twenty three months

i have decided this age goes by too fast.

stuff she was doing at the beginning of the month 

seems like she has always been doing it.

so i am sure i will miss lots of things.

i've also decided after her second birthday, NEXT month!

that i will just do quarterly updates on miss emi.

emi has been driving me crazy lately.

i prefer the newborn/baby stage than this terrible two stage

she is into everything (exploring) and wanting to do it her way

she is very independent and very needy at the same time.

emi loves to looks through things, this slotted spoon for example

or if there are openings in books, she has to poke my eye through it

and she always says, hello! until you say hi back.

 emi loves to have her finger and toenails painted.

she will sit still to have her hair done.

and can't leave the house without a bow.

 

she is the craziest sleeper.

i have found her like the picture below many times.

the night terrors have stopped (hope i don't jinx myself)

but she has started waking up at 2am to come get in our bed

when she was potty training she would wake up to go potty.

needless to say, i haven't been sleeping great for a while now.

because eddie sleeps through everything!

and never knows what happens at night.

 emi has become a picky eater. 

a typical morning i will give her fruit for breakfast

and she insists on a awful!(waffle)

for lunch and dinner, she pretty much eats the same thing

either a turkey dog or chicken nuggets

with some sort of veggie and a fruit cup.

for a few weeks she kept saying dutch!! dutch!!

this past week, i finally figured out it means lunch

she doesn't like chocolate milk or soda.

and can't be fooled into drinking water.

sometimes she demands juice! and i will give her water.

she will say no! and walk over to the fridge...waiting for juice.

 emi's speech has improved but a lot still doesn't make sense 

i understand almost everything, but i am sure others wouldn't

i have also noticed she says the end of things...like spoon, she says the oon, of spoon.

she is a good fake crier.

hides in our closet or behind doors and says, boo! and then laughs her head off.

she covers her mouth when she laughs, or throws her head back.

she dances to any beat...even slow songs.

does somersaults on her own. and she loves to climb.

the kitchen chairs are too heavy to move, but if she could move them

i am pretty positive i would find her on the kitchen counter.

 when you ask emi a color, her default is blue.

she can name and say any body part you ask (i should probably get that on video)

she loves kipper the dog, thank goodness for sprouts and netflix

emi hates being in her car seat or a shopping cart and pulls the potty card.

emi gets really upset if you load or unload the dishwasher without her

she will yell, elp! (help!) meaning she wants to help, then she yells, sop! (stop!)

 she has to have a goodbye kiss, and she pushes you out the door.

she insists on shutting the door behind us, if one of us leaves.

 she calls me mom!...i hear mom! mom! mom! mom! mom!

over and over, all day...i can respond and if she thinks i am not paying attention

she says mom! over and over again. it's especially fun in the car.

emi still won't read a book by herself.

she always picks the same books every night to be read.

she usually mimics what is going on, or answers yes or no if there is a question.

emi is in between sizes.so some of her clothes look huge!

generally she wears a 2T shirt and 18-24 month pants.

she wears a 5 1/2 -6 in shoes

her favorite books are flip books by Karen Katz

whenever she hears an out of place sound

she will put her hand behind her ear, and give you a look

the look is, do you hear that? or what is that?

i hope i don't sound negative about emi.

but i finally feel challenged as a parent.

i feel she has been an easy child 

and am wishing now she came with a manual on how to react to her bratty ways.

which i guess are just terrible two ways.

luckily we don't have meltdowns...

just big sighs and needing my full attention constantly.

story of my life

this picture tells how my life is with emi lately.

she is so busy, right now and into everything!

she goes for the stuff she knows she isn't suppose to touch

especially when i am busy and not watching her every move.

she also learned how to open doors this week...

so nothing is off limits to her anymore. 

a trial run...

no this is not an announcement, before anyone jumps to conclusions.

just purely a blog post about emi being such a good helper.

emi is getting the chance to be mommy's helper 

and she loves it most of the time.

she loves helping me babysit.

baby e usually arrives before emi wakes up from her nap

so it's always a nice surprise when she wakes up

 

emi will help me in any way i might ask her.

throw a diaper away, bring me a diaper, wipe the drool on baby e's chin, etc.

  

 she even likes to entertain her during tummy time.

and when baby e is sleeping

emi always reminds me....shhh! baby sleeping...

 but every once in a while. emi pulls her pouting face.

usually when i have to feed baby e.

i try to have her come sit next to me, so she doesn't feel ignored. 

but i have also noticed she does it, when i "baby" talk to baby e

a couple funny things.

today i caught emi shaking her babies bottle

like you would shake a formula bottle to mix it up. ha!

and last time we babysat baby e, we asked emi if she wanted to hold the baby

which she said yes, the second we put baby e on her lap

she tried pushing her away and kept saying stuck!

like she was being squashed or something

eddie and i were laughing so hard. 

hopefully by the time emi has a sibling she will be a little more loving.

sleepying woes

(emi last night about midnight)

emi hasn't been the best sleeper lately.

i seriously didn't realize how lucky i was

that she slept through the night at 8 weeks old.

 

lately she has been having separation anxiety and night terrors

on top of having a cold and two molars coming in.

nap time is also such a chore.

she fights it bad! but if i hold her, she goes right to sleep.

i finally have decided i am not going to battle her for upwards of 2 hours

or i have noticed if i am out and about

during the beginning of her nap time she will fall asleep in the car

then i just transfer her, into her bed.

 

a really bad nap day is no nap

and bad nap day is an hour and a half nap

a normal nap day is two hours

and good nap day is two plus hours

a really good nap day is when she wakes up in a good mood.

onto bedtime...dun dun dun

if i am home alone with emi, no problems

she goes right to bed, even sometimes before her bedtime 7:30

if eddie is home. it's hit or miss.

i think i figured out, if she knows we are together

eating dinner, watching tv, etc...she feels like she is missing out

and will get out of her bed numerous times

resulting in her falling asleep on one of us

a habit we don't want forming, but it's hit or miss though

and it's so much easier than putting her back to bed twenty times.

other nights though she goes right to sleep.

it's baffling, really.

the night terrors. they aren't common

but they happen. and it's so sad.

for a little while she was waking up every night between 11:30 and 12:30

saying no, no, no...and inconsolable.

she wouldn't let us touch her or comfort her in any way.

i've done some reading and a lot of it says, night terrors and nightmares

usually are a result of lack of sleep.

something that has become a problem in the last few months.

 the last couple of times she has had night terrors

she comes running, screaming from her room

it's seriously so sad!

i hoping once we move i can get a handle on her sleeping issues.

because, frankly i am tired.

i don't go to bed until after midnight usually, in case she does wake up

and then sometimes she wakes up at 5:30 to go to the bathroom.

but is always awake for the day at 6am.

needless to to say, sometimes i only get 5 hours of sleep.

i guess i am finally getting the chance to appreciate her old sleeping ways.

Our Valentine

valentine's morning emi got a balloon, some peeps and a card
she loved getting mail from great and grandparents.
we would hand her, her mail
she knows how to open an envelope.
she would say: oh, thank you!
when she would pull the card out, she would act shocked.

for valentine's day we thought we could brave the cold
and take our valentine to her favorite place

a lot of the animals were out
and she enjoyed the zoo more than ever.
we let her run around, hoping she would get some cooped up energy out.
we of course had to ride the carousel.
as you can see she started out happy.

but for some odd reason, by the second circle around
eddie was holding her
i guess she was refusing to even get on any animal.

then we went to the zoo's park.
she was so happy!
every time we go to costco, she yells and yells
until we walk over to the play structure and i have to explain she can't play.
so i think she was so excited to finally be able to play.

she finally used the slides without our coaxing.

Happy Valentine's Day!!

iphone pictures

these are some of my favorite pictures from the last two weeks.

her new smile.

acting like a baby.
(i've been babysitting a 3 month old a could days a week
so when the baby comes over she acts like a baby)

posing in the tub.
followed by a eeeee!! she wants to see the picture.

rag-a-muffin hair.
this is what it looks like when she won't sit still.
along with a picture of her new smile.

another lovely smile.

babysitting the baby.

i love when she falls asleep in the car.
she's so peaceful looking.

out in the snow...

she was actually brave enough to touch it.

pretending pretzels were fries.
wishful thinking!

this week...

emi and i were suppose to be in utah visiting gma
instead we stayed home (will be coming out in march, instead)
she caught a nasty cough and cold
she pretty much has looked this miserable for the past few days

we didn't want to spread our germs to gma
last time we visited, gma caught a cough/cold
and was on antibiotics for a month.
so we played it safe this time and stayed home.

we finally have a system down:
natural/herbal cough medicine, tylenol,
baby vick's rub every four hours
and suction of the nose when needed.

her new smile

along with a little potty update...
we have hit the two week mark of potty training.
we haven't had an accident since day 3.
i don't want to jinks myself...
but i'm pretty sure she is trained.
we are still working on staying dry at night though.

{eating her treat and showing me her sticker}

she has also moved on from her training potty
to her sesame street insert thing.

seriously....and i thought the one eye'd smile was bad.

i've had a few people ask me how we did it...
the whole potty training thing.
well for one, emi was ready.
so my initial decision was to try it for one day
kind of to see how it would go.
which has turned into two weeks.

first, we started off naked
and i think this is where her being ready worked in my favor
she knew she needed to go, so she would run into the bathroom
with me following close behind her.
she didn't want help.
i would ask her every once in a while if she needed to go
but for the most part i have been letting her be in control.

i did read somewhere you can set a potty timer, like as a reminder
but i wanted her to learn for herself.
after about 2 days i put underwear on her
she fought it, she wanted to stay naked.
but i insisted and she peed through two undies
sitting on the toilet but not knowing how to get them off.
that's when i realized i needed to step in a little.
so ever since then i have been helping her pull her undies down.
then she started wearing clothes.
by the fourth day, i was ready to venture out.
we went out only for an hour.
and once i got to my destination, i immediately took her potty.
and took her again before we left for home.
since then i have gradually increased the time out.
the longest we have been away from home is 3 hours.

i'm a little nervous for our plane ride next week.
but i think we can do it.

another first

i thought she was done with "firsts"

emi has been battling her naps.
like serious drag out fighting me for 2+ hours.
(her kind of fighting is jumping on the bed, acting like an alligator being caught trying to find a comfortable position, reading books, saying she needs to go potty...while giggling all the way to the potty, standing on the rocking chair, etc, etc...you get the idea)
so we were surprised when she drifted off to sleep
while eating, i mean picking at her dinner.

we finally tried out the reclining seat feature.

the bad part about her skipping her nap
and falling asleep before bed time was...
she woke up at 11pm and stayed up until like 2am.