Springtime!

Springtime is here! We have been loving the outdoors. Our TV time has cut back significantly. We spend a lot of our free time in our front yard and have started going to parks as well. With the nicer weather, bugs come unfortunately. Emma is not a fan. She tells "toes" (mosquitoes) and bees to go away. She definitely learned to scream at some point too. If a bee gets too close, she will scream like you wouldn't believe. Ha! Then she'll tell me that she's scared. I guess she gets this from me. I do not like bugs. I'm not looking forward to the roaches in our house either. Thankfully we have a bug service so we haven't seen too many roaches yet. Oh the joy of living in the woods.

Emma's hair color is definitely blonde but it's quite a bit darker on the top of her head. It totally looks like she had her hair dyed at some point :-) I think it's due to her wearing a hat outside all winter, so my guess is that it will lighten up quite a bit this summer.

We went back to Tennessee at the end of March. Emma did such an awesome job on the flights. I feel so thankful that I have a good little traveler. There is no longer a direct flight between Memphis and Durham :-( At the airport, she even peed in the potty. She was not a fan of the airplane potties. Fair enough. There is hardly any room. Anyways, she LOVED seeing Suds, Pops, and her cousins!! On the plane ride home, she kept asking to go back to Tennessee. I think that Emma thinks that Tennessee is Suds and Pops home. When we were driving around in Memphis, she kept asking to go back to Tennessee :-) 

Anna's coronation dress

Sleepover!

Cuddles with one of Emma's favorites!

 Baby shower for Tres, Melanie, and baby Emma!!

Speaking of potty training, I think her daycare takes her to the potty some. At home, she's usually too distracted playing so doesn't ask to go to the potty. I think we could probably potty train her now if we wanted to. But I assume that the longer we wait, the easier it will be. Perhaps in the next couple of months we'll really try. Right before she turned two, we let her go to school in underwear. She didn't have any accidents at school (until I picked her up... she pooped... and I stepped in it when I had her at the potty). Then when we got home, she peed twice in her underwear even when I kept asking. I think she's doing better now though. Every night she pees in the potty either before or after her bath. She initially would sit on the potty even if she didn't have to pee. She'd ask for milk and just sit there until she had to go. Now she's doing better and not sitting for as long. Also, while we're doing her bedtime, she'll tell us if she needs to go potty. I feel like she's partially procrastinating so she doesn't have to go to bed. But she will pee. So she understands the cues. She's pooped in the potty a few times but it's definitely not the norm yet.

Bedtime is still a little challenging. I really blame ourselves since we don't stick to the same exact schedule every night. So she tries to procrastinate every evening. Typically we aim to do bathtime at 7:30pm. She usually resists getting in the bath but she typically enjoys it once she's in there. Her favorite bath time activity is to put her little birds on the edge of the tub, then she puts washcloths on them. She's pretending the washcloths are blankets. She kisses them goodnight after they're tucked in. Then she says to us, "Shhh, be quiet, birdies sleeping." It's pretty darn cute! After bath time, she puts her jammies on in our room. She is very independent and insists on picking out her own pajamas. She doesn't care what she wears for the most part, she just has to get her pajamas and diaper from her dresser. If you pick it out, she will put it back in the dresser then pick it out herself (sometimes it's the exact same thing you picked out). Then she gets to watch a show in our bed while she drinks her milk. We aim to put her to bed at 9pm after teeth brushing but sometimes she doesn't go to sleep til after 10:30. She usually asks to watch Sylvie swinging (thanks Marilyn's instagram acct). We have to stay in the room with her until she goes to sleep but then we can leave and she pretty much stays in her own bed until the morning. She's definitely a night owl. When we flew home from TN, she stayed up past 1am without sleeping in the evening. You could tell she was really tired but she didn't even cry. She was just taking it all in. We had a few comments about how good Emma was being. Go Emma!

Emma still LOVES her milk. She would happily drink milk everyday and nothing else. Unfortunately she has become a picky eater. Some of the meals we make aren't ideal for little kids (spicy, etc), so half the time, she gets different food from us for dinner, which isn't super ideal. She still loves her strawberry smoothies, but I've started adding blueberries/blackberries and spinach. I feel less guilty that she's not a big veggie eater since she's getting the spinach in her smoothies. She's always loved fruit and that's still true. Her new favorite food is corndogs (they're vegetarian/soy) from Trader Joes. She loves dipping it into the ketchup and mustard.

Overall I think Emma is doing better at daycare. She still has a hard time at drop off on most days. I let her take her blanket and Mickey to the classroom where I drop her off to help out.
Last month, when I picked her up, she told me that she wanted to stay and play. I couldn't believe my ears. It made me so happy to hear that, so I actually let her stay and play for 5 more minutes until she was ready. They were playing outside (but in the covered area since it was raining).
We were paying for her to be in a program called Tumblin Tots once a week. They jump around, get on a mini trampoline, play with parachutes, etc. They introduced all the kids to it, then her teachers let me know how much she liked it. I'm not sure if Emma really liked it or if they told all the parents that. So we signed up in January and she did it in February too. My mom and I watched one day in Feb (we were sneaky and watched from another room so she couldn't see us). She cried throughout the first bit, so we ended up leaving. I didn't want to see her sad and figured she was upset since we had just dropped her off. One of the other moms was watching too and mentioned how emotional Emma is every morning. Awesome. I know she didn't mean to say something upsetting to me, but clearly, Emma doesn't calm down quickly when I drop her off in the morning.
Anyways, it turns out that Emma really didn't like this class (not sure why). In March, they ended up sending her back to her classroom because she was so upset  during her tumbling class and the following week, they didn't send her to the class at all since she got hysterical when the Tumblin Tots teacher came to her classroom to get the kids. I tried talking to her about it but she can't express herself well enough to tell me why she didn't like it. I just felt so guilty because every Friday I would talk to her about the class on the way to school since I thought she like it and I wanted her to be excited about it. Fail. If anything, it probably distressed her hearing me talking about it.

In terms of language development, she's talking up a storm. We understand most of what she says at this point. Here are some of my favorite things she's been saying:
She was saying "probably" in almost every sentence. It was not used correctly though. She meant to say that she really wanted to do something. She clearly learned that from us :-) 
So she'd say, "I'm probably going to watch Mickey." Which meant, I'm definitely going to watch Mickey so put it on :-) Hehe.
Lately, she's been asking ,"what in doing?" instead of asking "what are you doing?" I think she started to realize that she was saying it incorrectly and started saying it right... so we started to say "what in doing"... maybe that's not good for her language development, but it's so darn cute.
I love listening to her sing along to Frozen. My favorite line that she sings is, "the hot and the cold are both so intense, put them together it just makes sense" - always makes me laugh!

She loves big kids (or any kid older than she is). For example, on Easter Sunday, I wanted her to wear a dress to church. I had two options for her, both which were pink dresses. She loves pink but she's very particular about what she wears. It was a big fight getting her to put on one of the dresses. Finally she gave in and wore it to church, but as soon as we got home, she wanted to take it off. Fair enough. So we took it off. Well, later in the afternoon, she saw Miriam (the 3yr old girl across the street that she plays with) wearing a pink dress. She couldn't find her pink dress fast enough to put it back on. Ha! Speaking of clothes, she's very particular about what she wears. I'm starting to ask her opinions when we shop for clothes. If I like it and she doesn't, I don't get it since I"m not willing to battle her.

Emma loves playing with Miriam. She's always asking what Miriam is doing. Emma plays outside with her on most days (at least the days we're not working). Lately they have been taking their shopping carts and they pretend to go grocery shopping. They go around the cove to pick up different items. They play so well together. I feel pretty thankful that she has kids on the street to play with. She's less interested in playing with the boys on the street, but my guess is that's because we don't play with them as much.

Emma did great at church on Easter Sunday. She sat through the Duke Chapel service with us. Quite impressive! She just soaked it all in. We only really go to church on the big holidays. I want Emma to go to Sunday school when she gets a little older. But I really hate the idea of dropping her off at a room to play, since she's in school most of the week. I like my time with her. When she gets a little older and is actually learning Bible stories, I think I"ll be more willing to drop her off at Sunday school.

Emma is very attached to her blanket and her Mickey Mouse. She takes them everywhere with her. She also makes sure that I get Minnie Mouse to snuggle with at night, and she makes sure that Steve has "Wobbles" the moose. She insists that Wobbles go to work with Steve everyday. If she finds him at home while Steve is at work, she gets distraught. She even woke up in the middle of the night crying  and as soon as Steve came in, she gave him Wobbles, then she happily went back to sleep.

Emma is getting more active. She can actually hop now. She used to try put would just bend her nears and then stand straight. She can actually get some air when she jumps now. Fun! She loves wearing her running shoes. She can run pretty fast too. She has been begging for a scooter lately. Here is her first time on a scooter. She did pretty well. She's pretty persistent when she wants something. The girl has a good memory! We're thinking we should wait until next summer, in hopes of decreasing the likelihood of broken bones!

Hoping to update Picasa photos this weekend! Fingers crossed!