July 2007 to April 2008

As of today, July 3, 2008, Emma is 2 years and 9 months old. She is 3 feet tall and almost 30 pounds and now wears size 3T in clothes and size 6 in shoes. The pictures and info I have put into this blog only take you to April 2008, so I'm already behind (ugh...smiles). It took FOREVER to post this much info and I knew that if I tried to add more, it would not get posted, yet again. I've only been working on the journal portion off and on since September 2007!!! So, here it goes...

Emma continues to marvel and surprise us with her growing vocabulary and speech ability. Her sentences now contain 10 or more words and all the parts of speech are there, noun, pronoun, verb, etc. Emma knows our names and she will use them from time to time instead of Mommy and Daddy. The first few times she called me Reneé, it surprised me and sounded a little weird to be called that by her. Now, we are used to it. She knows her full name and can pronounce “Ethier” perfectly. If you ask her what her Daddy’s name is, she will respond, “Jared Robert.” She also knows we live in Sacramento, California.

The next 5 pictures are from December 2007 and didn't post correctly when I started doing this two days ago, so they are out of order in comparison to the rest of this ridiculously long blog.

***Keep reading/looking at pics until you get to my sign off of R'***

Now THIS picture is just too much! She has my shoes on (on the wrong feet), brushing her teeth while watching cartoons, and you cannot miss the hand in the diaper. To top it off, her t-shirt reads, "My Daddy is Dreamy and So Am I." 12-09-07

Emma LOVES my mini travel lint roller, even today (July 3, 2008), it is still a favorite toy. 12-14-07

All our friends from Sonora have girls...here are 4 of the 6 girls that were at our house for Sonora Peeps Christmas. Lauren Allen is the one smiling, Abby Weir is the little one looking at the camera w/lots of pasta sauce on her face, Keira Phan is the dark haired cutie in the corner and then of course Miss Emma. 12-15-07

Playing dress-up in one of the new princess dresses she got for Christmas WHILE wearing her Bronco blue & orange footy p.j.'s. 12-23-07

Playing her harmonica and maraca on Christmas Day. The stocking on her lap was made for her by Nana for her first Christmas in 2005. 12-25-07

"Reading" her Mickey Mouse book that Nina (Auntie Meryl) gave to her. 07-29-07

Cheese!! 08-24-07

LOTS of splashing in the bath! What you cannot see is the large bath sheet we having covering the bathroom floor each time we give her a bath, just in case. 08-24-07

Playing on the train at Fairy Tale Town in Sacramento. 08-24-07

Those cheeks!! 08-24-07

Here, Emma is imitating the hippo drinking fountain next to her. This is also VERY useful when trying to brush her teeth...We just ask her, "what does a hippo do?" to get her to open her mouth wider so we can reach her back teeth. 08-24-07

Her imagination also continues to grow in leaps and bounds, as we expect it should. She will build a camera out of her large Lego’s and was asking Jared and I to say cheese as she takes our picture. Then, she will hand the camera to us so we could take a picture of her. Emma has named only one of her stuffed animals so far, but she is really into sleeping with all of her animals (we have to limit her to only one or two at bedtime). She has named an orange bear and his name is Whopper – she really loves Whopper. She also still loves listening to “mooskit” (music) and dance to it. We have 6 or 7 CD’s for her and all of them have kids singing. She has her favorite songs that she requests from each CD. I cannot begin to count how many songs she now knows by heart. Most of them are learning songs from school mixed with nursery rhymes and Sunday school songs.

Emma is getting braver and more of a stunt toddler each day. She will do somersaults off of the couch onto pillows. The pillows are my requirement, not hers. Emma also wrestles with Jared – a little WWF time with Daddy is always a lot of fun. She will take a running start to jump on Jared’s back or chest – he’s got to be careful (smiles). Popping balloons is also something she enjoys – she will do a flying Nelson onto a balloon to try and pop it. It’s hilarious! She also enjoys jumping over and off of things – we have to keep a close eye on her.

As all children experiment with their environment, Emma's experiment for a while was walking, or running, while purposely not being able to see. If we didn't know or catch her doing it, she'd run into things from time to time during this phase. According to Jared, he used to do the exact same thing, so at least we know where she got it from! Here, she chooses to use one of her winter knit hats for the experiment. As a side note, she is wearing the matching gloves to this hat on her feet. If you click on the pic once to enlarge, you can see the thumb of the glove hanging out of her croc shoe. 08-26-07

Performing stunts off the couch is ALWAYS a good time. 08-26-07

Talking to her toy cell phone while wearing my straw cowboy hat. 08-28-07

Ride that moose, but don't drop the cell phone ! 08-28-07

Part of her dress-up play this day included wearing a swimsuit she was given. 08-30-07

The "toughy face" still is used on many occasions as a favorite facial expression of hers. 09-01-07

Wearing Daddy's socks (yes, they are clean) while buckled into her booster seat. She loved clipping herself in, getting unclipped, clipping herself back in, and so on...and so on...and so on. 09-05-07

Let's see how Daddy's socks look on the arms. 09-05-07

Peek-a-boo! Wearing the "mask" Daddy made for her. 09-19-07

A little WWF time with Daddy...her version of a Flying Nelson onto his back. 09-24-07

Coloring with the Steiff Teddy AJ (cousin Jen) gave to Emma. 09-29-07