Emily

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Nursery School Parade

Emily's nursery school had their Halloween Parade for the parents this morning. Emily came out at the back of the class holding one of her teacher's hands. The kids you see walking around in the pictures are the kids in the 2.5 year old class. The teachers were all dressed as ice cream cones and had their work cut out for them wrangling the kids and keeping them all from running straight to their parents! They did several loops around the yard, the first one Emily looked at me, the second one she ran over and gave me a hug, the third one she wouldn't leave my side! I walked her back and left her with her class after they finished that loop! They sang a Halloween song a couple of times. In reality, the 4 teachers sang the song and the kids just stood there. But it was cute! Emily loved the party afterwards and came home rather wound up! Our contribution to the party was ghost plates and Emily brought home lots of goodies after school. The parents did a great job not sending in a ton of candy, so I was quite pleased. Emily got a pumpkin cup and pumpkin straw which she really, really liked. She drank a cup of water out of it when she got home and then had her milk in it for lunchtime. It's certainly fun that she is "into" Halloween this year. We'll take her trick or treating to a few neighborhood houses tomorrow night.









Pumpkin Patch

We took Emily to a pumpkin patch a few weeks ago, but since the camera died, I just got the pictures uploaded to the computer. It was a real pumpkin patch with the pumpkins still attached to the vines, so we thought that was pretty cool. Emily had a tough time walking around it because of the uneven ground and all the vines and growth. We took a hayride out to the pumpkin patch and then when we got back we spent some time looking at the farm animals before going home.




The 2 that we chose!



We took Emily to a Halloween Party at our YMCA this past weekend. They had crafts and games and a spider web maze. Emily thought the maze was really cool, but that is mostly because there were older kids (middle school, I'm guessing) who took her through the maze and lifted her over the web when she didn't crawl under. As long as she was happy! Here are some pictures of Emily playing the games. She didn't actually throw any of the rings or balls, but would put them where they belong. But that is how a 2 year old does it! She liked to say that she was feeding the ghosts!



Friday, October 24, 2008

Dress and Glasses





I had a tough time getting Emily to pose for a decent picture in her new glasses. She made funny faces and kept moving around. She was definitely wound up tonight. At least you get the gist of the glasses. The frame is a lavender color and I think it looks a lot darker in the pictures.

Emily has been really into wearing dresses and jumpers recently, so here is a picture of Emily in the new jumper that she wore yesterday. Grandy got a great deal and sent it a month or so ago, but it was too wintry to wear until now. We have some Halloween window cling ons on the door behind Emily that she likes to play with. She is holding one in the picture.

Apple Picking

On the tractor ride to the apple orchards


Emily likes her apple!



I took Emily apple picking one day several weeks ago. We had gone one other time on a nice quiet day, but needed more apples! We picked a day that worked well for us, but didn't think about schools being out for the day for a holiday so the apple orchard was quite crowded. When we went by ourselves, you could just walk to the orchard, but on busy days, you have to take (and pay) for a tractor ride that takes you further out. Emily thought the tractor ride was pretty cool and enjoyed eating the first apple that we picked the rest of the time that we were there.

I have pumpkin picking pictures from another day, but they are stuck on the memory card of the camera. I have the memory card, but no camera to upload them from. Hopefully the camera comes back from the shop in the next week.

Daddy's Guitar, Cooking, and a new Trike

Helping Daddy play his bass guitar (lots of fun!)



Helping Mommy cook an apple crisp with Nilla Wafers on top
Emily was crushing the Nilla Wafers for me


Figuring out how to ride the tricycle that we got
from her friend Megan who just moved

Bike Riding Time

The Pumpkin Patch Pedal


We did the Pumpkin Patch Pedal again with Emily in September. The ride went well and Emily enjoyed it. We might have to skip it as a family next year since the baby won't be old enough for the trailer. Emily always enjoys the rest stops! This ride starts and ends at a park with a playground that also has a little mini zoo/wildlife area. Emily enjoyed the playground and looking at the animals after the ride which helped make it a special treat.

MS 150 Ride

Greg did the MS 150 bike ride again this year after having taken last year off for it. The weather was a bit questionable and fairly wet on Sunday, day 2 of the ride. Emily and I had a lot of fun the first day, we went to a kids museum and by the time we drove to that day's finish it was time to wait for Greg. We were able to spend the afternoon with Greg and hit the beach in Ocean City, Greg and Emily went in the warm, heated pool, and then get dinner. The second day there was less for Emily and I to do mostly because the weather wasn't great and she was tired from the day before. After walking around for a bit, we got in the car to drive back to that finish which is the same as where Greg started the first day. We went to a mall that I had gone to a different year when Greg did the ride, but they were remodeling a lot of it, so there wasn't anywhere for Emily to have lunch and not much to look at since it was all under construction. We ended up finding lunch, but didn't really do anything fun that day. Here are some pictures:

The Children's Museum
A huge light brite


Pretending to grocery shop (her favorite part)

The beach


The warm pool

An October Update

This will be a written "update" post and hopefully later this weekend I'll get some pictures online. Our computer and camera both broke over a week ago. I had a bunch of pictures that had been uploaded onto the computer, but I couldn't get to them. And still a few that are on the camera card, but not the computer. Both things turned out to be warranty repairs and I have to say that I have been thrilled with the way that Apple handled the repair to our Macbook and so far I have also been pleased with Canon's service on our camera. The camera isn't back yet, so some of the pictures still won't be up. It wasn't a good week with both the camera and computer breaking within a day or 2 of each other!

I have a couple of Emily funnies. This past Saturday I proctored the PSAT at the high school I taught at. Greg got Emily up and they had the morning together. Emily has been wearing her eye patch for 1 hour a day for "maintenance patching." Greg isn't usually around when she wears her patch, but remembered to put it on. He wasn't quite sure which eye it went on so he asked Emily. She likes to try to trick me into putting it on the wrong eye, but I never do. Well, Greg fell for it. She didn't say anything for the hour that she had it on that it was wrong. When I got home, Greg asked me which eye it goes on (he thought it may have been wrong, but wasn't sure). When I said the other eye, Emily started laughing. She loved that she pulled one over on Daddy! She'll tell me that Daddy put it on this eye (pointing) but it really goes on the other eye.

On Tuesday evening I had a haircut. We always go to meet Greg and he takes Emily to "Dinosaur Playground" while I get my hair cut and then we meet for dinner afterwards. When Emily woke up from her nap, I told her I had my haircut and she said "I go to the playground with Daddy!" I said "yes, which playground?" expecting her to say dinosaur (she and Greg made up the name). Instead, she told me "the playground in XXX (the town that the playground is in)." How she knew that is beyond me, it isn't a playground that we go to much except for my haircut days. I guess she must have overheard me talking one day, but she put a lot together to come up with that!

Emily had her eye doctor check up today. Last time we were there, about 2 months ago, we went from using the eye patch for 4 hours a day to maintenance where she only wore the patch for an hour a day. We had planned to be able to get her to read the eye chart a bit better and then have a baseline to go from on her eyes and likely give up the patch or reduce the amount of time. Instead, Emily read the eye chart with both eyes, the big ones with her weaker eye, and the big and a few smaller, but not super small with her stronger eye. As the doctor continued to check her, he and I could both tell that she is favoring the stronger eye. He asked if we had time to dilate her eyes to fully check them. The last time we did that was her first visit which was almost a year ago. After dilating them, he determined that she needs glasses. All young kids have eyes that are farsighted. Emily's are, but there is a discrepancy between her 2 eyes that is significant. A year ago, there was a slight discrepancy, but nothing significant. She is still favoring the strong eye because she sees so much better with it. The glasses should allow her to start using both eyes together and equally.

I made a bunch of phone calls this afternoon during naptime to check on glasses and prices around town. We decided to go with Lenscrafters and got her glasses an hour later. They really wanted us to get 2, one for a backup pair, which probably does make sense, but we didn't do that today. We explained to Emily that she can only take them off when she uses 2 hands, but really shouldn't touch them. We put them on when we got home (around 6:00pm) to show Greg. She wanted to take them off, but we distracted her with Sesame Street and I put my glasses on as well. She also had fun looking in the mirror at them. Within 10-15 minutes she still talked about them, but no longer tried or wanted to take them off. We could really tell that she is seeing so much better with them because she noticed pictures from across the room that she had previously only talked about from close up. She also would tell Greg how many fingers he was holding up from close to far away when she would never do that before. So, to us, she seems to be seeing much better already. At bedtime, we took the glasses off after stories and she commented that she wanted them back on. It is definitely easier for us to have her in glasses since we have been able to already see how much better she can see. We do need to go back tomorrow to get them adjusted, they seem to be slipping down on her nose a little bit. They seemed ok when we left the store, but were loose tonight at home.