Emily's word and tricks of the week

This week's word is "nana." Which is Emily's word for banana. She loves her some bananas and when I offered a piece of one on Thursday she said nana.

This week's tricks and/or skills are standing solo,retrieving her ball when asked to, and handing me her sippy cup when she wants more milk. The standing solo thing was the most exciting of all of these for us. On Thursday, she was holding onto the couch, as she does everyday, when she decided to let go without immediately plopping down afterward. She stood without holding on for about 5 seconds. She,Josh, and I were all quite pleased with her new skill. She was so pleased that she decided to show off for us a few more times.

The State Fair

Well, Emily kicked off the week by going to her first NC state fair. I knew that it wasn't really a fun place to be for a 1 yr old but we took her anyway. She is so laid back when it comes to new experiences I thought it wouldn't hurt to take her. She loves being out and about because she loves socializing. She generally smiles at people when they are paying her no mind. So showing her farm animals really didn't impress her since they're not people. Though all the cock-a-doodle dooing at the chicken exhibit left her looking perplexed. Other than that she just chilled and at one point fell asleep. Her most exciting moment was trying some cotton candy. It seemed to both delight and intrigue her. My nieces and my 2 older nephews went also. The highlight for us was sending them to check out the "World's Smallest Horse." We kept asking if they were sure if it was truly a horse or just a dog with a mane glued on. They swear he was real.We had a pretty good time overall.

Fun times at the pumpkin patch

We journeyed out to a pumpkin patch with my family today. All of Emily's cousins on my side of the family were there. We all had a good time. There was farm animal gawking and a big plastic tube slide. The line for the slide was about as long as one you might find at the fair. Josh decided that Emily might have fun going down it with him (yeah I'm sure it was just for her). We joked about just sending her down by herself but we don't think Emily or the state of North Carolina would forgive us too quickly. She didn't seem to have much of a reaction to the whole ordeal. By the time Josh and she appeared at the end, some of us thought she was napping on him. We also enjoyed a hayride to the actual pumpkin patch away from all the brouhaha. Emily seemed to enjoy this and hanging around the pumpkins the most.

Kisses

I discovered that Emily knows what "kiss" means yesterday. Today I said kiss and she leaned in to let me kiss her on the lips and then kept leaning in so I could kiss her a few more times. It's the small things. :)

Funny stuff

Elmo

Emily LOVES her talking Elmo doll. We picked him out for her with some of her birthday money about a month ago. It was between him and Cookie Monster (one of my faves). We showed her both and she seemed to chat with Elmo more. So we picked him with a little hesitation from me. At the time I thought Elmo was slightly....ok very annoying and the toy market was so saturated with his products. But seeing the delight Emily was expressing when holding him made me quickly reassess my feelings for the little red guy. I now love him only because she loves him. Everyday she has the same reaction when she finds him in her toy basket. She takes him in her arms and hugs him to her chest while smiling profusely. She generally speaks a few of her words to him and I just sit back and smile at the whole production. Anyway, I decided a couple of weeks ago that I would make sure she would know his name since he currently is her best non human friend (aside from her doggies). So today I decided to test to see if she knew his name as I do almost everyday. I wasn't sure if she knew it until today. I asked her where he was while she was sitting across the living room from him. She looked around for a few seconds, spotted him, crawled to him, and picked him up. I was pleased to see that she knew that her Elmo was the little red chatty thing that she has loved since meeting him in Target a month ago.

Emily @ 13 months

I'm just going to try to bring anyone who is interested up to speed on what Emily is up to at the ripe old age of 13 months. She is keeping me busy with her curiosity. She will put anything in her mouth at least once. Her absolute favorite thing is our dogs' food. She acts like it's candy. She has learned the word no but she can't bring herself to resist temptation when it comes to dog food. Luckily she has started to hold her tongue out for you to take things out of her mouth. I guess she wants to be spared of our fingers digging around in there. She also loves playing with her toy piano and drum. She absolutely loves music and will dance by rocking or swaying to the beat to anything that has a beat. Lately she has been swaying in slow motion. Which is hilarious. She also loves playing in the bath,playing peek a boo (she'll hide her face and then when it reappears I say peek a boo),spinning around and hopping on her butt (she's mighty tricky),looking and talking to herself in the mirror, and cuddling her stuffed animals and her Elmo doll (she'll pat their backs while hugging them).Emily also enjoys playing in the nursery at church and loves everyone she meets. She'll go to anyone and you'd think she's known the person forever. One slightly amusing story is when we went to visit Josh's grandma in August. We were all sitting in the living room chatting when his cousin (who she had only seen once when she was 3 months old) came in the door. Emily looked up at her and reached for her. It was like she was saying excuse me, aren't you going to hold me? Lately I've noticed that she has figured out how to use most of her toys (i.e. she can turn pretty much all of them on and knows how they work, she also knows how to get off of her rocking zebra etc.). Which is fun because I love seeing her brain at work.She has also started putting objects inside of other objects (such as small toys inside of a bucket she has) and then taking them back out and starting the process all over again. She has also started to let me read to her (she used to just grab the book out of my hands). While outside she likes to swing and play with the grass.She just recently got a little slide that has a landing at the top that she likes to jump on. She's not too sure of the actual slide yet. She's a very cautious little girl and so it scares her a little. I think her cautiousness is the reason she isn't walking independently yet. She can if you hold her by one hand and walk with her but as soon as you let go she plops down. She'll climb brick steps with ease but for some reason thinks walking by herself is the scariest thing ever. I know she'll get it one of these days but I'm getting a little anxious. At least she's been cruising more lately and has been acting like she'd rather walk to something than crawl to it. She has also been practicing standing from a sitting position without holding on to something. She's done it once successfully. It's so cute to watch. Overall she's a laid back kid and I think she's going to do everything at her own pace. Anyway, in other news she is getting her 8th tooth and loves to have her teeth brushed. She says "num num" (I think her version of yum yum) when she sees it. She usually says this when she really likes something (such as ice cream sandwiches and Reese's pb cups). She can also say up, ma ma or mommy, da da or daddy(almost everytime the phone rings she assumes it's Josh calling and so she'll point at it and say "da da"), doggie,baby, and bye bye (while waving). Speaking of pointing and saying da da, the other day she was on her slide when she saw our neighbor. He, like her daddy, has a shaved head and so when she saw him she pointed at him and said da da a couple of times. It was quite amusing and I'm just glad he didnt' hear her. She will also clap if you say clap and will give you something if you say thank you. Well, I guess that's enough rambling for one night.

October 08

Well, this is my very first blog. For right now I'm writing it to replace the good ole pen and paper to keep track of the happenings in our life. So one day I can look back and remind myself of what was going on way back when. I'll probably talk mostly about Emily since she's such a huge part of my life. Anyway, I'm currently a stay at home mom and I'm enjoying mostly every minute of it. Josh is currently working as an assistant meat market manager at Harris Teeter and is trying to avoid chopping off any other digits (as most probably know he lost half of one back in 05). We are living la vida loca in Clayton, NC in our cozy home that I've enjoyed putting together since moving in back in 04. We occasionally get out on our pontoon boat and get to go camping from time to time. We took Emily on her first camping trip back in August. We went to the NC mountains. She did quite well and the only incident we had was a raccoon that didn't want to leave our food alone. I also enjoy spending Sundays with my parents, sisters, and their families. One of my sisters (Jennifer) will be having her first and only girl in February. I'm looking forward to Emily having a girl cousin to play with here in the Raleigh area because she's the only granddaughter around these parts (she has 3 girl cousins in TN). Other than all of that, our life for the most part is pretty uneventful and we like it that way.