A New Toy

A family in our small group is passing down some toys for us. In the first batch, they gave us a wagon! We are so thankful and Emma has been enjoying the wagon rides. She even kept her sunglasses from Mariela on for a ride. She is growing up so fast! Here are also some pictures of her at 10 months (and healthy!).

Friends

Mariela spent the morning with us last Friday. During the school year she spent every Friday with us and we have missed that time with her this summer. Mariela has been so good with Emma and just loves her and takes care of her. Emma just adores Mariela and now is able to go after her and play with her. It brought me so much joy last week to watch these two precious ones play and to see a new friendship between these little girls that has been passed down from my friendship with Susan. I am continually reminded of the preciousness of friendship and am so thankful for Susan and that Emma has Mariela!

Mariela and Emma rocking together and giggling!

Emma's goofy smile. She had been giggling and giggling at Mariela.

Mariela was playing with Emma's new shopping cart and putting Emma's toys in there and running off. Emma found her cart and chased after her. They just ran around and squealed and giggled and played. it was just so fun!

It was a little strange to see my little baby really playing and running around.

New Duckies

As I mentioned in the last post, Emma has been sick with a cold/croup for over two weeks now. As you can imagine, her ducky has been covered in snot. It has been a chore to keep a clean duck on deck at all times. I had her laundry basket in the dining room last week and she saw a duck through the holes. She tried to pull it out and the basket fell on top of her. She just sat there and cried as she tried to pull the duck out, not even bothered by the laundry basket on top of her. I, of course, thought the whole thing was hilarious, but Emma did not. Yesterday the doorbell rang and a package arrived for Emma with TWO NEW DUCKIES!!! Here is a video of us opening the package and some pictures. She sat in her highchair for 20 minutes just rubbing the ducks and sucking her thumb, stopping only to flail the ducks in the air and squeal. I could not get her out of the highchair (not that I tried very hard). She just loves her duckies and it is very, very sweet! Also in the pictures Emma is sucking on a pacifier. She left hers (which is a toy to Emma) at Sammy's and when he found out Emma was sick he sent it to her to help her feel better. She has been sucking and chewing on that while rubbing the ribbon. If only I had known that she would enjoy a pacifier and ribbon so much I would have purchased one sooner but it is always more special when it comes from Sam! Thank you Aunt Sue and Aunt Abby for helping Emma feel better and loving on her!

Ten Months Old

Emma celebrated her ten month birthday with croup. She has had a terrible cold for over two weeks and that turned in to croup over the weekend. Thankfully we were able to see the doctor right away and get some steroids to strengthen her body and fight it off. It turned out that is was not too severe which we were very thankful for. Aside from being sick, Emma is weighing in at 22 pounds and slowing down in her weight gain. She is super busy all day long and is into EVERYTHING. This evening Emma started walking on her own without any prompting from us and by bedtime she was walking all over the house. Along with walking, she is talking up a storm. She now says: hi, uh-oh, bye (although I think it might just be hi), up, Mama (but only if she is very frustrated with me) and DaDa. Dada is her very favorite person and she walks around all day with his picture saying Dada and pointing at him. She also points to the window where we watch for him to come home and at the landing and says Dada and I have to respond with "Dada is at work". It is very sweet. She just loves him so much! She is taking two naps of 45 minutes to an hour and a half each and is sleeping 7:30-7:00 each night. Her eating is moving from baby food to table food and her lunches are all finger foods. She is eating a lot of cottage cheese, lunchmeat, cheese, green beans, avacado, peaches, nectarines, strawberries, blueberries, bananas, potatoes, sweet potatoes, pasta and cheerios. She still loves to drink her water and her favorite food right now is blueberries. Her third tooth pushed its way through this week on the top and she is biting anything she can get her teeth on. Another favorite activity is playing with the pictures in magnets on the fridge and she still gets so excited over Sam's pictures and videos. Emma also has started pointing to things if you ask her to find someone. She can accurately identify Mama, Dada, Sam, Grammy, Poppa, Puppy and Cat. Emma is just so much fun right now and we are so blessed by the Lord to have this precious little girl in our lives.

With Emma having been sick for the better part of two weeks, I have not taken many pictures but will post more soon. Here are a bunch of videos of what she is doing now. Enjoy!

Here is Emma at the end of her lunch. This was a very clean ending to a meal. She enjoys running her fingers through her hair and getting all of the food in it.


On Sunday I set Emma down to take off my shoes and she started to climb up the stairs. Since we live at the top of the stairs, she never is around stairs and had never tried to climb them before. She crawled right to the top!



Emma has started playing Peek a Boo with us. She doesn't cover her face completely, but she thinks she does. :) She also plays with me in the car and she hides her face under her duck.



Emma is a true girl! She has learned how to hold the phone to her ear and talk. I was playing with her one day and she picked it up and just started talking.



Emma just loves this cart! She just runs through the apartment and squeals all day long. She is just so much fun and makes us laugh so much.



And here it is...Emma taking steps. Like I said earlier, she started just walking all over tonight, so we will see if that continues tomorrow morning or if she goes back to the cart for the day.

Another Trip to Pittsburgh

At the beginning of this week Emma and I took a short excursion to Pittsburgh to visit Aunt Abby and Sam (Uncle Andrew is gone every night of the week working on his MBA and with training at the bank right now). It was so much fun to see Sam. He is just the most precious little boy and both Emma and I are so in love with him. He is getting some new teeth and didn't feel his best while we were there, but he just smiled and squealed and growled and talked and loved on us. We miss him so much already.

Emma is now eating blueberries and is studying them intently in this picture. Giving Emma food and buckling her into some apparatus was really the only way Abby and I could have a conversation.

Sam was so tired at dinner time. While Emma ate her blueberries Sam just sat like this for a good while. And then...

He fell asleep...bless his little heart!

Emma sure enjoyed exploring all of Sam's toys. He was just so excited to see her and was flailing his arms and she bypassed him for the toys.

Sam and Emma did very well sharing toys. They passed toys back and forth and squealed at each other.

Sam figured out that Emma does not like to have her duck taken away...however, Emma precipitated the duck taking by grabbing toys out of Sam's hands...oh the things we have to look forward to!

Emma has started grabbing the duck with her right hand while she is sucking her thumb. That frees up her left hand to help her move about while holding her ducky.

Sam kept Emma under control though! Quiet but mighty!

For the first time EVER, the weather was beautiful for the entire trip to Pittsburgh. Again, we had to tie Emma down in order for us to talk. The kids enjoyed looking for squirrels and at all of the American Flags.

Another trick was to put on Baby Einstein. Neither child ever watches TV so this was a huge treat. Emma sat like this for about three minutes and then decided she would rather play with the toys.

We packed both kids into Aunt Abby's car and drove to Carson Street! One of our favorite places to go in Pittsburgh. It was amazing the amount of effort to get both kids there between their different eating and sleeping schedules, but it was well worth it! Again Emma was restrained so Abby and I were able to have an adult conversation.

This picture is difficult to see, but it is Emma and me at the Milkshake Factory!!! It is my FAVORITE place in Pittsburgh (of course after Uncle Andrew and Aunt Abby's house). It is a family owned chocolate shop with AMAZING milkshakes. When you walk in it smells AMAZING. I was very excited to take Emma there, but as you can see, she was asleep. She woke up at the end and loved it!

Emma very much enjoyed playing in Aunt Abby and Uncle Andrew's grass. It was so soft and she just crawled around and picked at it. She looked like a lion on the prowl.

Uncle Andrew was home on Tuesday night and Emma got to play with him. I came into the room and the three of them were playing ball. It was so sweet!

Thank you so much Aunt Abby, Uncle Andrew and Sam. We hope to see you soon!

4th of July

The Woods family had a busy 4th of July. Emma and I went to the parade in Anderson in the morning with the Saxbys. Uncle Dan and Matty were in the parade with Matty's cub scout troop. It was so fun to see to see Matty in the parade! Emma loved every bit of the parade except that when she waved to people they didn't wave back. She sat in the stroller and waved at all of the parade participants and said "Hieee". Emma's favorite part was the Anderson Marching Band. She sat perfectly still and clapped her hands and patted her hands on her lap (I had never seen her do that before). It was very sweet and I knew it would make her daddy very happy. After the parade we went home for lunch and a nap and then we went over to the Ferone's for a party with the Saxby's, Nana and Poppa Ferone, and Jeremy, Melinda, Ava and Jax. Emma had fun playing with Ava and Anabel. She gave out lots of kisses and enjoyed being able to watch the kids and walk around the house. My favorite part was when all of the cousins were running through the kitchen and family room yelling and Emma just looked around and started yelling also. When they stopped, she stopped and then started up again with them. It was fun and sad to see how much she is growing up. We ended our day at 10:30 when Emma finally went to sleep. She had been in her crib for an hour saying "hieee" to the fireworks. So precious and sweet!

Sammy was squeezing Emma's cheeks and saying, "Look at those chubby, chubby cheeks". It was just hilarious. Emma thought it was funny also.

We always have fun with Aunt Amy!

Here is Emma watching the marching band. Her expression never changed, just the movement of her hands.

She also enjoyed the bagpipes and the fire trucks.

Finally she had enough and started to take her shoes off, so we went home.

Here is Uncle Dan and Matty throwing candy to the crowd! Happy Birthday, Uncle Dan!

I just love this dress from Aunt Amy. She was so much fun playing with the kids and especially with Aunt Amy's dolls from when she was a girl. Emma shook with excitement when she saw the dolls.

The highlight of the day was the ducks. The Ferone's have a pond in their backyard and we couldn't go outside because of the rain, but Emma was still able to see the ducks. When they waddled past the window, Emma shook and shook with excitement. When they were gone she turned to Mike and did the sign language for "more please". It was so adorable. She did get to go out and feed the ducks and she enjoyed that very much! I think she may even like ducks as much, if not more, than dogs.

Nine Months

At Emma's 9 month check up she weighed 21 lbs 4 oz and was 29 in long. All of her measurements were in the 90th percentile. She is very tall and as active as ever! This past month Emma dropped her late afternoon nap. She is cruising everywhere and is only still when she is sleeping. She is working on more teeth but is cute as ever with the bottom two. Emma says uh oh and hi and a variety of words in sign language. She is still sleeping 12 hours at night and has extended her naps to an hour each. This past month Emma stayed with a variety of people as Mike and I both went back to work. Thankfully my month of working is over and Emma and I can go back to having lots of quality time together.