Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Welcome to our crazy life


And... almost two years later, we are back online! Ha. What a joke this is. As much as I love to write, one would think I could keep up a blog. But alas, life intervenes and it isn't meant to be. Maybe we can keep this a little more regular.

I’m not even going to attempt to summarize the last two years of our life, as so much as changed and I’m sure it would be incomplete, as my memory isn’t what it used to be….just ask my parents! We’ll just start with the most recent events.


EMERY
Emery - 2 years, 9 months old
This sweet girl simultaneously makes me want to pull my hair out and makes my heart swell with her sweet, kind spirit. It’s amazing to me how much of a strong personality children have at such an early age. I completely attribute any ornery bone in her body to her father, and trust me, it’s her entire skeleton!

Since she’s not a baby anymore, she doesn’t really have milestones she’s reaching, but this is what she’s into these days, if I can brag a bit:
       
       Princesses:  We are taking her to Disney World this summer with my parents and brother and she CANNOT wait to meet the princesses, namely Snow White, who is her favorite. She has a play castle and dress up clothes that she plays in and wears most of the week, and she turns the rest of us into princes, monsters, horsies… you know, princesses are magical.
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      Puppies: About 90 percent of her stuffed animals are puppies, so we have a lot of puppy action going on in this house.  We also have a lot of puppy action as in she frequently thinks she is a puppy and acts like one, or alternately a puppy princess.
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           Completing puzzles: Emery is so stinking smart. She can do puzzles faster and better than most kids I know her age, not to mention puzzles by herself. Her current favorite is this alphabet train puzzle that she carries around, completes and pushes in her stroller 10x a day.
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           Singing every song she knows: I should clarify. I mean to say, singing any song. She really doesn’t have to know it, because about half of the songs she sings about are made up songs about what she is doing at that moment or songs she knows with alternative words she’s added to the songs, to try to get someone to laugh at her. Did I mention she’s just like her father yet?
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            Reading books: Finally, something I can take credit for! Emery started loving to read at an early age. By 18 months, she was already bringing us books to read from cover to cover. Now, at almost 3, we seriously can sit for an hour or more at a time and read book, after book, after book. This girl loves to read. She loves us to read to her and she loves to read to her Pooh friends and Cohen. Our pathetic library bag had seen better days just since July when we started going to the library weekly for new books, when this month, the head librarian who checks us out, felt sorry for me trying to stuff 30 library books into a tiny bag that she gave me two free ones! Gotta love fellow book nerds.
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           Imagination!! I have always understood that children are super creative. I remember coming up with wild things from time to time or unique scenarios for my Barbies to go through. Nothing I remember or imagined is even on the level of Emery’s imagination. We used to joke that my brother had “Rocko” vision ( a term he came up with himself) that basically meant it, it gave him the creative license for some bizarre things that could happen or that his toys were going to do. It was an often thing, but it came and went and we always knew when his “rocko” vision was surfacing. Emery seems to have this on a much deeper level. It never stops. She has running monologues with herself and to us about what is going on at all times and I usually have no idea where she is getting this stuff from.

On a similar tangent, Emery also has the vocabulary of a 5-year-old, I promise. She talks the entire day long and greatly enriches our home with always verbalizing her thoughts. Here are some humorous ones from this week:

At bedtime last week:
“Momma, the sunshine told me that its morning time. Can I show you the sunshine out your window?”

“Emery, there is no sunshine. It went night night. Look out your window and see, do you see the sunshine?”

“Yes!”

“No, that’s the moon. “

“Okay momma. I think I need to sleep in your bed tonight because the shadows are mad at me (with her mad face).”

“The shadows can’t be mad at you, they are just decorations on your walls at night.”

“Which friend can I take since you got out of bed again?”

“Not Percy! But if you have to take one, take Rudolph.” (So much for taking away friends keeping her in bed!)

Hair styles
“Momma, Can I color my hair red so I look like Ariel? (As she’s holding a red marker)”

Cohen
“Momma, one day when you are done with Cohen, he’s going to go back into your belly!”

The Future
“Momma, one day when I get bigger and bigger like you and have big hands, I’m going to be able to turn on the water myself! And work at the circus.”

“What are you going to do at the circus, Emery?”

“I’m going to ride the nice, beautiful elephants. I will give you a ride too, if you want.”

Cohen
Cohen - 4 months

Meet the newest member of the family: Cohen Matthew. Already 4 ½ months old, he’s not exactly new. This sweet boy already blesses us so much with his sweet smiles, and coos. After a rough first three months of eating, sleeping and pooping issues, we finally have him at a happy place and are truly enjoying the happiest baby ever.

Cohen has recently discovered how to roll over and coo loudly to himself. So instead of napping, we find him talking to himself in the crib and rolling around from side to side. Our pediatrician had us start him on solids at 4 months to see if it would help with his acid reflux and projectile vomiting. After refusing to eat rice cereals, we jumped ahead to squash and he LOVES it. He would eat a whole jar at once if we let him. He starts smacking those little lips and opening his mouth wider and wider with each bite. I’ll have to post our video of him first eating it if I remember.

For those  of you who think that Drew smiles all the time, you should meet Cohen. This kid never stops smiling. Even in the middle of the night when he we wakes up screaming. As soon as you walk in the room, he starts smiling and doesn’t stop. It takes us quite a while to get him finish his bottles sometimes because all he wants to do is smile at us!

I’ll leave you today on this lengthy chapter of our life, with a story of Emery at school today.

When I picked her up from preschool, she told me, Miss Holly (her teacher), told her to go to timeout today. When I couldn’t get much more out of her why, I went and asked her other teacher Miss Barbara if Emery has been in timeout today.

“Miss Barbara, did Emery listen today or did she get a timeout?”

Miss Barbara smiles, “Well, she almost got one today. They were all sitting in their seats at the table when they start putting their fingers in their mouth and making this face. (See the picture below)

 “We told them to stop putting their fingers in their mouth, and some stopped, but then Emery started doing it again and wouldn’t listen when we told her to stop. In fact, I think she’s the one that started this whole thing.”

Trying not to laugh aloud, I assured Miss Barbara that I would bet money that Emery was the one that instigated the incident, seeing as how this is her favorite face she and her daddy make.

“When she refused to listen, Miss Holly told her to go to timeout and she told Miss Holly, ‘No, please don’t make me go to timeout.’”

Oh boy. We have some discussion ahead of us about not always having to make people laugh at us for attention. J At least it’s something funny like that and not that she’s a bully. I think I can handle a class clown much easier!