One step at a time

Today started out as an uneventful day. Wes took the car to work because of the rain, so that meant Emeline and I were housebound. We were going to at least go for a walk, but due to some crazy napping...or anti-napping...we just didn't get around to it.

But in trying to occupy this little ball of energy for a while, I got to see some first steps! After she did it I set up the camera and tried to get it on video. I sent it to Wes so he could enjoy it too. This is the best we got.

Later when Wes got home, we tried to get her to do it again (but she was clearly getting tired), and we took some more photos. Here are some of the takes.

Here are some other photos from the evening.

I'm sure we're still quite a ways from full on walking, but we'll enjoy one step at a time!

Pleasure Point and Emeline Ave

We took an impromptu trip to the beach over President's Day weekend. Just a short afternoon trip, and it even rained a bit, but it was still lovley to get away and see the water for a while. We walked around Pleasure Point and watched the surfers for a while. Then we walked around downtown Santa Cruz. Before we hit the road to head home, we made a point to drive by the exit for Emeline Avenue so we could get a picture of Emeline's name on a real sign! I have a feeling once she gets old enough to notice this, it might be a coastal tradition :).

Bumper fun and nursery photos

When we picked out the wall decals from Ikea for Emeline's nursery way back when, we also got some matching fabric. It took me forever to decide what to do with the fabric. Emeline's crib was in our room for a long time, but since we moved into the nursery, I thought it would be nice to have a bumper to go with the room.

I'd done some sewing back in high school, but obviously, that's been a long time. So I knew I needed some help to get this done...and a sewing machine for that matter. Jessie has done some beautiful sewing of her own, so I asked if she'd be willing to show me the ropes, and she generously agreed. We had a fun afternoon of cutting, talking, pinning, and sewing, the kids played, and we finished up a beautiful new bumper for Emeline.

Here are some photos...

Jessie, sewing like the wind to finish the last step, so we could end in time for dinner.

Jack and Emeline looking mischievous.

The finished product!

Ribbons galore :). I picked out a ribbon that accented the foam tiles in the nursery.

And finally, some pics of the whole nursery. It's actually changed shape quite a bit since we had it all finished for the first time a week before she was born. (I actually just looked back at that old post on March 22, 2010, and Jessie commented that we had 40 days left on our countdown. Little did we all know that it would really only be 7 days!)

Thanks for the help Jessie, only 11 months later, the finishing touches are complete :)

Random Recents

A few random photos from recently that were too cute to leave out, but had no where in particular to go.

Cruising in her diaper...

Fat and happy....it's true, what can we say. :)

Fun with shadows.

Potty time :)

Sharing cheerios

Cheerios taste better when you share them.

Monkey kisses

In the past few days I've really started to see how much Emeline understands about her world. She's started responding to things we say to her in a way that shows us she really understands us. For example, when we say and sign "all done", she pulls at her bib and burp cloth after eating cause she knows that after she's done eating we take them off. I also started singing the ABC song in Spanish, the way her musical table does, and then she crawled over to the table and made it play the music. It was so much fun! The latest thing is we've been telling her to give kisses to her stuffed animals and she'll give them a big open mouth baby kiss on their mouths. The linguist in me is just going nuts wondering how many words she knows and when she'll start trying to say some herself. But in the mean time, we're having lots of fun watching her learn. Here's a video with the monkey kisses. Pardon my poor Spanish ;)

Yummy noises

We love to listen to Emeline's yummy noises when she's eating something she really enjoys. She makes these noises when eating a variety of things, but always for avocado, sweet potatoes (or sweet potato chicken stew), peas (or peas mixed with most things), turkey meatballs, tuna, and most definitely cheese!

Here's a video of Emeline having some cheese. It's a bit long, and you have to wait a while to hear the yummy noises, but you also can see how focused she is when she eats cheese. Other foods don't compare!

Since Emeline has been teething, we tried giving her one of the pucks of frozen pureed peas I made, and that was a big hit. (I call them pucks cause they are shaped like a mini hockey puck after I freeze the puree in a mini muffin tin.) So today I gave her a puck of frozen pureed apple, and once she got over holding something so cold in her hands, we even got to hear the yummy noises. Enjoy!