Santa Photos

Ember's First Meeting with the Big Man!
Ember's cousins, Joe, Brian, and Max.

Ember's cousin Britty.

Giggles

Miss E. has started giggling and it is absolutely adorable. She loves to be cleaned and started giggling when I was washing her neck. She is getting so big and so much fun. It is so fun to make her smile and giggle.

Pictures

We went to visit my family for Thanksgiving and had a really fun time. We drove the 11 hours up there at night and Ember slept almost the entire way. I wish I could have slept at all! Even when Josh was driving I couldn't sleep. It was a long day and I was completely tuckered out on Thanksgiving day. Ember was just starting to smile at people at this point and Grandpa loved trying to get the smiles out. I didn't take many pictures while we were there. Opps.

Uncle Ty invited us to go see Santa fly into the airport for his company party. We got a picture of her with Santa but I haven't got it yet. Britty came down to go too. It was a lot of fun and there was so much to do. Ember had a great time people watching until it was just too much and she decided she had had enough excitement for the day so naturally she started screaming.

At church a couple of weeks ago

Hangin' out at work with Mom.

"My Fingers are delicious!" (eating her fingers is her favorite pasttime)

So she has started to giggle just a little bit and it is adorable. I love to listen to it. She is getting such a pleasant personality. She is happy most of the time, but if she is upset she will let you know. She is starting to grab for things just a little bit. I will set her on the ground with a couple of toys and sometimes she will be able to get one in her hands. It is fun to watch her learn to do things and to actually succeed. I can't believe how much she has grown. She will be 3 months old on Thursday. She has found her voice too, she loves to babble away and sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between her talking and her starting to get upset. She is pretty loud, especially in quiet places (like during church today). It is cute though and I would hope that all the people there would understand. I really can't believe how lucky we are to have such an adorable little girl. You don't have to agree with me, but I sure think she is the cutest thing ever.

She LOVES it!

Our Little Elf

So we are a little lame and didn't do much for Halloween. I did finally make a costume for Ember yesterday afternoon. She wore it for about 10 minutes so we could get pictures then the hat and belt fell off. Oh well. It will be a lot more fun when she is a little older. I did love her elf costume. I kind of just made up the pattern and it turned out pretty cute. Of course when the little girl wearing it is so cute it is hard to go wrong.

This was not such a treat though... I have been pooped on twice in two days. Oh my what a runny mess. I told Josh that it is his turn next. He isn't so excited for that idea.

We are amazed at how fast she is growing. Look- She is already holding her bottle by herself. ;-)

This is Ember's only living great-grandparent. We went over to visit last week and to introduce the two of them. It was so fun.

I go back to work tomorrow, unfortunately, but luckily she gets to come with me for awhile. We will see how much working I will be able to get done. I hope it works out okay.

Miss E's Blessing

So this isn't the blessing dress, but it was too cute not to show. My parents gave her this adorable dress and she wore it on her first week at church. I think she looks so perfect. I think the little socks that look like shoes are the cutest.

This is her on her blessing day. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of her with Josh. Everything was so rushed that I didn't think about it until the following day. She was perfect during her blessing-wide awake and alert but she never made a peep. It was beautiful. Here are more pictures of her in her blessing dress. I will freely admit that I am a first time parent. I dote on her all the time and I love to just watch her coo and squirm. She is such a sweet girl.

So besides having a beautiful daughter, she is also a very good little sleeper. Most nights she sleeps at least 6 hours in a row and last Sunday she slept for 9 hours! I know I am in for it when we have our next kid because no one gets this lucky for two kids in a row. We have decided that she just is slow to wake up and so she will half wake up and we will hear a couple of peeps but by the time we start to think about going to get her, she is fast asleep again. I am pretty sure by the time she is in school it is going to take forever to get her out of bed and ready. I can't imagine how hard she will be to wake up when she is a teenager, but I am going to enjoy it for now and not worry about the future.

Smiles

We are getting some smiles from Ember. They may just be gas but we will take them. My Moms friend knitted this cute hat and blanket for her. She is so styling in them.

Ember's Photo Shoot

My friend Rachelle took some amazing pictures of Ember. Take a look at her photo blog to see what an amazing job she did.
http://rpsphotography.blogspot.com/

More Pictures

We are still absolutely in love with our little girl even though she can be difficult sometimes. She has a hard time going to sleep. She will work herself up into a fit before we can get her calmed down enough to close her eyes and just when we think she is almost out she will wake up again and start the whole process over. We have been lucky though, she sleeps for long stretches at night (4-6 hours at a time) so I guess the frustration of getting her to sleep pays off because we are able to sleep longer. Meghan, I hope you are right about the 5 week adjustment period. I don't know how people leave the house with newborns, I can barely get anything done and I have Josh to help me. I don't know how single parents do it.
Josh is such a proud daddy and he has the magic touch to calm her down-especially when I am getting frustrated.

She is not quite as sweet smelling as we would have hoped. I never knew that baby's could have such smelly gas!

She is pretty good at lifting her head up already when we give her tummy time. She can hold it up for around 10 seconds already.

This is her favorite position. She is a little escape artist with her hands. She usually has one or both out before we are even finished swaddling her. Luckily she still sleeps okay even when she escapes her swaddle.

She's Here

Ember Leigh Florie was born on Thursday, September 17th at 7:12 p.m. She weighs 8 lbs 10 oz

and is 19 1/4 inches long. She has a full head of hair already and has dark blue eyes that will probably turn brown. She is absolutely perfect in every way and we are absolutely in love with her already. I will post more pictures later.

Still Here...

No, I am not hiding anything. No baby yet. I guess I will have to go to work again tomorrow. I was hoping to be done. I decided not to post a picture because I look the same as I did last week and I am kind of protesting the fact that I haven't had the baby yet. My doctor thinks the baby is close to 8 lbs so there isn't any concern about her being too large. Unless she decides to come in the next couple of days, I am going to be induced on Thursday. Hopefully she will make her big debut before then. We will see though.

39 Weeks

I am really hoping that this is the last picture of me that I have to post. Hopefully you will get much cuter pictures by next week. I am getting impatient for her to get here. I think that it is more boredom than anything. I am all ready so whenever she decides to come would be great.

38 Weeks

So the countdown is really just 11 more days until I am due. We will see how it goes.

37 Weeks

It isn't much longer now. I am nervous and excited at the same time. I just hope she doesn't come before Josh gets home on Thursday or Friday. It would not be fun to go into labor with your husband 3 or more hours away. They say that they aren't supposed to move as much the last month or so but she is still moving my stomach like there is an alien in there. I tried to take some video of it because I think it is a lot more movement than most babies but since I didn't have anyone to film it, it didn't turn out very well. Maybe I will try again later. My whole stomach moves though. She is super squirmy.

36 Weeks

I can't believe there is less than a month left. It seems like time is flying by.

34 Weeks

Cooking Creations

I have kind of been trying a lot of new recipes this weekend and it has been kind of fun. I made these bowls out of parmesan cheese that you use for salads. They were really cute and all they are made of is cheese. I love the idea although eating the whole bowl was an accomplishment. I shouldn't have made anything else for dinner because the bowls were so filling.

Last week blueberries were on sale for $1 so we bought 3 pints. We ate two of them and I froze the last one, but i should have bought 20 pints and frozen them all. Today I made these blueberry muffins from the frozen ones and they are delicious. Josh gave me a cookbook a couple of Christmas' ago called The Bread Bible and every recipe I try from there makes one of the best breads I have ever had. I wand to get her other book The Cake Bible too so I can learn to make better cakes. My recent efforts have been less than spectacular...

33 Weeks

I got told this week that I was big enough to be charged for two seats if I rode a bus. How is that for a compliment!?

32 Weeks

I can't believe how fast time is going by. She is going to be here before we know it. I have been "nesting" of sorts this weekend. I moved all sorts of things around in our condo and set up the crib to make sure we would have room for it. Everything isn't quite the way I want it to be but it is much closer than it was. I am getting really excited for her to come.
On a different note, does anyone's baby move as much as mine does? I feel like she is doing gymnastics all the time. A couple of appointments back the doctor asked if I felt her moving very often and told me to count to make sure there were at least four movements in an hour. Well, I am lucky if there are fewer than 100 movements in an hour! And most of them are not small. She loves to push up against my belly and you can see her roll across. The first time Josh saw it he thought there must be an alien in my belly! I hope she isn't this active when she is born because there is no way I will be able to keep up!

31 Weeks and I LOVE Hand-me-downs

Here I am in all my glory. I don't think that I have grown much lately. I haven't really changed size at all. Josh told me that I am not Basketball-sized yet, maybe soccerball-sized. I am sure I have some room to grow.A woman I work with gave me these great hand-me-downs. One is a small, portable swing and the other is a full-sized swing with all the great attachments. She also gave me a play mat with arches that the toys hang on. It also plays music and has all sorts of buttons and tabs to play with. I should have taken a picture of it, but I didn't. She also gave me all of her burb cloths and blankets and teethers. I feel so spoiled. Everything is used but is still really nice and the price tag is right in our budget! I love free!

30 Weeks

2nd Annual Hobo Party

My parents have started a tradition of having a annual summer hobo party. They have all the neighborhood kids and parents dress up as hobo's and have fun games and activities. The kids eat out of pie tins and the dinner is cooked in coals under a garbage can (at least that is the idea-it isn't perfected yet). There are gunny sack races, pie eating contests, a tug-o-war, and a train ride. The kids have a blast. This year there were about 70 people there and it was a great time. Here are some pictures from the event.

(Dogs even get to be dressed up too!)