and friends...Oh, and did I mention that I actually want to enjoy Christmas with my family?



Here is one more number for you: 8- This is the number of days that Emerson has gone refusing to drink milk out of a cup. I am not giving in this time. The doctor said it could be a couple weeks, so I am sticking it out. This ordeal is teaching me a lot about how Emerson gets her stubbornness from her mommy. Someone has to win though!



Here are some cute pics that Steve took this weekend at the park with Emy.

Help, we are bored.

Okay mommas, I need some help here. Emy and I are in a playtime funk. We (she) does the same thing everyday. She is in the phase where she is learning so much and loves to try new things, but this is not my forte. I feel like I am not fully engaging her or taking advantage of this learning phase. I am not educationally saavy and have no creative ideas. I know that Emy does not need new (different) toys to play with, I just need ideas of things to do with her that are age appropriate.

So mommas, this is where you come in. I would love any ideas of free or cheap games, outings, groups and activities that Emy and I can do together. Or if any of you have any books or articles that give good suggestions, I will take that too.

Here are some new pics.

Thanksgiving at my brother's house. Emy is not so sure about me holding the new baby.

Trying to get a good pic in front of the tree

Posing with Santa and Mrs. Claus

Snack time in front of the tree

And, last but not least, a big Congratulations to Amy and Cory on the birth of sweet Hogan. (You can see him on their blog.) He was born on Friday and it the cutest most precious baby and Amy and Cory are going to make wonderful parents.

Yes, we are still alive

So sorry for the lack of posts lately. We are all well and good. My little business has exploded and I can barely keep up...in a good way. Anyways, I have been using every spare second to get orders finished before we leave town on Tuesday. Of course, I will still be coming home to a pile of orders to fill, but I have to take a break somewhere, right?

Anyways, Emerson and Steve went to San Antonio this weekend to visit the grandparents. I stayed here...to work...all day and night. So, Steve and Emy flew Southwest to get there. It seemed easy enough. A quick 55 minute flight down and back. We had the flight time right so that it was in between nap times, meal times, etc.

As my friend Amy said, things don't always turn out the way you had planned. So, I dropped Steve and Emy off at the airport Friday night at 5:15pm to catch a 6:30pm flight. This would be perfect since they would arrive in SA at 7:30 and get home just in time for a slightly late bath and bedtime. Well, my phone rang at 6:20, not to tell me that they were boarding, but to tell me that the flight was delayed an hour. Uh oh....

When my phone rang at 7:20, it was not to tell me that they were boarding, but that the flight was delayed ANOTHER hour. Oh man, at this point I was really feeling for Steve. You could just hear it in his voice, he was not happy and his patience had run out. The only good thing is that Emerson had not had a breakdown...yet.

The finally got to his parents house and put Emerson to bed at 11:00 p.m.! That is just crazy. The craziest part is that apparently Emy did just great. Wow. I am sure that if I would have been there things would not have gone so smoothly. She gives me a lot of flack, but not daddy.

So, needless to say, Steve is a saint...For dealing with the airport drama and taking care of our angel all weekend so that I could get some work done.

So, here are some pics from the last couple weeks. Sorry for the delays.

Trying unsuccessfully to take a Christmas picture.

Big girl pushing her baby stroller

"Emy, Where is your ear?"

Look at me!

Snack time outside

Hi, Mom!

Emerson has a cousin!

And I am an Aunt!!! Yippee




Janee Lee was born yesterday at 3:22 p.m. weighing 7 lbs even and she is 20 inches long. My brother and Kristin are so happy and doing great. I absolutely cannot wait to meet this precious thing next week!

Congratulations you two! She is just perfect and you will be wonderful parents.

Emerson's new tricks

Emerson is learning a ton right now and picking things up very quickly. Here is a run down of her hew tricks:

-Nodding her head in the "yes" motion instead of just the "no" motion
-Making the "what?" motion with her hands and at the appropriate time. Imagine "Emerson, where is your baby?" and her response being the "what?" motion with her hands out to the side palms up...too cute
-Jazz hands- Emy has always been a dancing queen- everywhere we go she picks up the background music and starts swaying and bopping. Now she does this in addition to jazz hands- When we were in Walmart last week she picked up on the Christmas tunes and started rocking out to the music with jazz hands and all. I cannot tell you how many people she was performing for because down every aisle people would laugh at her in all her cuteness.
-Pointing at the correct stuff- "Emy where is your baby?" and she points to baby, "Where is Elmo?" and she points to Elmo, "Where is your ear?" and she points to ear. Also cute and impressive (at least to us)
-Winking- if you give her a dramatic wink, she scrunches up her nose and blinks slowly with both eyes and then looks at you like, "Did I do it?"---It is seriously adorable
-Walking behind her push toys- She has four different push toys and LOVES to walk across the room behind them. Seriously, she squeals the entire time and when she is finished she looks at you and starts clapping profusely. She gets so proud of herself.

It is amazing to me that all of this has developed in the past two weeks! Watching it has been so fun. We have laughed around here more in the past couple weeks than I can ever remember.

I don't think I will ever understand childrens sleep

As many of you know I have read a TON on infant and toddler sleep due to the issues that we had with Emerson early on. Well, once we got everything figured out around month 4 things have been pretty perfect ever since. Emerson would take a 2 hour morning nap in her crib in the morning and another one in the afternoon at exactly the same time. This happened for 8 months straight-Awesome!

Well, I knew that it was coming--the natural changing of the schedule. I knew the morning nap would shorten or go first. Well, it has been happening. Emerson has been waking at 6:00 am instead of 7:30 am for the past 3 weeks. So, I took that as a sign that she was getting too much daytime sleep and we needed to mix things up.

Without wanting to mess things up too bad I decided to just shorten the morning nap by 30 minutes first and see what happened. So, about a week ago, I started waking her after 1 1/2 hours and keeping her up until her regular afternoon nap time. She made it okay, but didn't sleep a wink longer in the morning. Dang! Is she ready to drop the morning all together? No, I hope not because I am not ready for that.

Well, on Monday we were coming home from running errands in the afternoon and she was passed out in the carseat- this is really unusual. It was 1:30- 30 minutes before her afternoon nap was supposed to begin. "Oh well", I thought. I would just wake her up at home, play a little bit or have a snack and then put her to bed at the regular time. Nope. She literally did not budge getting her out of the car or coming inside. So, I put her to bed early. She was so tired which is not like her. I thought she might be getting sick, so I decided to let her sleep longer. She slept for 2 1/2 hours that afternoon.

She was extra pleasant in the evening-literally, this is not sarcasm, and guess what???? She slept until 7:15 the next morning and I had to wake her up!!! Praise the Lord. A random occurence? Nope, she did it again yesterday.

Now, according to books and stuff this makes sense, but logically it does not. She is getting the same amount of daytime sleep that she was getting before, just in a different order. 4 hours before in 2- 2 hour increments. Now 4 hours in a 1 1/2 hour and 2 1/2 hour increment. Whatever. If it works, it works. I doesn't have to make sense just as long as it works.

Random Pics from this week

Well, Emerson's week has been better than the last, but things are still a little rough. A couple of her new teeth have broken through, but there are still more coming. It looks like there are two more coming and possibly the year molars.- Yea.

We are trying to adjust naptimes too. I am trying to work on shortening her morning nap so that she sleeps longer at night. (She has been waking at 6 instead of 7:30 for the past 2 weeks) So, far, she is adjusting to the change during the day okay but is not sleeping later in the morning.

She is now on whole milk and finally made it through that transition...the catch is that it is in the bottle. When we thought she was sick last week we gave it back to her as a comfort and to keep her hydrated. Little does she know that she is going to lose it again. My cousin gave me some great advice to skip the sippy all together and go straight to toddler cups with straws. Emerson LOVES to drink from big girl cups with straws, so I thought this would definitely work. WRONG. Any other advice?

Hope everyone had a great week.

Not so happy Halloween

Due to all the information discussed in the previous post, Emerson's Halloween was not that great. Her day started out okay and she was in a good mood and bad mood kind of on-and-off all day.

You can see from the pictures in her costume that were in the evening, that she just does not look like herself. Her face is kind of wimpy and sad....but still precious in her costume.

Life as a one-year-old...

...Is not fun. Poor Emerson, since her wonderful birthday, things have gone down hill fast. Her appointment Monday brought 5 shots- two of which were live viruses (chicken pox and the flu). So, due to the shots, she is not feeling well. To make matters worse, mean mommy is still not giving her any milk or a bottle. She is still very angry about this. Then to make matters horrific, she is cutting THREE teeth at the same time. They are all on the top and she is miserable. My normally happy and easy going baby is angry, fussy, clingy and just overall miserable. Life at our house has definitely been better.


Anyways, here are some of the great pics from Saturday. Our friend, Amber, was hired to be the official photographer. I am so glad that we did this because looking back, I would not have gotten any pictures because there was so much to do. They turned out great!

We took some family pics. Eventhough no one is looking at the camera, I thought this was sweet.

Not sure about all these people yet.

Playing with sweet Jaylee.

Yummy cupcakes.

Sticking close to mommy.

Happy Birthday Emerson!

Yummy frosting!

This is great!