Big News

***This giveaway is now closed. Thank you for your participation.**

Thanks to much encouragement from all of you, I have opened my own Etsy shop. It has taken me weeks to prepare for, but it is finally ready. I still have several items to finish up, so check back often for new items.

You have all been so supportive already, so please do not feel obligated to buy anything. However, I would love it if you could at least take a look around and help me spread the news to anyone looking for baby gifts.




So, in honor of my grand opening, I am going to do a giveaway. I could not decide on a set item, and since most of the pieces are personalized I thought it would be better to giveaway a gift certificate to my shop. So, the winner of the giveaway will get $25 to spend in my shop any way that they want PLUS free shipping on their order!

There are 3 ways to get entered into the giveaway. You can choose to do any of them for 1 entry or all three for 3 entries. Here is how you can be included in the fun:

1. Visit Noodles&Milk and look around and choose a favorite piece. Leave a comment on this blog with what your favorite item is and your contact information. This will get you one entry into the drawing.
2. Mention and link Noodles & Milk in a post on your own blog. Leave me a comment here with your name, your blog and the fact that you linked it and this will earn you a second entry into the drawing.
3. Get a friend to post a link to Noodles & Milk on their blog and you can earn a 3rd entry into the contest. (Plus an entry for your friend). Make sure to leave me a comment here with your name, your friends name and your friends blog.
4. Once again, you must leave me your contact information to be considered eligible.

All the entries will be included in the random drawing. The giveaway will be open until next Friday, October 3 at 2:00 pm central time. The winner will be announced next Friday afternoon. Good Luck!

Seperation Confusion

I think Emerson is a little confused about how seperation anxiety is supposed to work. She still screams in the nursery, however yesterday in music class she IGNORED me.

Imagine this, the class has 4 other mommies, 2 teachers and 5 other children. We sat in a circle the entire time and played instruments and sang songs. All the other children wandered around at some point, but for the most part they played with their mommies. Not Emerson, she played with every other mommy and child and straight-up ignored me. She literally sat in the middle of the circle the entire time. I kept picking her back up and dragging her over to me and she would instantly crawl away toward someone else. She never even so much as looked back to see if I was there. I could have left and she would not have noticed. Keep in mind that she has only been to that class 3 times and she has been to the nursery tons of times. What the heck?

On another note, her passionate preference of the daddy is over for now. She will only play with him if I am in the room. If I leave the room she screams like he is a stranger. It is kind of funny except when I was on the recieving end of it over the past couple months. Now, it is all mommy all the time, except in music class.

Emerson's Dedication

Emerson was dedicated this past Saturday. Our family was scheduled to come in on Thursday and Friday to celebrate the weekend. Due to Hurricane Ike, my family who lives in Houston, came in Wednesday since they were still without power. It was great to get to spend some extended time with my family without worrying about work or getting stuff done.

The dedication was Saturday afternoon and then we had everyone over to our house afterwards to celebrate and have cake. It was a great time with family and friends. Eventhough Emerson is still in the middle of the seperation anxiety stuff, having an extended time with so many different people helped.

By Sunday she was letting everyone hold her and was actually preferring my brother to anyone. He finally had to force her to come to me so that they could leave. Emy was truly sad to see everyone go. She had such a large audience for 4 days and then it was back to boring old mom and dad. She shared her anger with us and proceeded to get 2 time outs Sunday afternoon. Lovely.

Here are the pics from last week and this past weekend.

So happy because she has the cats tail in her hand.

Happy swing timeHanging out with Mimi
Snuggling with daddyThe whole family at the church

Family portrait
Eyeing the cake
Hayden and Emy both wanted the same water bottle

We are truly blessed

Read this story and then count your blessings. You can read more about the family here. Can you even imagine?

We are so blessed with so many things. It is so easy to take for granted all the little blessings that we have and experience everyday.

Please pray for this family and as you do, make sure to sing the Lord's praises for all the ways that He has blessed your family.

PS- Sorry Beth for copying your post. I just could not help but pass this story on further.

Sassy Emerson

Ya'll, it is becoming evident that while Emerson is absolutely precious and has a wonderful personality, she also has an attitude. I know that a lot of it is due to the inability to communicate, however I need some help from all you mommy-readers out there.

First, an example of the problem. Keep in mind, we have "attitude" moments a couple times a day. I will be carrying Emerson through the house, talking to her and something happens that she does not like (ex: I say something she disagrees with, or I just picked her up from playing with toys, etc)...and she HITS me. No, not a playful "pat-the-mommy" game hit, but a full on painful hit that is accompanied by an angry grunt and mean face...almost like a stare-down. Does that make sense to anyone?

So, I know I can't lecture her or stick her in time out, but is there any discipline that I can do in these situations at her young age (10 1/2 months) to help her break these attitude habits, or at least let her know that they are not okay? I feel like we need to nip these moments in the bud....

Okay mommies, I would love advice, articles, books, stories, anything....

Pictures Pictures

First of all, here is our week.

Secondly, we had a friend of a friend, Amber, come over to the house to take some pictures of Emerson. It was the end of the day and Emerson had not slept as much at naptime, so I was not really sure if anything good would come from the session...I was certainly wrong. These are some of my favorites.

Have a great weekend and stay dry and safe.

Our weekend

Emerson went to her first TCU football game (looking pretty cute I might add). Go frogs!

Hanging out with Davis at the coolest part of the tailgate.

Watching the game with Daddy.I filled lots and lots of orders:) Yea- keep them coming!

Packed and ready to go to the post office.

This week

First time on the swing- so much fun

Wwwweeeeeee!

So big
Crawling after her favorite pink ball
So excited to pat the table
Checking to make sure she got everything

One of this weeks creations: G is for giraffe

The entire set-- sorry it is sideways

Have a great weekend!

Two weeks

It has been two weeks since I announced that Emerson is crawling and I can now officially say that she is cruising too. She is much faster at crawling with two weeks of practic behind her and her favorite thing to do is to crawl over to the coffee table, pull herself up and start cruising around the table. She stops occassionally to dance a little and then moves on.

It is amazing how fast she is changing right now. She is understanding more and more too. Yesterday I had to tell her to stop playing with several things and she looked at me and stopped...only to try again later and then we went back and forth. She definitely understood me though.

So, at this rate, maybe she will be walking in another 2 weeks. Ha! Yeah right....She is not that fast.

Holiday weekend- Not so much of a holiday

I came home from work Saturday afternoon and Steve tells me, "bad news, Emy woke up from her nap after only 40 minutes. She was freaking out and would not let me put her down." I think, no problem, some days are just different. WRONG.

We put Emy to bed that night and after about 30 minutes she is screaming hysterically. I got in there to comfort her and the second I pick her up she is falling asleep on me. So, I put her back down. 20 minutes later, same thing....This goes on a few times until I realize that something is wrong. Her cry has turned to the painful shril and I pick-up on the fact that she won't sleep laying down.

Saturday night was like the old days in our house. Emerson slept in bed with mommy holding her in an upright position. I tried putting her upright on a pillow next to me, but that was not good enough. She was so clingy and had to be held- this is so unusual for our very independent daughter. Despite being held and upright, Emy had several painful breakdowns in the night. I seriously contemplated going to the ER at 4am.

Sunday morning we went to a walk-in clinic. I was prepared to hear that she had her first ear infection. Wrong again. It is an upper resp. infection. So, we got some antibiotics, cough medicine and of course good old tylenol. She is doing much better, but now has a nasty cough and is still a little clingy. So much for a restful weekend.