Ho Ho Ho!

Ember did really well for her picture with Santa. She was described by a girl at church today as "A social butterfly", which is true, so we didn't really expect any problems. She loves strangers and waves at everyone who walks into sacrament meeting. As long as you will hold her, you can be her best friend. She especially likes you if you will let her play with your phone.

These Boots are made for walking...

Ember is such a girly girl. I don't know where she came from. She loves to walk around carrying a purse and to put necklaces and bracelets on. She has recently discovered a new favorite pastime...

She will bring me any of the shoes in our closet and beg to have them put on her feet. High heels and Josh's heavy work boots are her favorites. She walks best in this ballet flats though and now she can get this pair on by herself without any help at all.

We have also recently discovered that she is a sorter. She arranged her letters at bathtime like this:

She was in the process of moving the blue ones from the center to the side when she got out, that is why the K is still in the middle. She was very methodical about moving them and putting them in the right group. It is pretty funny.

We have officially entered tantrum stage and I don't like it at all. She is the type that will fall down on the ground and pound her fists when things don't go her way. Anyone know what to do about that?

Our Little Turkey

We have decided that Ember makes a very good Turkey. She even posed for us on Thanksgiving.
This little girl loves to eat. I am starting to try to get her to use silverware and bowls. You can see how well it is working. She can do it by herself once or twice but then it is too slow so she goes back to using her hands again. She loves cottage cheese.
She is starting to say a bunch of words, but I think we are the only ones who can understand her. These are the words we recognize so far:
Mama
Dada
Ca - Car
Nana - Banana
Boon - Balloon
Eesse - Cheese
Cracka - Cracker
Dug - Dog
bowawa - Bow wow wow
baall - Ball
do-wap do-wap, do-wap - When your up your up
Baba - Bubbles or Bottle depending on her mood

Happy Haunting!

We think she was the cutest Minnie Mouse around. Happy Halloween!

It has been a week!

Isn't she a doll? Since this picture was taken last Sunday Ember has:

Bit her lip hard twice both times resulting in blood dripping down her chin

Hit her chin hard on the side of the bathtub

Hit her mouth on the baseboard of our bed

Fallen into a sand trap at a golf course

Gotten a goose-egg on her forehead from falling on a brick walkway

Scraped her nose at a birthday party

Fallen off chairs more times than I can count

Smashed her finger in our door (hard)

Bent back one of her toenails

Fallen off the couch

Headbutted into our ottoman

and about a million other falls that I can't remember

You can see the scrape down her nose in this picture. It looks really bad. (please don't call CPS, I promise I am not abusing her). Her legs are covered in bruises from climbing and I don't know how she is going to survive another week much less another year. We might come to know the emergency room very well over the next few years with this little one.

On top of all this, she is getting about 8 more teeth all at the same time. Her top premolars have just poked through and her top second incisors are just about to poke through too. The bottom ones of both don't look like they are far behind.

On a funner note, remember awhile back when I couldn't get her to eat bananas? Well, now I can't get her to stop. Every meal she says "Nana, nana" and then looks disappointed when I give her something else. She walks over to the counter where we keep the bananas and looks longingly at them even when she shouldn't be hungry. She ate half of another boys banana this morning because she stood by his mom and said "Nana". While cute, she might end up wearing out her welcome.

Somedays I am jeolous of the other mom's whose kids are not quite so mobile yet. We were at a birthday party for a little boy who is only two weeks younger than Ember and he isn't quite walking yet. His mom could set him on the floor or have someone hold him and he was happy and content. Ember was chasing after the kids that were 3-10 years old rather than sitting around with the 1-ish year olds. And she has the bumps to prove it. Oh well.

All Girl

Ember is all girl sometimes. She loves carrying around her purse and packages. She is ready for her first trip to the mall I think.

It's My Party...

Happy Birthday Miss Ember!

We had a pool part with some of her cousins and family last week for her birthday and had a lot of fun. Here are some pictures of the festivities.

Ember, however, wanted no part of the pool. She was much more interested in other things, like rocks (she gets it from her Dad). She spent most of the party climbing on the rocks. It was fine with me but was still a little funny.She loved the cake. She ate the raspberries on top of it right away but then she didn't know what to do with the rest. She patted it a few times then finally got a bite. She was very dainty and clean about it at first. By the end she was pretty messy though. It was cute to watch.

It is hard to believe it has already been a year since this little girl joined our family. We love her so much.

Babblefish

I had been out of town for a couple days for work and I came home and laid down on the floor. Ember walked around me and then proceeded to sit down on my face. Repeatedly. Oh how nice it is to be home.
Ember loves shoes. She is constantly talking shoes out of our closet and carrying them around the house. One day, Josh found her in our closet with shoes piled one top of her and she was happy as a clam.
She has entered the wonderful world of climbing. She can get on almost all of our chairs which means that everything one the tables is within grasp. Oh what an adventure.

She has begun talking up a storm. I call her a babblefish (from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). She loves to turn pages to books and read stories to us. It is pretty cute, especially when she starts to blow bubbles.

Summer Fun

We had a family reunion at my parents house last week and had such a great time. It was so nice to see my family and to spend time with them and have them get to know Miss E a little better. Here are some pictures of our adventures.

Ember loved the swing. She was in heaven. I think we could have left her there all day and she would have been happy. Eating her first Avocado! It was a mess but she loved it.

My parents have an annual hobo party where everyone dresses up and we play all sorts of old fashion games. It was a lot of fun. Ember wanted to be held all day as we were getting ready for the party but as soon as everyone came (about 80 people) she wouldn't let us hold her at all. It was an adventure chasing after her but it was so much fun to see all the friends and family.

She loved the carousel ride at the zoo. I wasn't going to put her on it because I thought she was too young but my mom and sister convinced me to and you should have seen the smiles I got when we went up and down on the lion. She loves the motion.

This is a turtle shell she climbed inside at the zoo playground. She couldn't get enough of all the toys. We are going to have to start taking her to the park as soon as the weather cools off at home. It was so much fun.

It's Official...

...we're walking! I count 9 steps in a row, maybe 10.

One of my First Steps

So Ember has been making some attempts at walking lately. She will hold on to furninture until she can't get where she wants then she will let go and take a step or two and then fall down. She is so close to actually walking!

9 months

Ember had her nine month appointment this morning and she is getting so big. She is 20 lbs 12 oz (which is in the 75-90%) and is 29 1/2 inches tall (97%). She is slimming down, she used to be in the 95% for weight and has always been tall. No wonder everyone is surprised that she is only 9 months old, she towers over all the other babies that are close to her age.
Father's Day sure was fun. We thought her onesie was appropriate. I didn't get a picture when she was all clean so here she is just before bed, looking her disheveled best.

Josh sent me this at work last week. Sometimes tired wins over hungry. She is a good little eater. She will pretty much eat whatever we give her except for bananas. I don't think she likes the sliminess of them. It is so sad because they are so yummy and are great finger foods.

She was reaching for a toy in her toy box and got high-centered on her wee little belly and fell in! You would have thought she was in heaven. She loved being able to explore. She loves to try to fit in the smallest places then gets upset when she gets stuck. It is awfully cute.

She is working on getting her top two teeth. We can see them there but they haven't quite poked out there pearly whiteness yet. She has a little bit of a hard time with teething, she gets a fever and is quite uncomfortable for awhile. I hope they cut through soon.

Pigtails

Ember wore her first pigtails to church last Sunday and boy did she look cute. She looked so grown-up. She almost looks like a toddler rather than a baby. It is fun to watch her grow and change.

Swimmin' in the Water

We took Ember swimming for her first time last Monday and she had the time of her life. I have never seen her so excited to do something. I love the squeals of delight. First, thought, we had to get her picture in her cute swim suit. I absolutely love the tutu.

She has also recently learned how to clap her hands together and she does it all the time, except when there is a video camera on. We can't seem to get it on video, but we will keep trying. It is currently her favorite thing to do.

We had some people over for dinner last weekend and they brought their 6 month old little girl. She was sitting in our exersaucer and Ember was playing with it from the outside. Ember started talking at the volume she usually does (DA DA DA-She definitely doesn't have an inside voice yet). The other girl got this terrified look on her face and started to cry. It was the saddest thing I have seen. Ember had no idea why she could possibly be crying and no idea that she had scared the daylights out of her. Funny, sad, and oh so cute all at the same time.

8 month photo session

So I procrastinated getting her 6 month photos taken so here they are at 8 months. Rachelle did such a great job, I love them. Take a peek here
http://www.rpsphotography.com/2010/05/ember-8-months-growing.html

More Pictures

Sometimes she surprises me with just how pretty she is. Of coarse, I am an adoring mom.

But she also has a wild side, that we see more than the peaceful one.

And then there is the getting into everything. I have never seen anyone so determined. She practically sprints across the room every time we open a cupboard or the fridge. She is so curious. She has two teeth now and she has been pretty onery for both of them. She got her first one about a month ago and her second one last weekend. I don't like her teething at all. I kind of wish they would all come in at once and we could be done with it.

What a Doll

Doesn't she have a cute smile. It makes me melt.

I came home to this one afternoon. She loves to cuddle. She has figured out how to pull herself up to standing and man is she into everything. It is quite the adventure. She is so curious about everything and toys just aren't fun anymore especially when there are other things. Her favorite right now are cd cases and computer cords. Oh what fun.

We are going to be doing some serious childproofing this weekend.

Pictures and Giggles

Happy Easter. This is her pretty Easter dress.

She also figured out how to crawl under things, but she gets stuck sometimes.

These are her cute giggles. She was a little slap happy that night and she absolutely loves puppets. We found this little duck at a garage sale. She loved it.

This is how she started out crawling, kind of like a little worm. Now she can get up on her hands and knees, but she still crawls like this sometimes.

Growing like a weed

Miss E. is growing so fast! She is still at the top of the charts for height and weight. I LOVE this green dress, so we had an impromtu photo shoot before church a couple of weeks ago.

Speaking of big and strong, she is amazing at her yoga moves. It is definitely the best down dog I have ever seen. If you can't tell, she is one her hands and tippy-toes in this one. She has almost gotten the hang of crawling. She gets up on all fours and rocks then she will get on her tummy and wiggle her legs like crazy. It gets her moving forward but it is still a little slow going. I would guess by the end of this week she will be into everything.

She is really good at sitting on her own now although occasionally she will still topple over.

Horray for baseball season. She is already a D-backs fan. Snakes eat Mets (or Birds for Grandpa).

Hanging out with Daddy.