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.