Emily: February 2009

3rd Birthday Party

The cake

Corduroy with his party hat on that Emily made

The bear face cookies that the kids decorated

Playing with the parachute - we bounced teddy bears and did ring around the rosy

We had sandwiches cut into bear shapes

Emily had such a happy smile on her face while we sang to her

Yummy!

Present time!

After the party, doing the parachute over baby Annie

We had Emily's birthday party on Saturday with a Corduroy Theme. Everything was about teddy bears or Corduroy. We started by coloring pictures of bears and coloring and putting stickers on party hats for our bears. Then we moved on to decorating bear face shaped cookies with sprinkles, teddy grahams, and raisins. After that, we moved out to the living room and did the "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear touch your nose, turn around, etc." song. We also did bounced the bears on the parachute and did ring around the rosy with the parachute. After that, we moved back to the table and colored on bear sized t-shirts for the bears. Then it was finally on to the food! We had peanut butter and jelly as well as soy nut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into bear shapes. Then it was cake time! Emily loved being sung to and had such a happy look on her face while we sang to her! Once some of the guests had left Emily opened up her presents. She had such a good time.

Scott, Adrianne, and Annie came up from PA for the day and after naptime Emily had fun doing the parachute again with the adults while Annie watched from the floor.

Baby Allie is Here

I don't have any pictures yet, but Jill had her baby about an hour ago at 1:04 pm Central Time. Allie is 7 pounds 14 oz and 19 inches long. Early reports have the new Mommy, Daddy, and baby all doing well. The phone call that I got said she was screaming and crying in the nursery for her initial exam and had lots of dark hair. Emily is excited to have a cousin and Greg and I are now aunt and uncle!

Shoes, books, and toys

Emily decided that my brown shoes look much better with her dress than her brown shoes do...

And, what big feet you have, Miss Emily!

Emily and I chilling on the couch. We had been reading. Emily is wearing her pj's because she had a birthday party to go to in the morning (this was Saturday) and it was a pajama party! Emily got to get dressed out of her jammies that she slept in into these that she could wear shoes with. She thought that was pretty cool and had a great time at the party. She is wearing her stethoscope to check on the baby. It is one of her favorite things to do. She lifts up my shirt, puts the stethoscope on my belly and then tells me that my belly is icky and gets a blanket to clean it up with. At the doctor's office, which she has been to with me multiple times, she knows that the doctor puts a gel on my stomach to listen to the baby. She pays so much attention!

Emily playing with her tools. In these pictures, she and Greg were building her big girl bed. She also really likes to "fix" the work helmet that came with the set. Though, if the helmet needs fixing, that might be a bigger issue! She's hard at work, though! We had this set out when we had a few nursery school friends over yesterday. 2 other girls and 2 boys, so I brought Emily's train and tools downstairs. The girls all had a field day with the tools, the boys barely touched them. These girls will be able to show the boys a thing or 2 in a few years!

As a side note, when I brought the tools and train set downstairs, I must have said that we needed to bring some boy toys down for the boys to play with. After Emily and I went out afterward, the bins were sitting on the floor to go upstairs. Emily said "We need to bring the boy toys back up, Mommy!" I thought that was pretty funny!

Snow and Museum Fun

Emily and I met Faithe and her 2 year old boys Ethan and Grant at a kids play place. It had a climbing area (minimal interest to Emily) and a pretend grocery store, pizza restaurant, animal hospital, post office, and granny's attic (dress up). The grocery store and restaurant were huge hits for Emily. This wasn't a surprise at all, Emily loves that sort of play and had a lot of fun pretending to make food and serving it and pushing her grocery cart around and then checking out from the store. When she finished in the store she was adament that she had to leave and got to the little car in the arcade area. She pretended that she was loading her pretend groceries into the car and then sat in it to "go home."

Emily's Eyes Update

I don't think I've mentioned anything recently, but you may have noticed in recent pictures that the eye patch is on again. Aside from right after surgery, she never completely stopped wearing it, but we had been down to just an hour or 2. When we went back 6 weeks after she got her glasses, right before Christmastime, she still wasn't using her "bad" eye much. She's old enough to read the picture eye chart, but she just wouldn't with that eye. When the eye doctor put the patch on top of her glasses to block the "good" eye she wouldn't read it, but as soon as he pulled the patch off, she said whatever the picture was very quickly. So, it was pretty obvious to both of us that she wasn't using it, even though she didn't complain about the 2 hours of patching and seemed to be fine. We went to 5-6 hours of patching again, we would patch from first thing in the morning until she went down for her nap, generally 7:30 or 8 until 1 or 1:30 most days. She actually had a tough time the first week of that and got really cranky and tired after 3 hours or so. After a week, she adjusted so I felt confident that her eye was improving.

We went back to the eye doctor again a week and a half ago and he was able to see some positive changes. Emily still isn't great about reading the smallest pictures with either eye, but we were able to get her to do one with the good eye, but none with the weaker eye. It isn't necessarily because she can't, but there are a lot of distractions and interesting things to look at in an eye doctor's office. We are now patching 3-4 hours a day and go back on March 11, I think. It's hard to reason with an almost 3 year old and convince them that they really need to focus on what the picture is. Hopefully at our next appointment she'll be able to really blow us away by what she can see.

I do think that pediatric ophthalmologists need to have a special exam room that is just the stuff they need for the eye chart and nothing else to look at!

Emily's conversation at the eye doctor's was hilarious, though. She is full of questions about everything these days and she asked her questions the whole time. The funniest thing is that the eye doctor has a stuffed yellow duck that wears a red shirt. He sits near the eye chart and the eye doctor can turn him on with a foot pedal near the exam chair and he stomps his feet and a red light goes on. It is to get kids to look and focus on something while the doctor looks at their eyes. One of the pictures on the eye chart is a bird. Emily calls him the duck. The whole time Emily kept asking if the duck on the chart had had a bath because he didn't have any clothes on like the duck with the red shirt. And where his clothes were and how he needed them and on and on. It was pretty funny because this all seemed logical enough to her, but the doctor and I just wanted her to tell us what the pictures were. When the doctor wasn't in the room, Emily asked the nurse where he was, what he was doing and what for. The nurse left the room laughing.

31 Weeks

This pregnancy

About the same time, a week or 2 later, with Emily's pregnancy

These pictures were taken on February 1, so I was about 31 weeks pregnant then. Baby is doing good and doing what he is supposed to be doing. I'll be 33 weeks tomorrow (pregnancy is 40 weeks long) so we are within 7 weeks of the end. Since I had a c-section with Emily, my doctors will be giving me another one on my due date if I don't go into labor on my own before that. Emily was 2 weeks early, so this one may be as well, or not! If I go into labor then we will try to deliver naturally if there aren't any complications and baby and I both are doing well.

I'm taking a pre-natal water fitness class one morning a week while Emily is at school and I love that. It is so nice to get in the water and have the weight off of my back. I use Emily's naptime well most days for resting myself, I seem to need that to make it through the day. I don't rest as in not do anything, but try to sit or lay down and read or do things that I can do like that. And I am tired by the time that she goes to bed. So, I am definitely slowing down, but still doing well. The nursery is about ready so we are getting there on most things!

Cat in the Hat and a Bear

Waiting in line to see the Cat in the Hat

Building a special bear

Putting the heart in the bear

We had a busy weekend at the end of January between 2 different malls! On Saturday morning we went to Pottery Barn Kids to meet the Cat in the Hat. Emily enjoys reading the books about him so figured that we'd take advantage of the chance to meet him.

The next day we went to Build a Bear to make a special bear for the baby from Emily. I had gotten a little coupon in the mail for my birthday that got us a free bear or money off of a more expensive one, so we thought building a bear for the baby might be a fun way to use this! Emily picked out a light blue bear and helped to stuff it and give him a special heart inside. Then she picked out a t-shirt that says baby boy on it. The bear is sitting in the baby's room ready for him to arrive!

Susan's Birthday

The pictures are fairly self explanatory! Emily helped me open up all of my gifts so it was fun having such a big helper. She was very good, she knew the gifts were for me, not her and was excited about that. Since all of our birthdays are relatively close together (Greg in December, me in January, Emily in February) she is really into birthdays right now. And the baby will be a month or so past hers, too!

She got to enjoy a little piece of the cake that she helped Greg bake the night before. I was well remembered with cards, phone calls, and email. It was a nice and quiet birthday, perfect for me right now!

Please Touch Museum

We met Scott, Adrianne, and Annie at the Philly's Please Touch Museum several weeks ago. It is a great kids museum with lots of fun stuff to do. Highlights of the trip for Emily were a large pretend grocery store with lots of fake food and shopping carts and the pretend snack bar that had fake food and trays to carry your food on. If we lived a bit closer we would be regulars there, but right now we're a little too far to go super frequently. Here are some of our pictures! We didn't take pictures of a lot of the things because we were so busy doing them.

One of the Alice in Wonderland rooms that keeps getting smaller