Our little ham

Out of all the toys she has to choose from, she chose daddy's empty Ensure bottle. I added a little rice inside and now she REALLY likes this "toy."

Pretty sure she's teething again. She gnaws on anything she can get her mouth on - especially this teething pacifier. (And once last night, she tried to chew on my leg - ouch!!) The part she's chewing on is a bumby berry. Notice the slobber dripping from her elbow?
Standing all the time.... and consequently falling a lot too.

Enjoying her morning walk. It was 63 out this morning - perfect weather for walking!

And here she is trying to be funny. She's so much fun!

Climbing

Emelyn has become more and more confident pulling up in the last few days. It's amazing how much she changes daily. These pictures are from two days ago and this morning she kept going straight for the couch to pull up on to stand.

Pulling open the DVD drawer...

...and doesn't mind that dad's in the way... she climbs right over him to get the remote out of the chair...

Changes

Before I put any pictures up, I want to give a shout out to the men in my life.

Happy 55th birthday (yesterday) dad.

Happy 3rd birthday today, Joe.
Happy Father's day Jake and Dad. I have to say I've truly been blessed with two amazing men in my life - my dad who taught me what a husband and father should be like and was a living example of that man and Jake who IS that father and husband for me today. (Jake wouldn't be the husband/father he is if it wasn't for his dad so I guess I've been blessed by 3 men!)

It seems things are changing every day around here. One day Emelyn is sitting by herself quite wobbly and now she can get to a sitting position on her own from any starting position. Last week Emelyn was scooting/starting to crawl and now she's a little speed demon that can work those legs by crawling faster than I ever thought possible! Also, just in the last week she has started pulling herself up to a standing position on just about everything - barstool (scary), chairs, couches, entertainment center and us.

On a funny note, I try to keep our house clean - in fact I have a daily schedule of which load of laundry I do as well as which house cleaning tasks I do to make sure I stay on top of things each day. Now that Emelyn is crawling I'm starting to realize some things need tweaked. If you could have seen the knees on her sleeper yesterday morning after 30 minutes of crawling you would agree that sweeping and scrubbing apparently needs done more than just twice a week! I had no idea our floor could get so dirty so quickly - and I have no idea HOW it gets so dirty either!! Makes me wonder if I need to steam our carpets more often!

Anyways... on to pictures...

Emelyn crawling/cleaning my kitchen floor

Deep in thought as she takes in everything outside

Our first bloomed gladiolus of the season!

Emelyn's basket of toys. Each morning she takes the toys out one by one then puts the basket on her head. Not sure why this is so entertaining to her, but it keeps me entertained!

Smiles and laughter

I'm not sure if it's just this age, or if Emelyn is an exceptionally happy baby, but here is a glimpse of what she's like while playing (assuming she's not hungry or tired!) Needless to say, seeing this makes me love my job even more! (BTW - when we ask Emelyn how big she is she usually puts both hands over her head with a big smile.)

On the move

This week we've had a lot of fun helping out with VBS. I tried to get to the church to help prepare and serve supper to the kids before VBS and then picked up afterwards. (I say tried because Emelyn has been taking super long naps lately and sometimes doesn't wake up until 4!)From there, Jake and I went to a series on treasuring Christ for the parents (excellent) while the kids were at their VBS stations.

While we were doing this, Emelyn enjoyed her time in the nursery with her friend Lauren and Ms. Mildred and Ms. Louise. These two ladies are AMAZING. Sometimes I think they're a better mom to Emelyn than I am - they are SO patient and do nothing but love on her and serve her every need while we're away. They faithfully watch Emelyn and her "friends" every Sunday morning while we're in Sunday School too - it's almost like getting some Grandma time each week for Emelyn!

Ms. Louise giving Emelyn her supper

Lauren and Ms. Mildred
On another note, Emelyn is moving more and more every day. For some reason she loves our tile floor and is constantly crawling around on it and clapping on the tile with her hands and feet - I think she just likes the noise!

Also, she's found a new use for her exersaucer - it's now her jungle gym. She loves to crawl through it over and over and over.

And finally, Melissa and David stopped by on their way to their new home in Pasadena, CA! It was so nice to see them. As long as Jake's health improves and he doesn't have to have surgery, we're hoping to fly out to see them sometime - not sure when yet, but hoping all the same! There's a non-stop flight that goes out of NW Arkansas every Friday and Monday directly to Los Angeles and the flight is anywhere from $49-$99/one way. I hope we can take advantage of this while it lasts - it would be such an inexpensive (somewhat), easy (no connecting flights to rush to catch) and fun weekend trip sometime!

Father's Day came early

Father's Day came early for me this year! Emelyn (& Alisha) was so excited to give me my gift for Father's Day that she couldn't wait another week. Emelyn and Alisha made me a wonderful DVD of pictures of me and Emelyn from the day she was born until now. It was amazing! I remember the day she was born like it was yesterday. She has grown up so much and so fast. I can't believe she is already 8 months old. I couldn't have asked for anything more for Father's Day than to get this DVD and spend the day with my family! I love both of you!

How could I forget?!?!

Melissa on left

Not only is today Emelyn's 8 month birthday, but my sister, Melissa, is graduating today with her PhD from Ohio University as well. Congratulations, Mel! We wish we could be there to celebrate with you and look forward to seeing you Tuesday!!

8 Months

Our smiling precious girl is 8 months old today!!

Giving dad a hug before he leaves for work - makes daddy's day!!!

I think this month has been by far my favorite yet - it seems I say that every month - but this time it's especially true. Emelyn's little personality has emerged and she spontaneously breaks out into laughter, reaches out for us to hold her, loves to snuggle in, and squeals with delight randomly through out the day. Here's the traditional monthly summary:

• She sits up by herself and crawls everywhere
• She's starting to pull up on things
• She loves to eat - two days ago she tried plums - they were too tart for me to eat but as always, she devoured them! It makes me wonder if she'll even pucker at lemons?
• A few new quirks - snorting and repeating sounds - one night this week Jake burped and she looked at him, grunted and then laughed. So Jake grunted back and she repeated etc.. etc... for quite some time. It was hilarious!
• Each morning when we walk we hear birds chirping and dogs barking and Emelyn goes back and forth between high pitched squeals and grunts to imitate the sounds.
• She's full of hugs. Anytime we're holding her she'll wrap her arms around us and lay her head down for a few moments, then looks up and smiles at us. :) Precious.
• Emelyn nurses 5 times a day, and eats 3 small meals. She also still naps at least 3 times a day.
• She goes to sleep each night between 7:30pm - 8:00pm and then wakes up around 7am.
• A funny about bedtime: we use to rock her to sleep at night but a few months ago she decided she was done with that so now we just lay her down. In the last week or so though, she's realized how much we love hugs so as soon as we walk into her room, she looks around, then clamps her feet around us and gives us a great big hug. It works for a brief moment, but we still end up laying her down. :)
• She claps her hands (sort of - see previous video)
• And finally - one of my favorites - she likes to sing. Anytime one of us starts to sing to her, she chimes right in to make it a duet.

New quirk

Yes, I know. I've been on a blogging streak lately. But this is just too cute not to share, and I don't know how long this quirk will stay around so wanted to share before it disappears.

Yesterday and today Emelyn has been snorting. At first I thought she was stuffed up. She's not. She just likes to do this every chance she gets. The video below is during her first bites of plums.

Torn

For quite some time now, Jake and I have talked about putting up a fence, adding on to our patio and enjoying some backyard evenings - especially now that we have Emelyn. But now that the time has come I just don't know if we can do it. You see, our neighbors have 4 adorable little boys, and they don't have a fence either. Our yard becomes their soccer field, water gun battlefield and place to play tag almost every day. In the evenings, somehow 4 becomes about 10 kiddos as the other neighborhood kids come over. Our yard always looks like a mess because of them so we've yet to actually put any real effort into taking care of it (other than mowing of course! - oh yeah - did I mention I caught them planting seeds out there once!? :) Now that we have Emelyn, we know we will soon be using "our" yard - hopefully some patio furniture for meals outside, a swingset to let her play on etc... Unfortunately, I know what the boys next door are like - rough. They are the sweetest, most courteous little guys, but I think boys are just rough in general - I'm sure anything we put outside would soon become tag base or the goalie markers and from there, over time, ruined. I hate to take away their playing field (their yard is quite tiny which is why they are always in ours), and I'm sure someday Emelyn will want to play with them too and so the idea of fencing her in along with her toys seems a little weird. We have saved up the money and are in the process of getting quotes this week. *Sigh* I guess we'll see what happens!

On a side note... I was quite excited this week when I found a "$50 off a $100 purchase" coupon at Old Navy Weekly! I have to use it by tomorrow so I'm excited to go today (hopefully.) Also, Huggies has this "Enjoy the Ride" rewards program where you receive codes from Huggies that you can redeem online for points, and then use those points to enter into sweepstakes. I'm not even sure why I decided to do it since I rarely win anything, BUT I accumulated 20-30 points the morning I signed up for their rewards program (by signing up I get Huggies coupons in the mail each month which is why I decided to sign up - goodness knows we use them!) I decided to use all the points at once by entering for a $25 Visa gift card over and over. About 3 minutes later I had used all of the points (takes 2 points to enter each time) AND I had WON 2 $25 gift cards. Last week they came in the mail so this will work out great with my Old Navy coupon. I realize this sounds silly to most, but for someone who has no shorts right now, this is super exciting. :)

Clapping

This will be my final post for the night - I'm trying to stay awake until Jake gets home from work!

Still gets me every time...

In the blink of an eye

Tonight as I was giving Emelyn her bath, I couldn't help but reminisce that it seems just yesterday she was getting her first bath. My how things have changed, but I still can't figure out when everything changed!

This was Emelyn's first bath:

Here she is over 7 months later (I might add that she was not very happy that I took her out of her cold bathwater):

New tooth!

Yesterday morning while the three of us were getting in an early morning walk, Jake spontaneously asked what I thought of going to Tulsa for lunch. Long story short, we did exaclty that! Once Emelyn woke up from her morning nap we headed west and had a fun relaxing day eating, shopping and visiting family.

While we were out eating, Emelyn grabbed onto my drink coaster and started chewing on it. While I was digging pieces of cardboard out of her mouth I noticed she has a new tooth that is completely in. I don't know how I didn't notice it before - it wasn't one of the two middle teeth on top, but one next to those. She now has 3 pearly whites!

Jake and Grandpa save the day!!

This morning when I took milk into the garage to put in the freezer, I noticed the freezer wasn't as cool as usual. The light was still on, but it didn't take long to realize that the freezer wasn't running no matter what I put the temperature on. Ugh! The only thing I could think of was "All that milk will have been frozen for nothing!!"

So I called three different repair men, and it was gong to cost $75 just to have someone come look at the freezer so I called grandpa. He walked me through exactly what to unscrew, take off and check and then narrowed it to 3 possible problems. The first possibility was that the thermostat may not be working. He told me to unhook two wires, cut back the protective coat, then find a piece of copper around the house to connect the two wires together then plug the freezer back in - if it kicked on, I have a bad thermostat. To most, splitting wires likely sounds easy. And most people probably have copper wire laying around. Not me. I called Jake at work and he very sweetly agreed to come home and do it for me since tinkering with wires makes me very nervous! In no time at all, Jake had it figured out and the freezer kicked on!

I called various appliance part stores and finally found one 15 miles away that had the thermostat in stock and would reserve it for me... $40. Emelyn and I packed into the van and headed that way. Once on interstate, I called Grandpa to thank him, and to give him the diagnosis. He mentioned that sometimes spiders will crawl into the thermostat and make it stop working and that I can try to use WD-40 to "blow out" any spiders that might be inside. I was already half way to the store and Jake was on his way back to work, so I decided to go ahead and buy the part just to be safe.

Once I finally made it to the parts store, the people at the front desk had no idea what I was talking about, the man I talked to was out on a service call and their computer showed that they had nothing similar to what I needed in stock and usually don't.

So back home I went. Ugh. By this time, I was in need of a shower and was starving .... Emelyn was starving and had a full diaper. Since Jake had things "rigged" to work temporarily, I went ahead and fed Emelyn, changed her clothes, took a shower, ate etc... and then went out to look at the freezer. Once again, Grandpa was right! A few squirts of WD-40 later the wires were hooked back together and the freezer kicked on.

And since no one really wants to see a picture of our now working freezer, here's a picture of Emelyn on our walk BEFORE working on the freezer. :) It was in the 60's out but the sun was shining hence the reason that she has her PJ's on with a sun hat. :)

Midweek thoughts...

• Jake's medicine came yesterday afternoon and he took the first 4 injections this morning. Please join us in praying for healing as well as minimal side effects - the side effect papers were 4 pages long - I'm sure most are "rare but severe" and I'm sure all of these side effects are the same as any other drug but it was still a little alarming to see everything capitalized, hi-lited and in bold letters. Some that were noted as very important are: avoid anyone that has a cold or an infection, this medicine increases your risk of developing cancer, do not take any live vaccines (mumps, measles etc..), tell your Doctor immediately if you have a fever, cough, sore throat or chills and finally instructions on what to look for on a regular basis. This might be hard because Jake is commonly cold (he's in sweat pants in the evening and Emelyn and I are in tanks and shorts!)
• I love to make homemade bread. Love it. But during the summer I avoid it because I don't want our house to heat up from the oven.... So, I was on Craigslist looking for a food processor to assist in making baby food and saw a new listing for a bread machine - the exact one I've been eyeing and saving for (has a 13 hour delay so that bread can be freshly baked when you wake up.) AND it was listed as "rarely used" for $10. I immediately emailed the person to see if I could meet them somewhere in town to look at/buy the machine. When the person emailed me back I thought their name was familiar - turns out it's someone who's dad coached me in T-ball when I was little and we were on the same team. Needless to say, neither of us knew the other is in Arkansas. Small world. And I'm smelling some homemade bread in a nice cool house as I type this. :)
• Emelyn's cousins were in town over the weekend. Here they are playing with Emelyn. So cute. In the first picture, they were acting like monkeys in hopes that they could get her to laugh. In the second picture, Cameron was reading her a book.



• I think Emelyn is teething again. At least she is acting like she did the last time teeth emerged - clingy, wanting to snuggle a lot, drooling and chewing on everything.
• Finally, we have a small problem in our house - there seems to be a growling wild animal around that is just too cute to get rid of. (Of course, since the camera's out, she wouldn't growl very much!)