What Emma's Up To

Emma is 2yr8months. I've been doing a "One Line A Day" journal for the past couple of months in place of blogging. That way I can keep track of the cute things Emma does and says.

She is the biggest sweetheart. She likes to tell us that she loves us "whole wide world." She's still saying "my" instead of "I." So she'll say, "My love you whole wide world." Sometimes I'll even say "my" instead of "I" because I don't want her to learn the correct way of saying it. It's just so cute.

I love how she says certain words as well. She says "teef" instead of "teeth."

When Steve got home from work the other night, she made Steve stand on one end of the hallway as she ran to him to give him a kiss. She did it again and gave him a hug. Then she made Steve come running to her to give her hugs and kisses. Did I mention how awesome Emma is? God knew what he was doing by giving us a little girl.

Ever since Steve's parents came to town a couple of months ago, she has been more of daddy's girl than she ever has before. Pretty cute, although it did make me sad a couple of weeks ago when she told me that she wanted her daddy to come sleep in her room and told me that I could go to Kathy's room (what she calls our guest room). Typically she wants me or both of us to lay in her room until she falls asleep. She's still a night owl and doesn't go to sleep until at least 9 if not after 10.

We give Emma a bath or shower almost every evening. She gets grimy from school (esp in the summer since they play outside with sunscreen on). Lately I've been showering with her instead of her having a bath. Every evening she'll tell me that she's going to cry in the shower. A couple of days ago, she was even teaching me how to cry in the shower. When I pretended to cry softly, she made sure to let me know it was not loud enough. She also likes for me to hold her in the shower so that she can lean back and get water to run down her hair (but not on her face). When she does this she smiles while telling me that she has play-doh hair :-)

Emma has an amazing imagination and is very good at imaginative play. Emma is still very literal with naming her animals. Her baby doll's name is "baby" and her dog's name is "ruff, ruff." She did name her tooth fairy doll, "baby haha." Not sure about that one :-) Recently she asked for a brother and a sister (thank you Daniel Tiger episodes about siblings). She said her sister's name is "baby haha" and her brother is "baby hoho." Ha!

She loves dancing and twirling. Nothing makes her happier than wearing twirly shirts, skirts, or dresses. Other than that, she'll wear leggings. Anything with a button is forbidden. She will have a major meltdown. She refuses to wear any pants with buttons, sweaters, etc. This has to change at some point, right? On our days around the house, I let her pick out what she wears and often times she'll pick princess dresses. :-) She's to the point that she mostly likes to put on her own clothes (although often times needs assistance). That's true for shoes too. She's one independent girl!

She has been doing well at school. She's doing some better with drop offs at her daycare but some days we still have difficulty. I think it's dependent on how she's feeling and how tired she is. Before we go into school each day, we say our prayers in the car. We say essentially the same prayer every day so Emma is able to say it with me. She is very much attached to her green blanket and her Mickey Mouse doll, both of which she brings to school. Lately, she's started to get attached to her pink lovies that she held onto as a little baby. She calls them dirty little blankies, or dirty blankie. I promise that they're not dirty. I'm not sure where that name came from. The past couple of weeks she's been bringing her green blanket and her dirty blanket to school (no Mickey). When she sleeps at night, she likes to pile all of her stuffed animals and blankets on top of her. Like a crazy number. I actually will remove some so she doesn't suffocate. I've slowly moved some of her stuffed animals out of her room so that's less of an issue. Speaking of sleeping, we still lay down with her in her room until she falls asleep. I like cuddling with her. So on most nights I don't mind one bit. Usually she'll sleep through the night once she falls asleep on her floor/bed.

Emma has a number of best friends. She always talks about McKenna (her best friend from school), Miriam (who lives across the street), and her cousin Sylvie (who she loves Skyping with). We play outside pretty regularly with Miriam. I feel very grateful to have another little girl on the street for Emma to play with. There are a few neighborhood boys for her to play with as well, but she plays better with Miriam.

Emma will try some foods, although she seems to be getting more picky. We don't enforce her sitting at dinner for very long. Her favorite food without a doubt is milk. She loves it. Like really LOVES it. We have to be careful not to give her too much before dinner so she'll actually eat some food.
She loves smoothies and insists on helping make them. Usually we do OJ/bananas/vanilla yogurt/strawberries/spinach. That is a big win in my book! So most days, she'll drink some of that and ask for more. She really likes fruit, sausage, cheese, corn dogs, tomatoes. She doesn't like peanut butter (is that even possible) nor does she like hummus. I think it's a texture issue with both of them.

Potty training. We tried here and there to put underwear on her in the last several months. Her teachers thought she was ready around the age of 2. I think physically she was ready. On one occasion, she was out playing with kids in the neighborhood and she told me she had to pee. We went inside and she peed in her potty. So physically she got it. However, she didn't want to be potty trained. So we didn't push it. At the end of August (so just over 2yr7months old), she started peeing in the potty regularly (with Hershey kisses being her reward). We usually took her to school in underwear.  But often time we kept her in a diaper at home. We were really inconsistent, mostly because she had zero interest in pooping in the potty. So she regularly pooped in her underwear. Good times!
Update: As of Sept25th, Emma is pooping in the potty! Yah Emma! She initially was asking for 3 Hershey kisses (1 for peeing, 2 for pooping) which I guess was the deal... although luckily she stopped asking after a couple of days (that's a lot of chocolate... not that she would even eat it all).

Emma has an amazing memory. A couple of months ago, when we were talking about birthdays, she went and found every single one of her birthday presents and put them on the kitchen table (where she had opened them) and remembered who gave her what. I was quite impressed! We're definitely to the point that we can't buy her Christmas presents when she's with us- she's attentive and she'll remember. Although recently we bought books through her school. One of the ladies who works at her school gave us the package of books when they came in. Emma keeps talking about how Ms.Lori gave her those books. We've tried to explain that Mommy and Daddy got her those books and they were delivered to her school. Then, Ms.Lori handed us the package... but she thinks Ms.Lori gave them to her :-)

Whenever we leave the house, Emma finds one of her small Snoopy bags as her purse and fills it up so she can leave the house with a purse too. She fills it up with any toys that she can find. So my car ends up being completely filled with toys :-)

I'm forever trying to update photos on Picasa. Tune in and hopefully I'll get more uploaded before too long!