Holiday Weekend

We had a great Thanksgiving, we headed up to my parent's house for the weekend. My brother met us there and Josh's parents made the trek from Groveland to spend Thanksgiving with us. We ate, drank, laughed and played with Emmy. She is pulling herself up on everything now! We were playing on the floor one day and she stood on her own. Not after holding onto something, no by herself. She somehow went from kneeling to standing on her own and stood there for almost 10 seconds! We were all in such shock, including her, we all just froze. It was the strangest thing to see her vertical, I don't think I am ready... I am pretty sure that was a freak trick because she has not been even close to doing it again, but I guess we'll see. She is freakishly flexible and has a crazy center of gravity. I think she just may be a gymnast...

Other fun events of the weekend:

Can you believe we are all looking at the camera? Marc's friend took this first try. Now that is what I call a photographer!



Riding her new pony from Grandpa and Grandma. What a lucky girl!



Sharing her toys with her Uncle Marc



Thanksgiving Dinner. She absolutely loves her Cheerios and anything she can put in her mouth herself. This girl is an eater!



Rocking in the rocking chair that my mom, my uncles, cousins, me and my siblings have all sat it. Pretty cool.



Hanging with Nannie. Emmy LOVES my mom. Every time my mom looks at her she squeals, it is the funniest thing ever and I know my mom just loves it :)




The highlight, sitting on Santa's knee

Not too sure about this guy.....



Nope, I don't like him at all!

9 months old

Where have the past 9 months gone?! Everyone told me that my baby would grow up fast but I had no idea she would grow and change so quickly. I try and enjoy every stage as much as I can because I know it is just a matter of time before she will be on to the next. Right now she is crawling everywhere. She is quick! And she talks CONSTANTLY everywhere she goes and everything she does, she is mumbling something. I am trying to teach her I am "mama" not "dada". She has mastered standing at her bumbo chair, it is all she wants to do. She is attempting to pull herself up to the coffee table but hasn't quite gotten there yet. She loves to eat! She is not very interested in milk theses days so it is a struggle to get her to drink even 15 ounces, but she loves food. Prunes, peas, you name it she will eat it. I have started to give her finger foods and it occupies her for a while. She so delicately picks up each piece and puts it in her mouth. She is great at illusions because you'd swear she got every bite in her mouth until you pick her up and half of it is in her highchair. One of her favorite things is the bath, she loves it. Splashes away. She even dunks her face in the water, I think we have a swimmer on our hands :)

Personally, I absolutely love being a mom. I know it was my calling. I could spend every waking moment with her, teaching her things and watching her grow. It kills me to be away from her during the day but I know she is in great hands at daycare. She is very happy there with her little friends and the teachers are awesome. Not to pat my own self on the back, but sometimes I am amazed at what I can do in a day. Despite the fact I am working full time, I am still nursing full time, making all her baby food, putting her to bed, getting up with her in the night and in the morning and I have even been making her a Christmas stocking. I have been working on this damn thing every night for weeks now. Sewing every last sequin and bead. Oh, don't worry you will see many pictures of it when I am done! I am tired and overwhelmed at times but I look at that sweet smiling face and it melts my heart. She is worth it all and more. I am so very lucky to have a lifetime of memories to come with my little monkey. Oh the fun things we are going to do.....

She doesn't snuggle often so I had to capture this moment



Concentrating on her cheerios



Loving her prunes



Packing with her around has been interesting...

3 Day Breast Cancer Walk

The 3 Day, 60 mile Breast Cancer walk is held in a number of cities throughout the year. It is held in San Diego every November and the headquarters happens to be set-up at the bay right in front of our house. Every year we walk down and check out it out. It is truly amazing watching all of the people who have committed to walking 60 miles to raise money for breast cancer awareness. This year they raised 9 million in San Diego alone. I have friends who have done it multiple years and I guess there are such a variety of people who participate. Men, women, young, old, people who have lost loved ones and those who have been diagnosed or fought it themselves. The amount of people that come out and support them is also a sight to see. People dress up and decorate their cars with pink, bras, fake boobs, etc. Every year I tell Josh I want to do it and be a part of such an amazing cause. I don't know when but one of these years I am going to walk in it. I think I may have to skip the camping part, I can't imagine sleeping in a tent after walking 20 miles in a day!

We dressed Emmy up in her pink sweatsuit for the occasion, she was a hit :)



These pictures do not do the scene justice. There are pink tents set-up everywhere and tons of people walking and cheering them on.

Name

My full name is Jennifer but I can't ever remember a time my parents called me that, unless I was in real trouble! Growing up everyone called me "Jenny" pretty much until I left for college. I thought it sounded too cute and young so I introduced myself to everyone as "Jen". So I guess you can say I changed my identity a little when I turned 18 and moved out of the house. I could never figure out why my parents would name me Jennifer if they had no intention of ever calling me by my full name. Plus, could they have picked a more popular name?! Everywhere I go there are at least a few and it was the most popular name for like 10+ years or something!

I loved the name Emery before I even knew I was having a girl. I don't know how I came up with it but I thought it was unique, without being weird, pretty and is appropriate for a baby and a grown woman. Yes, we got a lot of like "Emery Board" or "Emory University" but that did not change my mind, I thought and still do think it is beautiful. Fast forward 9 months and I have again followed in my parents footsteps, almost exactly. I call her Emmy. She has such a fun little personality Emmy suits her perfectly right now. I guess that is what my parents were thinking with Jenny (because I must have been as cute right?!). On occasion I call her Emery but mostly just Emmy or monkey. So, after all those years wondering why may parents would name me a name they shortened almost immediately, I did the same thing. My mom's response was just wait until she comes home and asks you to call her "Em"!

Our sweet, full of personality, little Emmy

Talent

I knew Emmy was talented but I had no idea exactly what she was capable of! Josh's dancing skills and ability to pick up choreography was also a big surprise :)

Video

I know I already posted a video of Emmy standing but this was too cute not to share. As you can tell, this is her new favorite thing to do. She crawls over to the bumbo chair everyday now and just stands there. Oh and she loves to point. Now am I crazy or does she not say "Yeah Yeah Dada" about 16 seconds in!

Headband

Since Emmy has nowhere near enough hair to put barretts in we decided to put on one of her headbands. Instead of it making her look feminine, Josh pointed out that she looked more like LeBron James. Ha!

"The Twitch"

Emmy really did inherit all her traits from Josh including his twitch. Josh twitches when he sleeps and it is not just a subtle twitch, he kicks, elbows and almost jumps in the air he twitches so bad. I have woken many a night to an elbow or a knee or a massive jolt. I am not sure if it is because she is moving around so much more now, or just because she is getting older, but Emmy has started to twitch. So is now extremely stubborn when it comes to bed time so it has been somewhat of a struggle getting her to sleep. She has also been waking up in the middle of the night and I can't figure out why. Tonight I finally got her to fall asleep in my lap after nursing when she twitched... She woke up crying immediately! I was able to settle her quickly but it made me realize why she has been waking up - that damn twitch!

I am Standing!

For someone who only wanted to sit until 2 weeks ago, Emmy is moving and a shaking now! She started pulling herself to standing using her Bumbo Chair last night and would not stop. She didn't want me to hold it either, little miss independent already.

Advice?

Yes, I am using my blog to solicit advice and probably gross out a few people along the way. Emery is having MAJOR poop problems (the situation is so serious it warrants me referring to her by her full name). She has been pooping little rocks for 2 weeks now. I mean if I threw them against the window it would break. I have tried everything - warm baths, prune/pear juice, prunes, suppository, etc, and nothing has worked. As someone who is extremely interested in nutrition and how food works in the body, I am stumped. She is dehydrated and needs liquid but she plays with cups, sippie cups and water bottles more than she drinks from them. She learned the "motor boat" sound which she does constantly now! I swear she is loosing so much syliva which isn't helping, she looked like she was foaming at the mouth when I got her home today. She had a very rough day today which prompted this post. Lets just say I am very appreciative of one of her Baldwin teachers going above and beyond the call of duty with a jar of vaseline today. That is all I am going to say about that. So, if anyone has any other advice, please let me know!

Kitchen Floor

All she needs is a sponge and she can clean the kitchen floor! As you can tell by the tone of her voice, she takes her job very seriously.

Having fun with Daddy

On the move!

It is amazing how good Emmy has become at crawling in a weeks time. She is starting to stand up on her legs and do the baby "downward dog". Her favorite thing to crawl to is the wall heater which she is not allowed to play with for obvious reasons. It is a good thing we are moving to house with central heat because clearly the word "no" is not yet in her vocabulary...

What a way to start the day

Emmy has been waking up in the middle of the night lately so I have been especially tired in the morning. This morning I was out of bed at 6:30am and was so tired. I could barely keep my eyes open while I was nursing her and was dreaming of a cup of coffee. Yes, I am breastfeeding and drinking coffee. As a full time mom and employee it is a must! I drink a cup after I feed her in the morning so I figure the caffeine is gone once i feed her again. Anyway, I got all 8 cups of water and scoops of coffee into the maker with her on my hip. Thankfully I had just enough coffee for this morning. As I was turning it on she pulled it over so it all poured out all over the counter, oven, in the drawer and on the floor. NOTHING is worse than cleaning up coffee grinds, especially wet ones. I put her in the highchair to start cleaning up the mess and she wouldn't stop crying so of course I started crying. I don't know if I was more upset about the mess and being so tired, or the fact that now I would't be able to have the cup of coffee I was dreaming about. Josh woke up to quite the scene today!

The rest of the day went pretty smoothly until Emmy peed on me on the way to the bath. If you can believe it I have gone 8 1/2 months without being peed on. I guess today was as good of day as any :)

Aching Muscles

I know I have mentioned it before, but it is worth mentioning again. Tracy Anderson's Post Pregnancy DVD is awesome. I did my monthly stomach workout on Sunday and my stomach hurts so bad I can't cough or laugh. Josh thinks it is hilarious to try and make me laugh and watch me grimace in pain. I keep telling myself if I do it more than once a month it wouldn't hurt so bad but here I am again, every possible muscle in my stomach is killing me!

I also took Emmy to the zoo on Sunday and for those of you who have been to the SD zoo, it is a workout in itself. We had lots of fun. She slept for a while but when she woke up we went to see the monkeys. One happen to be right up against the glass so I took her out and they were nose to nose, staring each other down. She got all excited and starting flapping her arms and "hooting" away, it was too cute. I couldn't hold her and take a picture so I told Josh he has to come next time. Since she liked the monkey so much I wanted to see what else she'd get a kick out of so we visited the ducks and flamingos since the come close to the fence - loved them. Then I decided to take her to the petting area! No, I did not let my 8 month old actually pet the dirty sheep but she got to get up close. They had some weird little ponies too. All and all another great day at the zoo. As we were leaving the people walking past were laughing and pointing at her. She is so damn cute this isn't unusual but when I looked down she was sitting in her new favorite position. She is so flexible it is a little freaky sometimes. I think we may have a gymnast on our hands.

No your eyes are not deceiving you, she is balancing on her butt with her feet in the air!