puffs

e.t. loves puffs and cheerios. she literally starts shaking when she sees me get them out. she likes to play "let's see how many i can fit in my mouth", and she wins every time.

date night: home edition

making the most of dinner date night at home...grilling out, dinner on the porch, and amazing weather.

new pastime



a little something

...for emma taylor's easter basket. thanks pinterest for the idea. tutorial found here.

3/25/12

sunday lunch

we celebrated emma taylor's baptism with some sunday lunch. we are so thankful for the family that could join us!

baptism

praise the Lord. emma taylor was baptized, and it was a special day with our church family and actual family. we are so thankful for those who love us and stand beside us. we hope that emma taylor will come to know Jesus at a young age and never know a day without Him.

scooching

she may not be crawling but she is sure mastering the scooch.

{leaving her playmat behind}

{zoolander?}

{for some reason she really likes loves this chair}

{precious}

frustrated

emma taylor has been getting pretty frustrated lately. she will turn one leg under like she wants to crawl, but the other leg gets stuck behind. when she does get the other leg under too she gets upset because she doesn't want to be on her belly. i hope for her sake she will get on this crawling thing soon. i hate to see her so frustrated about it!

e.t. & me

baby cow

emma taylor loves being outside and despite laying blankets down for her to play on she always ends up eating grass. i think we might have a little baby cow on our hands...

a few more outside shots

we continued our 8 month photo shoot outside...

...but all she really wanted to do is eat the grass!

8 months

emma taylor is 8 months! she is talking all the time (but mostly just saying dada). she is more wiggly than ever. i had to take her with me to a doctor's appointment that last for an hour and a half and my arms felt like they were going to fall off by the end because she didn't stop moving once. she can scoot herself a bit on the floor while sitting up to reach things. she still dislikes laying on her stomach, and therefore is still not crawling. however she does like to crawl all over us when we are holding her. she has 4 teeth on the bottom and is currently getting her top two in. she has added cherrios to her diet, and i doubt she is that far from eating other finger foods. she loves being outside. she is definitely easy and fun at this point and as long as she is fed she even does well when she is past her naptime. she is in between 2 and 3 naps, but i don't think it will be long till she permanently drops that third one. i feel great too. i think this is the first month where i have actually had some nights where i have slept all the way through ( after 17 months of interrupted sleep i never thought it would happen again).

sweet curls

we have come along way from the sad looking bald spot.

learning

here is emma taylor learning the trick to getting the dog to come see you....give her food.

and just for kicks here is another one of emma taylor and all her rolls...

she is eating without a shirt on because we have been having trouble keeping a bib on. i have also started telling her no which in this case made her laugh hysterically while still pulling off her bib. so we resorted to eating without clothes on. we really wouldn't need a bib except for the fact that she seems to always touch her mouth and smear whatever she is eating all over her shirt and sometimes in her hair. how do i keep the bib on her? any advice?

making progress

remember that window i rescued from the trash pile...

well, i am finally making progress on it!

ded {aka dad}

emma taylor still LOVES saying dada. she still hasn't uttered mama. she likes to say it over and over and in different inflections. sometimes it comes out sounding like she is saying ded with a little accent. i love it!

park

{*love* her scrunchy toes}

{clapping}

{abby is way more interesting than the camera}

teeth

emma taylor's fourth tooth finally came in {only after one and a half months}. she now has 4 teeth on the bottom and one coming in on the top. while googling about teeth and trying to figure out why it was taking SO long I found out two things. 1. teeth come in pairs...or at least they are supposed to. and 2. there is a natural order for teeth. emma taylor is not following that natural order. first your bottom two teeth (check) and then your top four before anymore on the bottom (not even close).

motherhood and me

i have been reading lots of blogs lately that are very honest about motherhood and that it is not all rosey. from all of the monthly updates on emma taylor you might think that she is the best baby in the world. that however is not the case. i have been wanting to somehow write all of this down (now that i am out of the thick of it and can think clearly) so that i can 1. be encouraging to anyone who is a first time mom and 2. remember it when the next one comes. although now i would agree that emma taylor has a great personality and demeanor it took a while to get to this point.

before we had emma taylor, people would always ask if we were ready. our response was always that we were ready to have no clue what we were doing. the one thing i was most worried about when having a newborn was the lack of sleep. i found out that God truly gives you grace and the strength when you need it the most. i was lucky for emma taylor to never have night mixed up with day but that still doesn't mean it was easy. it is so hard to get up several times a night, feed a baby, and get them back to sleep. that would be a process of 1-1 1/2 hrs, and then in 2 hours you would have to do it all again. i cried a lot for the first month. i am NOT generally an emotional person so to cry that much was very hard (as it would for anyone). dealing with all of this plus recovering from labor (which was hard...she was a 9 lb baby!) was more than i could imagine i would have to deal with. after 2 weeks emma taylor came out of the sleep all the time phase which some people say their kids come out of at 3 months!

at six weeks was my breaking point. emma taylor was dealing with gas issues, and she wouldn't sleep which means she just cried. i ended up calling up one of the moms from the youth group that we volunteer with and asked if i could go to her house. i felt so vulnerable showing up at her house in tears with a baby that i didn't know what to do with, but God is faithful and turned that into a mentoring relationship that is so so encouraging to me.

once the gassy, fussy, crying all the time phase was over it seemed to be uphill. however, that does not mean it was easy. we are used to order and being in control. with a newborn you are not in control...i followed the ideas of the baby whisperer or baby wise and although it helped, she still was not predictable on how long she napped (if she napped) or how long between feedings she would go. i had to remind myself that she was a person who needed grace too. she was not a robot.

i have learned that i am not a newborn person. i loved her so much but did not like the phase. maybe its because i like order but once she got to be 5 months it seemed so much easier. 5 months in retrospect sounds like such a long time, but i don't remember it being that long. she truly is in such a fun stage right now. she LOVES people and attention. i can't even count the number of people who come up and talk to her while we are at the grocery store, and luckily she loves every minute of it.

so motherhood has grown on me. i guess it has had to. i am not a natural at it, but i guess most people probably aren't. i know there will be lots of challenges ahead, but i hold fast in knowing that God is faithful to meet us where we are and sustain us when we need it.

swing

we have a little park a little over 1 mile from our house. today we decided to walk over there to check out the baby swings. i love that it is so close and that i don't have to cross any major roads to get there. there are 2 sets of playground equipment. one for smaller kids and one for bigger kids. i can't wait till emma taylor is big enough to play. despite her lack of really smiling in the pictures she really did love the swing!

...she is still pretty little so i had to stuff the baby swing with my jacket.

a new development

i have offered emma taylor the slightly addictive (as i have heard) baby puffs a couple of times. the first few times she didn't know what to do with them so i stuck them in her mouth and she immediately showed her distaste for them. this weekend she finally got it and there is no turning back. she is so cute eating them, but i cringe at the idea of her completely feeding herself. she makes such a mess as it is. worse case scenario, she eats all meals with just a diaper on!

{this takes a LOT of concentration}

{of course you have to have no less than one in each hand}

{okay...i put it in my mouth. what am i supposed to do now?}

{not sure...but i kind of like it!}