Just one of those days...

While Emerson can be completely charming and adorable, she has her moments. Today, we spent the afternoon running errands and all of Emerson's adorable quirks were in full effect and not so adorable in public. For instance, as we were standing in the check out lane at the grocery store she asked the woman behind us for a hug. She is very hard even for strangers to resist, so before I could stop it the woman hugged her. Then Emerson asked, "kiss, please?!". Once again before I could utter a word the woman kissed the top of her head. Emerson then grabbed both of the woman's hands and held tight. Ella, who was watching the whole thing, cried out, "Emerson, don't hug and kiss strangers!!!" This then completely embarrasses the poor woman who was just being kind and makes me want to stick my head in a hole. UGH!

Emerson has also started calling out "Hi, Grandma!" to any woman over the age of 40 and "Hi, Daddy!" to any man around Brian's age. I'm trying not to notice the dirty looks.

I am starting potty training with Em tomorrow. We will see how it goes. It may be too early for her, but I figure I have the whole summer to work on it.

Emmy and her Microphone

The girls are into performing lately. Emerson is picking it up from her big sister that holding a microphone and singing for a camera is very cool. She follows me around with her mic saying, "more Emmy sing please". Here are two quick clips of Emerson singing. The first is Twinkle, Twinkle and then her ABC's.

Good Morning, Sunshine!

Slacker Blogger

Sorry I've been such a slacker with blogging. I've gotten some recent friendly pressure to post another update so here it is.

Emerson seems to be doing well at school. I just got off the phone with her teacher and she said "Emerson is such a doll, but boy, can she be stubborn." Yep, sounds about right. She can protest quite loudly when she doesn't want to do something or we don't give here what she wants. She has a minor meltdown, we usually walk away, and then within 1 minute she will come over, take my hand and say, "Hi, sweetie".

Emerson's language development continues to be slow, but steady. She is putting more words together and her vocabulary is crazy. One of her favorite things to do is to name as many items in a category that she can. For example, if I say "bugs" she will rattle off "spider, ants, butterfly, caterpillar, bee, etc..." The other day, her teacher sent home a note that said they were working on sea animals, the teacher held up an animal and said, "seal". Emerson corrected her and said, "no, walrus". Emerson is also great at naming her letters, shapes, and numbers. These things are all concrete, but anything abstract including simple questions, forget it. She often doesn't answer people when they ask her for her name, age, how is she. She struggles with things that aren't a physical entity.

Emerson is now getting into trouble daily. I just checked on her and she was coloring on the wall. Yesterday, she crawled onto the table, sat down and helped herself to some pineapple. When I caught her, she said, "Yum, mommy. Pineapple good." She loves to drink out of the dog bowl, ick.

On to Ella...who will be five in about a week. She is just growing up so fast. She is sensitive, kind, and loving. I really think she is starting to pick up on the fact that their is something different about her sister, but hasn't asked me yet. I know we need to have a conversation with her, it just hasn't happened. She is protective of her. The other day a friend of Ella's was drilling Emerson about animals. For example, say "elephant", say "horse". Seemed harmless to me, but Ella put her arm around Emerson and told her friend, "My sister knows how to do that, stop asking her." Wow!

So that's the quick and dirty. The girls, myself, and my mom are leaving for Florida for a week tomorrow. I'm looking forward to the warm weather and spending time my mom. I'll try to post some pics when we get back.

FYI- The pictures are of the girls with their Aunties and future Uncle Paul. Emmy loves Paul and even though she hadn't seen him since X-mas, walked right up to him and said, "hey, Paul".

A Big Week

My baby girl turned 3 this week. Thankfully, she is in denial as I am. When you ask her how old she is, she just can't stop saying "two!". We have a full year of programming under her belt with that one. She had a wonderful birthday and loved opening up her presents. Her favorite "gift" is a birthday card that sings "Happy Birthday" to the tune of "B-i-n-g-o". She opens and closes the card probably 25 times a day.

Emerson started school this week. She goes Monday through Thursday for 3 hours per day. The bus comes up our driveway to pick her up and drop her off. I cried the first day and now I am loving life!! I have three hours to myself every day. Right now I am casually blogging and drinking coffee, how great is that. She seems to love school. They write in a notebook to let me know what she did during the day and what therapists saw her. This is so nice since Emerson is a little short on the details.

Ella continues to love school and is such a little actress. She got a princess CD for Christmas that she has memorized. I love listening to her belt out "Reflections" with such passion I think she believes she is Mulan. So heart-felt. We are going to Disney on Ice tonight so she will be in heaven.

Ella often says things that make me believe she is "4 going on 15". This week she asked me why I have "cracks" around my eyes. I said, "What, I DO NOT have cracks around my eyes, show me where." Sure enough, she points to my crow's feet. I already spend a fortune on my skin care line, now what, botox?

A New Year!

Time sure flies. I have been very neglectful of this blog, but I do try to keep up on everyone else's, even though I don't comment too often. Christmas was very fun this year. Ella was just so excited and it is great to have some new toys in the house. We really don't buy the kids too much stuff except on holidays and birthdays, so we were in dire need of some updates. Emerson had a great time as well. She loves company (especially men, especially men she doesn't know). She was in her element prancing around and having all the new people pay attention to her. I will never forget waking her up from a nap and her realizing that we now had a house full of guests. She walked around with her hands up in the air, exclaiming, "yah, yah, yah!!!" She liked unwrapping her presents and the toys she got are being played with somewhat. The best gift Santa brought were some musical instruments, a recorder, kazoo, horns. She loves them. She has been drooling more lately so we are bound and determined to work on that.

Ella has been quite a little dancer lately. She loves listening to music and dancing. The other day she told me, "Mom, I just love that hip-hop music." Wow, they grow up fast. I've realizing, however, I need to invest in "Kid Bopz" because some of the lyrics on XM are so not appropriate. I heard Ella belting out, "I kissed a girl and I liked it". Pretty funny, but that will not win me Mom-of-The-Year.

Emerson will be 3 in a month. Life with Emerson continues to be an adventure. She is adorable and sweet, but boy can she cause a ruckus if she doesn't get what she wants. I am trying not to baby her and make her more responsible, well as much as I can for her developmental age. I'm trying not to carry her as much, make her throw things away, put items on the table, get me diapers, get herself undressed, things like that. She is talking a bit more lately, but boy is this area slow. Her vocabulary continues to grow, but she really struggles to combine words and it seems like it is a motor planning issue. We are doing lots with rhythm and using carrier phrases like, "I see _____", "I got ______". She does have a few phrases she uses a ton, "read book", "where (daddy) go?". And the other day when Ella came in the room wearing a dress I heard her say, "Wow, beautiful!"

Emerson will start Early Childhood at school next month on the day she turns 3. I am looking forward to it. Birth to 3 was really just a support for us and not really providing any type of extensive therapy. She was only getting most therapies once a month. They really were relying on me to do the bulk of therapy. Well, I am incredibly relieved that now she will be in a program 2 1/2 hours each day and will be getting all therapies 1-2 hours per week. That will be incredible and I will feel less pressured to be her therapy provider. I know she is going to love it and I know they are just going to LOVE her. We have our IEP next week which should be interesting. I've written many a goal in my day as a Speech Path for an Early Childhood Program, but it will be a whole new experience on the other side as a parent. I already feel vulnerable and I'm not sure why. I do know that I will miss my baby girl every morning when she is at school. Hope I'm ready for this.

Just Because...

I thought I would post a video of Emerson. She is just so lovable and I hope this captures her beautiful, sweet nature. I haven't posted a ton lately on Emerson and what she has been up to because, frankly, we have been at a bit of a standstill. She is expanding upon her single word vocabulary, but not combining a ton of words. This is how it goes with her. Huge bursts of development and then not much. This child is increasing our patience ten-fold. We continue to work hard and hope that it comes. But, we love her and will just wait.



Did you notice in the video that I asked her to not eat the crayon. She eats crayons, candles, you name it. Everything, but food really. The other day I saw her chewing and asked innocently, "Whatcha eating?" Her response, "bugs". I held out my hand and out came a very unhappy ladybug.