Is She a toddler!?

This week Emily officially moved to the toddler room at daycare. Because of the influx of babies they are moving her a couple of months early. She loves being with the toddlers. They have fun toys to climb on and read a lot of books. She gets to go outside everyday and plays with her little toddler friends. The older ones in the class are already excited when "Emmy" shows up in the mornings.

I am amazed at how well Emily gets around. She isn't quite walking but she does "cruise" around very easily. She has even figured out how to steady herself with one arm on the walls in our house. Her favorite activity is pulling herself up on something, taking a few steps, kneeling down, and then doing it all over again. If Emily had her way she would be outside running around with the other kids in the neighborhood. She likes to believe that she is older than she is.

I can't believe my little baby is not a baby anymore. She is definitely moving into toddlerhood. We both love seeing her grow and change every day. It is fun to see a light bulb come on when she figures out that the cupboard doors don't only open but they close too. Emily is a true blessing in our lives. I am excited for the upcoming stages as a mommy of a toddler!

My new favorite place to pull up on. Mommy doesn't like it.

Mother's Day with Mama and Nana

Check out the 2 new top teeth!

Playing under Auntie Beth's piano

Reading with Daddy

Easter Sickness

Emily's first Easter will not be forgotten. We were hosting my mom, Kevin's parents, and grandma. First off when we got home from church we found a lake in our kitchen. Turns out some of the pipes were backed up which made the dishwasher emptied all of the water on our floor. Also Em had been spiking fevers since Friday. I had called the nurse on Sunday assuming it was another ear infection. They told us to wait until Monday since her fevers weren't that high. We have her some ibuprofen and she was a trooper on Easter. After some initial clean up we were able to sit down and have a nice dinner. Then Kevin and his dad spent the remainder of the day declogging the kitchen pipes.

I took Emily in on Monday and discovered that she had the coxsackie virus. This virus is related to hand, foot, and mouth disease--a common, not serious childhood illness. The doctor said that while she didn't have the full blown virus she was probably feeling pretty miserable. Plus since it is a virus there is nothing you can really do but wait it out. So we started our ibuprofen regiment and waited for the best. On Tuesday I still felt like something wasn't quite right with her. So I ended up taking her back in to see the doctor. This time they verified that she did indeed have an ear infection. Turns out that ears can change quite quickly and we were too early on Monday to catch it. Now we are doing pretty good. I think that virus has run its course and we are 2 days into our antibiotics. Emily is slowly back to her normal old self. Needless to say we won't forget her first Easter any time soon. Hopefully there are healthier and sunny days in our future.
 


Celebrating Great Grandma's 88th birthday on Palm Sunday

Easter bunny from Great Grandma



         

 No pictures in her Easter dress this year.





Feeling much better



Mama

Emily started making repetitive noises about a month and a half ago. She would say dadadada while we changed her diaper and crawl around saying mamamamama. Last week while she was walking along the couch holding on for dear life and very discriminate "Mama!" distress call came from her. She waiting and after I didn't say anything she said it again. Since then Mama has become her favorite word. While she tries to climb up my legs when I am cutting up her dinner...mama,  mama. When she is overtired and goes down for a nap she screams Mama. It appears that she only likes to use her first word when she is sad or in need of something but I will take it! We are looking forward to her discovering more and more words.

Baby showers and Birthdays Oh My!

The weekend of April 8,9, and 10 we had an extremely busy weekend planned. On Friday night we enjoyed a lovely "family" dinner with our good friends the Martin's. Their daughter is almost a year older than Emily and they have so much fun playing together. Plus Taetam has introduced Emily into Chugginton. It is a great show for toddlers.

Then on Saturday Emily and I were off on a road trip to Port Washington to help shower my cousin Mandy with baby goodness. She is due with her first bundle in June. Emily had a great time charming the family with her smiles and laughter. She tried to keep up with the big kids--which is difficult when you can't walk and they can. She loves other kids. She gets so excited and just wants to play!! The nice thing was my cousin Ryan's wife Amanda was in town from California with her son Lucas who is 3 months younger than Emily. The two of them spent some time playing with each other. It is going to be so great to watch them grow up together!

After spending the night at Grandma and Grampa Mixdorf's house, Emily and I continued our road trip to Germantown. It was our niece (Em's cousin) Brielle's 7th birthday party. There are lots of little kids on that side of the family (most of them girls) and it is so cute to watch them all interact with each other. Em is the youngest but you can tell in a year or so those girls will have a great time running around and playing with each other.

We feel so blessed to have the family we do. It is great that Emily has so many fun people to play with and so many people out there who love her.

Playing with Lucas, Great Grandma, and Grandma.

Having fun with Rylie and the activity seat. I think Rylie was looking for some buckels!

Sitting with Great Grandma Wille after a long day. Great Grandma was doing her best to calm Em down.

Growing Up

Emily is almost 9 months. Which I find very hard to believe. She is definitely leaving her babyhood as quickly as possible. She is crawling all over the place investigating our house. She likes to kneel and play with her toys. She is even pulling her self up on some of the furniture. She is itching to walk. It is like she almost can't move fast enough. It is fun to watch.

Also Emily loves food. Thanks to the wonderful daycare staff at Tanya's she has been exposed to all sorts of great finger foods. The ones she absolutely loves are soy butter and jelly sandwiches (its a peanut free environment so the soy is like peanut butter.) and pasta with Alfredo sauce. She will eat just about anything put in front of her as long as everything is mixed together. If you serve her things separately she won't touch them. Em is also babbling away these days. She grunts in excitement especially at other kids and shrieks with delight while playing with her toys. She has even started to say mama and dada. I don't count these as first words quite yet because I don't think she realizes that we are mama and dada. She is a ball of energy who doesn't always want to stop to nap. I just love this stage!!

Practicing standing on my own at my activity table!

Reaching for my toys

Playing with my blocks

Too cute

My big eater

Yummy!

Bathtime is becomong a nightly ritual since I put all of my food in my hair!

Having fun playing with Dada

Infections

After picking Emily up from daycare on Thursday it was clear that she was not feeling well. Firstly when I got to daycare she was in the swing. The swing was only our friend for about 3 weeks when she was 2 months old. Once I brought her home I decided to call the nurse. To make a long story short I took her in on Friday, ear infection and probably a sinus infection. Our first round of antibiotics. Man do those things work fast. Thank goodness because we were in Grafton over the weekend to help Beth celebrate her 40th. Emily is back to her normal self. A normal self I haven't seen in at least 4 weeks. It is so great to have my happy smiley baby back.

Our sick little babe

Stomach Virus and Teething

We have just ended our second round with the stomach bug. Frankly I hope we never have to deal with it again. Emily seems to recover very very slowly from stomach viruses. Meaning she continues to get sick for several days after initially being sick. So far we have made it a whole day and hopefully are on the upswing.

In addition to being sick Emily is still teething. A process one of my girlfriends said never ends. She has two teeth on the bottom and the top ones are slowly descending. It seems that my daughter finds relief from teething pain by chewing on our coffee table. I have found several bite marks along the bottom rung. We have put blankets and pillows around the bottom of the coffee table to try and make her stop. However she always manages to dig past these. Em is not a fan of any of the traditional teething relief methods. She hates cold teething rings from the fridge and doesn't like chewing on a washcloth. Oh well I guess we will just have to live with the bite marks on our tables.

Other than that Emily's 7th month has been uneventful. We have spent a lot of time at home and are looking forward to the warmer weather and influx of family gatherings that are coming up. We are also having fun making summer plans. .



Practicing sitting on our own



She loves smiling. Especially when Mommy brings out the camera!