What We've Been Doing!

The last couple weeks have been really busy for us. One of our weekends was spent at a friend's house visiting with lots of daddy's friends from college. Emma got to meet all of their children. I was pretty interested to see how she'd do with meeting other kids her own age (for the first time).


I know that it sounds so wrong, but I was pleased that she was more interested in toys than other children. Being not an especially huge fan of kids in general, I found it easier to monitor her while playing with toys than I would have with monitoring her play with other kids. I realized that it is time to provide our little girl with more mentally stimulating toys. She really liked playing with the shape-sorter toys and blocks.

Thankfully, this past weekend, Grandma and Poppie came to visit Emma and brought her lots of fun things to play with. They brought her a noisy, light-up pink scepter (she already hit the dog in the head with it), a swing for outside (YAY!), a mylar balloon (she LOVES it), and some plastic toys that make a chain when you link them together. She's been happy ever since. Lots of more productive play is happening around here. Mommy is happy.

Emma and I are home alone all day and we don't have an air conditioner right now (it's broken and needs to be completely replaced) we've been pretty miserable. In our living room, the temperatures are probably reaching close to 100 degrees. I am not joking. Our pool isn't quite ready for swimming either, so we don't have any relief in that area. Emma and I have been taking cold baths in the bathtub together. She is really enjoying it. She loves to play with her toys and grab the water as it comes out of the faucet. She also loves for me to cradle her head in my lap so she can relax and kick her legs. She makes big splashes, feels so proud!

She's really improved her eating lately. We're able to give her larger chunks of food and she is chewing much more carefully. She really enjoys tasting new things and always remembers to comment on her favorites "MmmmMmm". Whenever Daddy and I are eating, Emma crawls up to us and begs terribly. I considered it to be somewhat rude, so we've been discussing alternate ways for her to ask us for a bite. Last night, Daddy was able to get her to politely touch (not grab!) his sleeve when she wanted more food. YAY!

Currently, we're also trying to teach her how to go down the stairs. She is masterful at climbing them, but tends to fall face-forward while going down. Since stairs are a big part of life, I'd rather work on teaching her how to handle them now instead of waiting and teaching her later. I think we'll avoid more accidents that way. Right now, we prefer to turn her so that she has to go down the stairs backward (butt-first). She doesn't remember to do that part on her own, but if we position her, she manages to get down safely. It's very encouraging!