New Moves and Socks

Two days ago, Emma added a new dance move to her rapidly expanding dance-move repertoire. She now waves her arms, nods her head, and spins in a circle. She does this only for songs that have a heavy beat. Sometimes she screams in excitement. As far as I know, this dance move is completely Emma's invention.

Emma has also started to dress herself. She most likes to help with putting on her shirts and her socks. Usually, I put her head through the neck opening while Emma finds an armhole to stick an arm through. She's very helpful! Emma also likes to dig socks out of our laundry pile (dirty or clean, she's equal opportunity sock-searcher) and lay them across my feet. She knows that there is an opening at the top of the sock, but she's not really strong enough to stretch it open and pull it over my toes correctly.

Lastly, Emma is a huge fan of dried anchovies. I must say, I like them almost as much as she does. We ate at the Korean restaurant this week and she enjoyed kelp, pickled garlic cloves, anchovies, dried fish, squid, bamboo, marinated mushrooms, and other fermented fruits and veggies. I am so proud of Emma's willingness to eat most everything.

More reasons not to vaccinate...

Most people know that I am staunchly against vaccinating my child (and my animals too, but that's another matter). There are thousands of informational sites dedicated to this topic, but I really liked this one. It's a blog kept by some parents who have also chosen not to vaccinate. They've included a list of a few of the dangerous ingredients that exist in some of the vaccines many people consider to be the most safe. Enjoy!

14 Months Old!

Emma is now 14 months old. She's changed so much.

In the last 2 weeks or so, she's begun to wean herself. She goes to bed around 9:30 and sleeps until 10:30 or 11:00. She doesn't really take a morning nap anymore and doesn't usually need fed during the night. I do feed her once around 6am and then she goes back down until wake-up time. Very doable.

Emma nurses less during the day as well. She tends to eat 4-5 times daily as opposed to once every 2 or 3 hours.

She eats a ton of solid food between nursing sessions. We recently visited a pizzeria. Emma ate one large piece of pizza all by herself. She also ate the crust off of three of my slices as well as three or four whole bread sticks. I was amazed.

Emma is still wearing 3-6 and 6-9 month sized clothing. She seems to be gaining weight, and just this week I noticed that one pair of her jeans is a little bit too short.

Last week marked another first for Emma. I cut her hair for the first time. It was really scraggly and I thought she looked unkempt. She kept having issues with bangs in her eyes. I would have liked to grow them out, but the hair was bothersome to her. Daddy was so sad!

Today, Emma got to play in the snow for the first time. I don't think she was especially thrilled. Her snowsuit was just too bulky for her to move in, and she resented not being able to use her hands to pick up the snowballs I made for her.

Favorite words: Birdie, Cat, Doggie, Car-Car, More, Special Delivery (when she plays with her toy Post Office), Water, Lights, Sit, Down, Good Boy (prior three are all to the dog. Good boy sounds like "gobby!"), What is it?, socks, hair, eyes, nose, mouth, red, yellow, ABC!, Woof-W00f!, Emma, Momma, Daddy, Vroom-Vroom!, Bee, Peeka-Boo!, Link, flower, butterfly, moon, ham, book, bread, hi there, hello. There are probably loads more that I'm forgetting, but these are a few we're guaranteed to hear at least once each day.

Favorite Foods: Cheese, ham and bread. Cooked carrots, pretzels, potatoes, homemade rice pudding. Anything sweet.

Dislikes: Lettuce, cottage cheese, sauerkraut.

Favorite activities: Pointing out the colors red, yellow, green and blue amongst her toy people. Dancing, dancing and more dancing. She can hum the first couple bars of any song she hears. Most of the time it is recognizable. Sorting through the laundry looking for "socks!" She likes bathing, drawing, and reading her books. She loves getting out of the house. She loves being held by complete strangers. Going out to eat. She gets angry if the food takes more than 20-25 minutes to arrive. I don't blame her.

Favorite toys: Her cube-shaped board books from Grandma and Grandpa, her bus and wooden "people". Best toy EVER. Her toy post office.

Developments: Does not drink out of a sippy cup (I've never introduced one), she can sip thick drinks from a straw, she can hold her pencil in a tripod grip. She can open up the Dreamcast, take a CD out of it, open up the DVD player and correctly put the CD in it. Daddy doesn't approve of this skill, but I'm rather proud. She can recognize colors, count to two, and knows A-C of her ABC's.