Emma's 2nd Birthday!

Emma is 2!

Wow – 2 years old. I still can’t believe Emma it! (I do have to admit I cried on her birthday because where did the time go???) She is such a little person now! She is growing so much and so fast. She continues to talk up a storm and says the funniest things.

She is practically potty trained during the day and now wears underwear. She still has accidents from time to time but for the most part she doesn’t. We put her in a diaper during her naps (and she typically wakes up dry) and we put her in one at night. It is really amazing that we can say she is practically potty trained and this all happened before she was even 2!

Emma is still obsessed with chapstick – and she always wants it when she is on the potty. Sometimes she will have five at a time. It is so strange that she loves chapstick so much but I guess there are worse things than that.

Emma also loves Elmo. The funny thing is Emma has never seen Sesame Street but there is something about Elmo that she loves. Judith got her an Elmo shirt and that is all Emma wants to wear. She has so many clothes but we can’t get her to put on anything except Elmo. We call it her uniform. So if you see her wearing a pink Elmo shirt in almost every picture from here on out you will know that we tried to get her to wear something else but failed. Oh yes, if you haven’t figured it out, Emma now picks out what she wears. She knows what she wants to wear and you have to put it on. When her Elmo shirt is dirty it isn’t a pretty site at the Wyman house but after reasoning with her for a while we manage to get her to pick something else out. So the funky outfits you see in the pictures are all her doing.

We threw Emma a birthday party at our house. We had 40 adults and kids in total. Who knew everyone could fit in our place. This will have to be the last time though that we do this because our house is just too small. Kids were running around everywhere and it was a lot of fun. We had a musician come to her party and play for 45 minutes. Emma loved it and so did the kids. Emma is used to seeing her because the musician puts on a show every Wednesday at the local bookstore for free and Emma goes every week. We didn’t really have a theme but Elmo was definitely present – not only did she wear an Elmo shirt; the cake had a Sesame Street decoration.

Emma had another special guest come to her party - Grandma Marcia – and boy oh boy was she excited to see her! Grandma Marcia and Grandpa Bob bought Emma two Elmo shirts for her birthday and she wore one of them. It is a nice change to see her in a different Elmo shirt. Now she has three to choose from when she gets ready in the morning.

Emma also got some great gifts from people. One of the best gifts she got was a red flyer wagon from Judith. She calls it a wa-wa and she finally has one of her own. All her friends have one and she was always so sad that she didn’t have one. Now she is so excited to have her own!

Emma still loves to read and we are so happy about it. She got some great books for her birthday that we can now add to her collection.

Another favorite pastime of Emma’s is cooking, eating the food she made and having tea. This is of course just her playing in her kitchen and sitting at her table but it is really cute to watch her cook. She loves playing with all the different food and making soups, eggs, chicken, beans and what not. She can just sit there for hours and play. She likes to have company over for “food” so we are often sitting with her at her table eating or drinking her creation.

Emma loves to sing and dance. She loves singing the head and shoulders song, itsy bitsy spider and twinkle twinkle little star are among her favorites. She also enjoys when we play when you are happy and you know it. She will sing along but she has never sung the song on her own.

She is also learning how to count both in English and Spanish. She can count in English up to ten with some help and we have heard her count in Spanish on her own up to three. I know she can count higher in Spanish but I don’t remember how high.

She’s become quite independent and wants to do everything on her own. She is feeding herself more which is great, and she is walking up and down stairs on her own. In our house she doesn’t hold to the walls anymore to get up and down the few stairs we have inside but she will hold on to the railings other times.

She is back in swim classes and is enjoying them. She is very slowly getting the hang of closing her mouth when she goes underwater. She loves blowing bubbles underwater and overall having a great time swimming. She is going to love when we go to Hawaii next week and she can swim every day.

That’s what is going on with Emma – she is two, knows what she wants (aka can be a bit stubborn when she doesn’t get her way) and is overall a happy little girl. What more could we ask for!

Our little big Emma

Emma will be two years old soon and I just can’t believe it. She has grown up so much and is such a cute, sweet little person. Her personality comes out more everyday and she reminds me of me. That is a good thing and possibly a bad thing. She knows what she wants and won’t stop until she gets it. For example, she loves chapstick – just loves putting it on her lips, carrying it around and unfortunately sticking her fingers in it. She won’t let up until you give it to her and it is an easier thing to give into her than fight with her. When she sees chapstick she lights up – she makes these wonderful facial expressions and they are just to die for. It is really hard to not give in and give her the chapstick. Typically though it ends with us having to take it away because she sticks her fingers in the chapstick – it is really annoying how many chapsticks she has ruined! Another example is Emma loves her stuffed animals – she sleeps with three bunnies, her monkey, giraffe, another little bunny and her other monkey – LaLa. I love that she loves her animals and that she is attached to them but she is maybe a bit attached to them. I don’t mind as much as Jamey does but she likes to bring the majority of her animals to the park or outside the house and it can cause some problems. Granted it is probably best for her to not bring her animals when she leaves the house so we are going to try to stop that.

As I have said before and will continue to say Emma is smart and she knows what she is supposed to do or not do. She will climb up on a chair by the counter/bar in the kitchen and we don’t like her doing it because it is a bit dangerous. So now when she does it she will get up and say, “Emma, no, no, no.” It is really funny to hear her say that.

Emma has started to pick out her own clothes – she has preferences of what she wears and sometimes it is a battle but most of the time it works out. I love watching her go through her clothes and pick out what she wants to wear.

Another past time Emma loves doing is swinging from everything. She has figured out that the kitchen table is a fantastic place to swing from. She will move the chairs away from the table and start swinging. I have to say that the first time she did it I was blown away. I couldn’t believe she was hanging from the table and swinging. Hilarious!

As smart as Emma is, the one thing she didn’t get down was potty training. Last weekend we decided to try the three day potty training method – and, well, Emma failed – miserably. The house was like a pool filled with pee – thank goodness for hardwood floors – easy clean-up. She did pee on the carpet a few times so not as many times as she peed on the floor. It was bitter sweet to she her cute little tushie in underwear and not have diaper butt but I did three loads of laundry everyday for two days. It was just awful. She never got it even though the method says that a 22-month old can do it. She is interested in the potty but this method wasn’t right for her. We are now taking another approach and it seems to be working. It isn’t flawless but she is doing much better. Instead of having her tell us when she wants to potty we continuously ask her if she needs to go and then will go in the potty. Judith wants to try underwear next week so we will see how that goes. In any case it is pretty amazing that she likes going to the bathroom in the potty.

We started Emma in swim classes again. She has only been to two thus far but she is really enjoying them. She is learning that she needs to close her mouth when she goes underwater but she does drink a lot of it. One step at a time. Emma is also taking a couple other classes at the recreation center which she enjoys. They are gym type classes with some arts and crafts aspect at the end too. It gives her something to do during the week in addition to music class.

Emma can definitely be difficult but she hasn’t really entered the terrible two’s just yet. We have the most trouble with her at dinner time because sometimes she doesn’t want to eat what was made for her. It is so difficult to feed her sometimes and it isn’t a pleasant experience. She will want to do anything but eat – play, read a book, skype with family, look at pictures of Gracie. But all in all she doesn’t throw tantrums and we are lucky so far. We imagine they will come someday but hopefully not soon.

For quite a while now we have been working on Emma’s manners. We make her say please, thank you, etc. and it is wonderful to hear her be kind to people – especially us. One of the cutest things she does is when someone sneezes she will either say bless you or “a-chew-ee” – you know the sound you make when you sneeze. It is so precious when she says that. And she has been saying it a lot because Jamey got sick and then of course I got sick.

We are trying to teach Emma colors and while we know she knows them she won’t always get it right. Sometimes Jamey thinks she is color blind because she will say blue or green for everything when she knows it is yellow or red. I think she just doesn’t want to think so says something to appease us but when she gets it wrong we just work with her more.

In addition to chapstick Emma is really into Elmo and trains. Judith got her an Elmo shirt – it is really cute but she is not a fan of when it goes into the washing machine. She knows it needs to be clean but doesn’t want to part from it. We also bought her a Thomas the Train book and a train rubber stamp. She really enjoys the book and loves getting stamps! When she sees a train she says choo choo and will refer to trains as such.

Emma is an avid reader. She will pick up books in room and sit on her stool and read her books. We don’t need to entertain her during this time – she is content reading by herself. But of course we love to read to her and do so at every opportunity. She refers to a number of her books by particular names – and it really cool to see how her little brain is working. She will bring us books to read to her and then request a different one.

We are in midst of the retched preschool process and I can’t stand it! I get so stressed about it and it puts me in a bad mood. I just want to shut down and pretend it isn’t happening. It is so expensive and competitive. Ugh!! And the places we have seen aren’t great – we saw one that we liked but it too has its flaws. I just can’t believe we are already at the stage in Emma’s life to look for a preschool. It makes me sad that she is growing up so quickly but I love it too.

I love spending time with Emma. It is so fun to do things with her and watch her do all the things she can do now that she is older. She wants to do everything herself – “I doey” aka I do it. I love her little sweet voice – and love that she talks so much. She is putting three – sometimes more words together. She will even speak in sentences but when that happens we have no clue what she is saying. She is talking in her own language. She is also speaking more Spanish which is a blessing and a curse – we can’t always understand what she is saying or what she wants. Most of the time we are OK but sometimes she can get a bit frustrated or she will laugh/smile because she knows we don’t know what she is saying. The other day she was saying something (in her own language) and she kept repeating it over and over because I kept asking what she was saying. After ten times of repeating herself she just started to laugh because I wasn’t getting it. it is good that she laughs more often than getting frustrated.

Little Miss Emma was a Princess for Halloween. She wore a princess dress that Grandma and Grandpa bought for her. She was a beautiful princess. I bought her a wand, tiara, ring and earrings to go along with the outfit. She loved the tiara surprisingly given she doesn’t love wearing anything on her head. She also is obsessed with her wand. She likes to “zing or zoing” people with it and thinks it is the funniest thing when she does so. She starts hysterically laughing and it is wonderful to hear the house filled with her laughter. We bought her a dog costume to wear but she wanted nothing to do with it – oh well.

It took almost two years but Emma is really good about going to sleep now. When we put her to sleep she will say “mama, bye bye” and then go to sleep without crying or whining. I can’t tell you how nice it is for her to go right to sleep. And she isn’t that difficult with her naps either which is such a 180 than before.

Emma is the light of our lives. She brings so much happiness to our lives and fills our house with love and laughter. She loves giving hugs and kisses and they never get old. I hope she stays this lovey forever. I also hope she doesn’t become an Emma monster once she is two. Time will tell.

Wrote on Oct. 3 but didn't post till now...

It’s been a long long time since I have last posted an update – and boy oh boy did a lot of things happen!!

Emma is such a big girl it is amazing. I can’t believe how much of a person she is. Emma is a talking machine – she is saying more and more words everyday and when we ask her to use her words and she does. She climbs on everything and is a first class daredevil – not afraid of anything. She loves hanging and swinging on the monkey bars at the playground. She is the only one her age that does that and she absolutely loves it. It is really cool to see – but the little voice inside of me wonders if it is good for her arms...

In August, we went to LA and SD. Emma had a wonderful time in LA with Gracie – her new best friend. She learned how to say Gracie’s name really well and command her to “come.” It is really cute to watch her call Gracie and then with all her might yell come. She does it with such fervor that it will make anyone laugh! A huge milestone happened when we were there – Emma went poo poo in the potty. We were giving her a bath and she crouched down in position and we asked her if she needed to poo. When she said she did we lifted her up and put her on the potty. Low and behold, she pooed in the potty. It was amazing!! We cheered and cheered and she was so proud of herself. We have continued to encourage her to use the potty when we are home and she seems to be getting the hang of it. It really is incredible to see her potty train herself though. She will tell us that she has to go poo poo and then say potty and she will go. Sometimes she just toots and we tell her that she doesn’t need to go to the potty to do that but she is learning. And then just this past week she started to go pee pee in the potty. She is doing this potty training thing reversed but how many kids really potty train themselves.

She was a flower girl in Meredith’s wedding and was a perfect angel that day! Emma looked so beautiful in her flower girl dress! She walked down the aisle with no problem at all and even tried to walk Meredith down the aisle!

Grandma Shu Shu's visit