New Kitchen

Here is our new and old kitchen and dining room! It used to be 2 rooms (1 white, 1 red) now it is 1 big room that we love!

Enjoy looking!

Happy Thanksgiving

Watching a few minutes of the Macy's Parade

Sitting in the rocking chair

Getting the table ready for the big meal!

On the move!

The table is set

Greg and Emily starting the feast

I'm getting ready to eat

Emily likes it!

The fork is too slow, moving on to fingers!

Yummy stuffing!

We had a great Thanksgiving! We were planning on meeting my side of the family in St. Louis for the holiday, but due to very expensive plane tickets when we tried to book in September, we opted to stay home instead. It ended up working out perfectly since we were given the go ahead to move back into our kitchen on Wednesday afternoon. Since the weather was so nice on Thursday, we actually spent a good part of the day doing yard work and raking up leaves! We did get some things moved in and had enough serving pieces for our meal. We ordered the meal from Boston Market since the idea of cooking and moving back into the kitchen all in one day was a bit too much to fathom. We added a few of our own touches, but had a really good meal from there. We'll cook our own Thanksgiving Dinner next weekend with our usual foods.

Emily loved the food and ate really well. We even avoided any of the tantrums that we've been seeing a bit more frequently at dinner time. They usually revolve around something that she wants that she doesn't have or something that she has that she most definitely does not want! And every now and then there is no rhyme or reason that we can tell for why she is upset.

In the morning we let Emily watch a little bit of the Macy's Parade, but she really wasn't interested, except when she caught a glimpse of Elmo on the tv. That's our girl, she'd rather play than watch tv.

We thoroughly enjoyed our first meal in our new kitchen. What a difference it makes in the house.

Ahoy Matey

Emily had her eye doctor appointment on Monday to check for a suspected "lazy eye." We were hoping that it was fake, her pediatrician had suspected that it was, but unfortunately it is the real deal. Her right eye crosses when she is focusing in front of her. The first treatment to try is patching the good eye to strengthen the muscles on the lazy one. The doctor checked her vision and her vision is good, but the right eye is weak. We don't know if the right eye was weak and then became "lazy" or if it is lazy and then became weak. Her eyes haven't always crossed. Right now she has to wear a patch for 4-6 hours a day and we go back in about a month for a recheck. There is a surgical option that is fairly common and the doctor said he often has to do it. We're hoping that since Emily is so young, we'll be able to get her on track without surgery. Her sitter has been great about working with us and the patch. Once we get it on (she doesn't like that part), she is fine and plays normally. The first day, she seemed to have a tough time seeing right in front of her, but now she is doing great (this was the second full day).

The patches are cute! In the pictures, Emily was wearing a ladybug patch. Yesterday she had a yellow one with little stick figures on it. We have told her that she is like a pirate and have mentioned the pirate from the Wiggles. Tonight when we asked her what pirates wear, she pointed to the eye that we cover. She can also tell us where we put the patch.

In other non-eye news, her vocabulary has increased a lot recently, and it was pretty big to start with! She has gotten clearer with her 2 word phrases in the last few days. This morning during breakfast she said "cracker please." She also has been saying "my ____". Often filled in with some body part (my legs, my eyes). She's been saying multi word phrases for awhile, but we're really understanding them now!

Happy Halloween

We had a lot of fun on Halloween. The Friday before, I took Emily to a little Halloween party at the place where she and I had done a class this summer. She enjoyed seeing the other kids and did a craft and was part of the costume parade. I don't think she really got most of what we were doing, but she enjoyed it, at least!

On Halloween Day, we got home around 4 from school and got Emily all ready for Halloween. She had been carrying her plastic pumpkin around the house for several days so she was used to that. When we took her to the first house, she wasn't quite sure what to do. We showed her how to pick the candy and drop it in her pumpkin. By the time we got to the next house, she was an old pro at picking up some candy and dropping it in. She got some animal crackers at one house (what a great idea when you have toddlers coming by!) and tried to chew on the bag the rest of the time that we were out. We only took her to 5 or 6 houses, but that in itself took awhile!

I tried to give Emily a lollypop on Thursday after we got home, but she wasn't so sure about it. How funny. I guess she'll figure out that she likes those before too long.

We also took some video, I'll work on getting that uploaded and online before too long.