The Emma-nator!

I haven't done an actual update on Emma's ever-increasing skills in awhile. And never on this blog, since it's so new. So, it's time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the antics of a very adorable little toddler! You may want to grab a nice cup of hot chocolate, cuz this is gonna be long;)

Little Emma is now 14 months old. Isn't that crazy? The last time she was weighed was while she was sick, and she weighed in at 16 lbs 11 oz. Yeah, she lost weight from having diarrhea for a week. Rather disconcerting when she's in the 2nd percentile to begin with. I think she's gained quite a bit back already, though, since she's been eating non-stop lately. Her next appt is in a month, so we'll find out where she is then. Our bathroom scale says she's 17 lbs, but those aren't accurate for small children.

She's wearing mostly 6-9 month clothes. She still wears 3-6 month onesies, and SOME outfits. Sleepers are 6-9 months, as are most outfits. Yeah, she's teeny tiny! I love how little she is^_^ She can wear her clothes longer this way and I love it.

Ever since Emma discovered she could walk, she hasn't stopped! She almost never crawls now. She walks aaaall the time. She also likes to walk around in the store...and to follow other children around if we let her. She LOVES other kids - especially older mobile ones. She threw a fit once when we wouldn't let her follow some older kids at the store...she was super tired at the time, though. But she really likes other kids. I think she'll love nursery at church in 4 months:)

Speaking of church, we meet at 1 this year. Sounds great, doesn't it? Well...it majorly interferes with nap time. She usually goes down for a nap around 1 now...this week, she didn't take a nap at all on Sunday. Well, maybe for about 10 minutes during choir practice, but that's IT. She was so tired by the time she went to bed...

And speaking of naps and bed, we are on an awesome schedule for both nowadays. She usually wakes up around 8 AM, naps around 1 (after lunch), and goes to bed around 8 PM. It's awesome! Honestly, cutting out that mid-day nap nursing session is what put us on this amazing schedule. She now naps on her own in her crib! Woohoo, I have me time during the day again! It took a couple days of CIO for nap time, but hey, it works. Some days she has a hard time with it (like yesterday...and then the fire alarm went off JUST after she calmed down...), but she naps for 1.5-2 hours most days.

As for nursing, we are currently down to once a day - right before bed. We'll be cutting that out very soon, probably later this week. I should probably establish a better bed time routine first, though. Currently, it's dinner, brush teeth (which she hates), nurse, family prayer, kisses and cuddles, bed. I need to add in bed time stories. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't. I need to be more consistent with it. I COULD give her a bath before bed, but I really don't want to do that every single day. Plus, by the time we finish dinner, it's pretty much bed time.

Oh, I ran into my lactaction consultant at Walmart today. You know, the one who we saw when I was having all those supply issues way back when. Wow, that was almost a year ago. Crazy. She asked us how we're doing and I gave her an update. It was neat. She thinks we're doing great^_^

Emma hates hates hates having her teeth brushed. Not as much as she hates having her fingernails trimmed (MAJOR tantrum!), but she definitely doesn't like it. She puts her tongue over her bottom teeth, so it's REALLY hard to brush them. But tonight, after I brushed her teeth, she grabbed her toothbrush and chewed on it. So, maybe she'll "brush" her teeth herself? We'll try it tomorrow and see how it goes. She only has 3 teeth right now, and a 4th is just about to cut through, so it's not AS important as it would be if she had a full mouth of teeth. The 3rd tooth cut while she was sick - fun...and it was TORTURE coming in. And I thought the bottom teeth were bad...wow. Top teeth SUCK. But this 4th doesn't seem to bother her AT ALL. She's perfectly happy. But, it hasn't fully broken through yet...so we'll see how the next few days go. I hope it comes in quickly. I hate teething. In the next life, I'm seriously going to have a talk with Heavenly Father about WHY teething misery is necessary.

Emma isn't really talking at all yet. She says mama and dada, and she said baby once (to her cousin^_^), but that's about it. I THINK she might have said kitty during Christmas break, but it sounded more like "DIE-dee." But she kept saying it as she chased the cats around my parent's house.

Speaking of cats, there's this sweet little black stray that hangs out at our complex. It meows at doors all the time. Apparently one of our neighbors is leaving food out for it, so it's gonna stick around for awhile;) Anyway. Emma hears it meowing and wants to go see it. She got all excited last week when I asked her if she wanted to go outside and see the kitty. I needed to check the mail anyway. So we went to visit the cat, and it came over to us and rubbed against us and everything! It even let EMMA pet it (we washed our hands thoroughly afterwards)! I tried to take a peek at the kitty's gender, but couldn't see anything. I think it's a girl, but I could be wrong. After all, we thought Wedge was a girl at first;) It's a VERY affectionate little kitty. It even followed us to the mailbox. Later that day, we were getting in the car to go to a ward activity. John was buckling Emma into her car seat when the cat started meowing at us. I meowed back, and then it jumped into the car!! Eeep! We had to get the cat out before we left;) And I made sure the cat wasn't in the path of the car as we backed up.

Anyway. Back to Emma's communication. Instead of saying words, she points a lot. She makes her wants known by pointing at the objects she wants. Sometimes she wants forbidden objects, like my cell phone or camera. And when I say no, she throws a little tantrum. Ah, the joys of toddlerhood. She also grabs our hands and pulls us to things she wants, or to things she wants us to do for her. For instance, she has one of those toys that has animals pop up when you push/twist/slide the various little controls. She likes to grab my hand and make ME make the animal pop up! She also has several books with textured pictures (furry, scaly, etc) and she likes to grab my finger and make me feel it, too! It's really cute.

She will also bring objects she wants to us. When she wants to eat yogurt melts or another snack that's in a sealed container, she'll bring the container to us and very obviously "ask" us to open it. We always comply, because we are definitely not going to say she can't eat when she's such a tiny little girl!

Emma knows one sign so far. She signs "light" aaaall the time. She points at the lights and then signs it. I'm working on teaching her more signs, such as please, more, banana, drink, and eat. At this point, please is my number one sign to teach her...as you'll see in the next paragraph.

In addition to pointing at what she wants, she has decided the screaming is a good way to make her wants known. Um, no. It's not. Not ok. We're trying to teach her that screaming does NOT get her what she wants. We wait until she calms down and is quiet before giving her what she wants. While we do so, we try to teach her the sign for please.

Emma loooooves food. She eats almost everything we eat now. We're holding off on peanut butter until she's at least 2 for allergy reasons (especially since my dad's allergic), and her pediatrician says it's also a choking hazard. Some of Emma's favorite foods include: bananas, yogurt melts, yogurt, graham crackers, Goldfish, pasta, corn, and, of course, desserts. She knows where we keep the bananas and specifically points to them every morning. She eats almost a whole banana for breakfast everyday! (Well, she won't tomorrow because we're out - need to go buy more.) Yesterday, I didn't know she had a banana for breakfast, since John fed her. So later in the day, she requested a banana, and I gave her one. And then later that evening before dinner, she asked for ANOTHER! We didn't let her have that one; 2 bananas in one day are more than enough for a tiny 14 month old! Besides, she needed some veggies and protein instead. That, and I don't want her to get constipated from eating too many bananas!

There are a few foods that she does NOT like. She hates eggs. She is definitely my child in that. I only like eggs if they're scrambled, and only if they're done right. Every single time we try to give her eggs, she spits it right out. Good thing she likes meat, beans, and cheese! She also refuses to eat jello. And when I've tried to give her pieces of canned peaches, she wouldn't eat it. But that was the week we were all sick AND she was teething, so that might have been part of it. I'll have to try that again. She doesn't seem to care for pineapple, either. Oh, and she's not really interested in eating pureed squash anymore, but we're veering away from the purees anyway. She also refused toast when she was sick; we think she doesn't like the texture. She likes bread just fine. But other than that, she eats pretty much everything - even cooked onions and cooked green peppers!

We have, however, had issues with getting her to drink whole milk. She just wasn't interested in it. John and I drink skim. When she sees us drinking it, she points and very clearly wants some. We let her drink a little, but she NEEDS the fat of the whole milk. She LOVES the skim, but she doesn't care for the whole milk. We even tried to trick her by putting whole milk in a regular cup (she loves drinking from our cups), but she wasn't fooled. Today, though, we had a good day with whole milk - she drank almost the entire sippy cup full! Yay! I kept offering it to her during meals. When John and I drank our milk and she asked for it, instead of letting her drink mine, I gave her HER cup instead. And she drank it! I'm hoping we can keep this up.

As for sippy cups, once she mastered drinking from the Nuby ones we got her, she decided she wanted to drink from the Gerber ones we already had. So now she'll drink from both types of sippy cups we have! Yay! She can drink from the ones with handles all by herself, but she still prefers to have US hold it for her...we're working on that.

For a long time, she was only interested in feeding herself foods that were NOT messy. Well, during Christmas break, she decided that she wanted to feed herself messy foods, too! Now she sticks her hand in my cereal bowl, pasta, stir fry over rice, cake, ice cream...pretty much everything. While she was sick, she decided to try feeding herself with a spoon, too! She wasn't really interested before that. But, I didn't really give her that many opportunities for it, either. She also wants to feed herself with one of OUR forks! If you've seen our silverware, it's particularly large, so a tiny toddler feeding herself with a big fork is pretty funny. Don't worry, we don't let her poke herself with it;)

When Emma eats snacks like yogurt melts or puffs, she likes to "pretend" to share with us. She'll put a piece in our hands and then take it back. Or, she reaches out like she's going to put a piece in my mouth. I open my mouth and say "aah" - and then, at the last second, she pulls it away and eats it!! She thinks it's the funniest thing! Yesterday, she accidentally dropped it in my mouth, so I ate it. She gave me the funniest look! It was a mixture of confusion and anger. She tried to take it back! Too late!

Emma loves to watch me cook. At first, she was pretty impatient with the whole food not being ready thing. She just wanted to eat it right away! But we explained to her that it wasn't ready to eat yet and that it needed to cook. Now, she loves to watch! She wants John to hold her up nearby while I'm cooking dinner. Yesterday, I made a cake for Victoria's birthday, and I asked Emma beforehand if she wanted to help me bake a cake. She had the biggest grin on her face!! She was so excited! She loved watching me pour all the ingredients together, and she especially loved watching my KitchenAid blend the cake batter. Then, she stood by the oven and watched it bake for a minute or so. She does that with the microwave, too, but we have to hold her up for that one;)

Emma has discovered that the fridge is a fun place to play. Greeeat. Thankfully, she can't open it. Yet. When she can, we'll get one of those fridge latches. She likes to pull aaaall the food off the bottom shelf (it's all she can reach LOL) and bring it over to me. We had a fun photoshoot with that recently. I don't let her do it very often, though. She gets mad, but she gets over it. Distraction helps;) She was also trying to climb IN the fridge! I got an awesome shot of that. One of these days, I'll digiscrap it and then post the page.

Today, Emma discovered that magnets are fun. She pulled a magnet off the fridge and then put it on our magnetic front door. I want to get her some of those alphabet magnets, but I couldn't find any at Walmart. I'll check a dollar store another time.

Another object that Emma loves to play with (that I'd rather she didn't) is the toilet paper. Joy. We keep the bathroom door closed, but when I'm home alone with Emma, I have to leave the door open when I use it so I can keep an eye on her. Of course, 95% of the time, she follows me in. And, of course, she waits until I'm wiping or washing my hands to completely unroll the TP...

Emma is SO totally a girl. She's already interested in clothes and shoes. Yep, she's definitely MY daughter!! Some days, I ask her what she wants to wear and let her pick between 2 outfits. She frequently grabs OUR clothes and wants to wear them over hers! One time, when I was sorting through her bigger sized clothes (right after I'd hit a couple consignment stores and washed the clothes), she grabbed one of her 2T dresses and wanted to wear it! So, I put it on over her clothes, and she walked around the apartment in it for a good 20 minutes or so! She LOVED it! When she sees her shoes, she wants me to put them on her. But then she wants to take them off again...and put them back on...yeah, I don't want to make a game out of that. I usually keep her shoes where she can't see/reach them;) She also loves our shoes. She picks them up and carries them around. I got some adorable shots of her wearing John's boots. I made a super cute digiscrap page of it, too. She likes to play with socks, too. Especially John's dirty stinky ones. Ew. And she likes to play in the laundry. She tried to take our dirty undies out of the hamper the other day...nasty. Folding laundry with her is difficult, because as soon as I get something folded and stacked up in the appropriate pile, she grabs it and UNfolds it. She likes to play with clothes. Emma also loves to look at clothes on the racks at stores. Yeah, she's definitely my little girl! She's also GREAT about changing clothes and getting dressed. Some days, I'm lazy and don't change her out of PJs, but on one of those days, she flat out WANTED to get dressed! So, I let her get dressed.

Emma likes to put things on her head. Or rather, have ME put things on her head. This is partially my fault. Ok, it probably is entirely my fault. When she got her stacking rings for her birthday, I put one of the rings on my head, and put another on hers. She thought it was SO funny, that for the longest time, she thought that's what they were for! Now, she knows how to stack them on the pole. But she mostly likes to put them on her wrists like bracelets. She loves jewelry, too, especially necklaces. Thankfully, she hasn't been that interested in earrings on the rare occassion that I wear them. She looks at them and touches them, but doesn't pull on them or anything. Phew!

Now that her hair is getting longer, I sometimes put pigtails or barrettes in her hair. It's so cute! At first, she kept pulling the little scrunchies out, but she left them alone all day Sunday. I think she likes the fact that I'm pulling it out of her face.

Emma LOVES baths in the big tub. Loves them. She plays with her duckies and other bath toys and splashes around. It's a lot of fun! But she HATES showers. I've only tried a couple of times, but she did NOT like it at all! So, baths it is;)

Most days, Emma is wide awake by the time John leaves for school or work. She gets upset when she sees him leave:( It's sweet, but sad at the same time. She does the same when I leave her with John, too - even if it's just to check the mail. But, she does this a little when other people come to visit and leave again, so I think part of it is she wants to go outside, too.

She loves to laugh! She's ticklish, so we have a lot of fun tickling her and making her laugh. She also likes to pull on John's leg hair and laughs so hard when she does! Though...that's probably because I'M laughing too, and John usually reacts very vocally to it. She laughs whenever we laugh, even if it's not because of her. The other day, I was reading a conference talk, read something funny in it, and I laughed. Well, Emma laughed, too! It was so cute!!

Emma loves to ride in or on things. If we put her in a box, she wants us to push the box around the house like a little car. John has more energy for that than I do!! He's way more fun with it than I am. She has one of those walk-n-ride toys. Now that she's walking, I converted it to the ride on vehicle. She LOVES it!!

Like all toddlers, Emma has her moments. She throws tantrums when she doesn't get what she wants. She's more likely to do this when she's tired. Her tantrums are short lived, though, because I either distract her or just wait until she's done (when distraction doesn't work or I don't have the patience for it). Usually I'm justified in saying no. For instance, when we were watching something cook in the microwave, Emma decided that the knives looked like they'd be fun to play with, so she reached for them. NO!! I pulled her away before she could grab one and she got mad. Too bad! Yeah, things like that. I know, I'm such a mean mommy for not letting her get her way...*rolls eyes*

But overall, she's a happy, sweet, loveable, cuddly, content little tot. She's always been a really easy going little girl. I don't know how we got so lucky with her. She now comes up to me and hugs me all the time and just loves to cuddle. Yes, she has her moments, but who doesn't? She brightens my life every single day. She really is a joy and we are so blessed to have such a little sweetheart in our lives. I love her so very much^_^