Where to Start??

Where to start?? Emma does so many new, exciting, cute things daily and finds more ways to get into trouble daily than we can keep up with!

Emma eats oatmeal for breakfast almost every morning. Some mornings she wants us to feed her and some mornings she wants to feed herself. Since she is still working on being completely adept with utensils and oatmeal is kind of tricky, we give her some help. We're trying to teach her that oatmeal is not a finger food. It's really cute when she can't seem to get a spoonful of oatmeal and then starts to use her left hand to try to pick up some oatmeal, stops herself right before touching it, and shakes her head no, as if she's telling herself that oatmeal is not a finger food.

Emma has been very family oriented for the past week or so. Over the weekend, she was not content unless all three of us were in the same room. At one point, Daddy was reading a book to her in the living room and I went into the kitchen. She quickly came to get me, took my hand and walked me back to the living room then sat back down with Kurt to finish the book.

She is enthralled with books lately as well. Emma has always loved books, but now, she can't seem to get enough of them. I think on Saturday, she brought me at least 75% of the books off her bookshelf and we read the first page of every one. Generally, she brings us several books a night to read. She really enjoys pointing different items out and repeating words or animal sounds. One of her current favorites is Peek a Who? When prompted, she repeats that a cow says Moo!, a ghost says Boo!, a train goes Choo Choo!, and can point out several of the animals on the Zoo! page -- her favorite is the jaguar and she recently learned how to make a ssss sound for a snake.

Emma loves going down to the basement. There are all kinds of fun things to do there....like take DVDs off the shelf, or climb onto the futon to reach the xbox to turn it on, or see if the laundry room or office door is open and get into something there. She is a big fan of pushing/pulling her wagon around --I think it makes her feel big to be able to do it.

Emma watches Blue's Clues and Dora the Explorer. Luckily, she mostly just likes to have them on in the background. She rarely just sits and watches. Usually she is playing or bringing books to us during the show. She lets us know when she wants to watch them by trying to climb over the couches to the remote controls or pointing to the TV and saying either Blue or Dora. She sometimes will use sign language --dancing-- to indicate that she wants to watch Blue's Clues. At the end of Blue's Clues, she will stop whatever she is doing, stand up and wave and say Bye! to the tv. Super cute.

The other day, Emma's caretaker at daycare told me, "Emma is so smart. She is also in charge of this room. All the kids look to her to see what to do." We're still not sure if this is good or bad. We're leaning towards that probably means she's the instigator. (Obviously, her father's child!)

Emma is babbling up a storm. It's so cute to hear her trying to hold a conversation. She'll just look at us and talk and we can tell she's trying to say or ask something. In the car on the way home from daycare, I'll ask how her day was and she'll babble a couple sentences.

After we get her dressed in the morning or after her bath at night, Emma will stand up, reach out and then lean over to us and give us the biggest tightest hugs ever. It makes our hearts so happy!

There are probably a million other things I could write, but I think this blog is long enough. I'll catch up more later this week or over the weekend.