Daddy's girl

Emma is lucky in that she gets some good quality time with Dan each week.  His normal schedule is such that he's home with her on Mondays while I'm at work, then I'm with her on Saturdays while Dan's working. 

Well, starting today they'll have a lot more quality time because Dan is officially on the unemployed roster.  His position was eliminated a couple weeks ago, but they let him continue to work for a couple weeks and his last day was yesterday.  To be honest, I'm a little jealous of the time they're now getting together, but I'm so glad that they get to continue forging their daddy-daughter bond.

We are, of course, hoping for a quick return to the workforce, but in the meantime I think both Dan and Emma will be better off for a little one-on-one time.

Is this thing on?

Where does time go?  I think it evaporates into something called "the past." Nevertheless, a lot has happened since Halloween.  We had not one, but TWO birthday parties for our big TWO year old.  She was full of great big "cheese" grins at her first party with our family.  

Here's Emma with (from left to right) Dan's parents, Larry and Carolyn, my Grandma June (Emma's great-grandma), and my parents, Cindy and Mike.  In the chair with Emma is her Great-Grandpa Harold (my grandpa).  The one great-grandma who couldn't come still only lives five minutes away and Emma sees her every Tuesday.  I'd say she's surrounded by more love than she'll ever know what to do with.

We toasted the evening with a tea party using her brand new tea set and Emma rang in her new year in style.

Her second party was with all of her little friends, and it was a superhero party.  Literally, the night before the party I had about five BOOM, POW, ZAP signs printed out, and was at another friend's Christmas party when someone heard me talking about Emma's party the next day.  She said that she just threw a superhero party for her husband and had all sorts of decorations that I could pick up the next day (the day of her party).  So, I met this girl at 7pm on Friday, and at 8am Saturday I was at her house picking up all the superhero decorations I could ever want including the super rad cityscape below that people could "fly" over.  All the kids except Emma thought it was so cool.  She just cried every time I asked if she wanted to try it.  Still, it was a success all thanks to Amy whose generosity made my daughter's whole birthday.

And, here's the final shot of the day.  These two were wiped out by 6pm.

So, that's November and part of December in a tight little nutshell.

Happy Halloweener

Emma was a very happy Halloweener yesterday.  We started our festivities the day before Halloween because we're awesome and waited until the last minute to do any kind of celebrating and then showed up at the pumpkin patch with a dead battery in our camera so only got two pictures.  Fortunately our camera phones came to the rescue so we didn't walk away totally empty handed.

Here's our little flying dino-lizard (in rain boots and froggy pajamas cuz it was after bed time when we arrived at said pumpkin patch due to daddy's work schedule).

And, here's Emma's trick-or-treating crew.

We started the night at a friend's house for pics and headed out to take the neighborhood by storm.  At the first house, the guy answered the door with a scary mask on and screamed when he opened the door so Emma started crying...great start to the night.  But, after the next few houses she had the whole "trick or treat" thing down and was pulling me to the doors instead of me carrying her.  She ended up with a ton of loot that Dan and I get to eat.  There's nothing like some cute kids to amp up the take home.

It was a great night with our dear friends and their darling little guys.

Remind me someday

My sweet Emma,
You're 21 months old TODAY.  That means the big 2 is just a few months away and I'm already feeling like I'm forgetting moments of your babyness that I promised myself I would remember forever.  While I have little snippets on camera that I can look back on, nothing compares to the real moments experienced with you.  Here are some things I don't want to forget...

- The first time I heard you sing yourself to sleep with "Jesus Loves Me" on our deep sea fishing trip earlier this year.
- How you say "Bless you" to yourself every time you sneeze (you also say it to us to when we sneeze, cough, or make any other noise besides speaking).
- When we say "I love you," you respond with "too" because you're a woman of few words and you know that we know what you mean.
- That the first book you asked me to read was "Brown Bear."  I couldn't understand what you were saying at first and then you pointed to the book and kept saying "bunbay" which I then interpreted to mean "Brown Bear."  Now you basically have it memorized.
- Every time I pick up my computer you ask to watch "Harry the Bunny" on Baby's First TV website (that's what grandpa lets you watch when you're at his house...such a treat), and you ask for Boos Poos, otherwise known as Blues Clues all.the.time.
- You love tomatoes and pick them off my plant when they're two days away from being perfect, but sit on your playhouse steps and eat it all with the seeds squirting everywhere.  I guess if your guilty pleasure is a tomato off the vine then we're okay.
- You still crawl in the dog crates and close yourself in when I'm not looking.
- The main reason you like having stuffed animals in your crib when you fall asleep is so you can play with the tags, and if I hand it to you the wrong way you say "tag" until I turn it around.
- You love music and the other night when your dad was playing his guitar you went to the living room and got your own instrument (don't know what it's called, but it's from Africa) and started playing along with him all on your own.
- You think most little things that you pick up are "buggies" including watermelon seeds.
- I've caught you at least four times (so far) with a mouth full of dirt.
- You can put your alphabet puzzle together with one hand tied behind your back.  We have not, in fact, tied your hand behind your back, but considering that you usually just use one hand to put it together anyways I'm pretty sure you could do it if the other one was tied behind you.
- Your friends in the church nursery say that you walk around the room like you own it, and you're always soooo happy to go play with the other kids.
- When I walk around our yard picking up dog poop you stop every three steps, point down and say poopy even if there's nothing there.
- There have been several times when you adamantly say something and we just don't understand.  You're obviously much smarter than we are because you will learn our language so quickly and we will never learn yours.
- Your version of tickling is walking up to us and just poking our leg or foot.  We don't tell you that it doesn't actually tickle because it's just so funny seeing you giggle and "tickle" us that we laugh out of sheer joy.  You just walk up and say "tickle" and start laughing hysterically.
- Sometimes when we pray before dinner we ask you to pray and you just say "Jesus."  That's the perfect prayer in my humble opinion.

Sweet girl, if you can't tell, there are so many things I don't want to forget and I'm sure so many things I already have forgotten.  I want to savor every second with you knowing how fleeting this time is, and even though each moment can't be etched in my memory forever I know that every experience we have is building on the one prior so the end result will be one amazing person with memories of your own and fun stories to tell.

Love you tons,
Mommy

OC Fair 2012

We have the distinct pleasure of living about five minutes away from our county fairgrounds, so we typically get the season pass and this year was no different.  What was different, however, was the awesome kids area that they put together for the first time this year.

The theme this year was Eat, Live, Grow, and there was a whole section where Emma got to practice being a farmer (startin' 'er young).

 Then, she took a lap on a tractor in her own tractor race (with a little help from dad).

Whaddayaknow...she got first place (good thing as she was the only competitor in a race we made up for her).

So, we had a ton of fun at the fair this year and even though we didn't get there as much as we would have liked (early bedtimes definitely derail the best laid fair plans), we can't wait for next year to see the new baby piggies, get the delicious grilled corn on the cob and the even more deeeelicious cinnamon rolls.  Hopefully we can get by for another year or two before Emma realizes there are rides at the fair (we'll just tell her that they're really scary and dangerous and fall apart all the time), but she already has a monster sized Scooby Doo from last year's fair and her new fave, a cute little stuffed piggy, from this year thanks to Papa so we're out of luck in convincing her that the prizes for the games come to life and eat little kids at night.  We'll just have to wait and see what she wins next year.