Chocolate, Anyone?

Who knew Doctors would prescribe chocolate as making everything better? I sure didn’t. I mean, yes, I know that chocolate is the best medicine for anything... but for a Doctor to confirm it, well I feel like the happiest person in the world. That’s what happened yesterday at Emma’s 18-month doctor's appointment. Chocolate really works and does make everything better.

Let me go back a few days to explain. Jamey and I decided over the weekend that we needed to get Emma off the bottle once and for all. Per the doctor’s recommendation we got rid of it cold turkey. We did a little send off Saturday night when I was giving her a bottle but it didn’t resonate with her – no surprise there. When I went to feed her Sunday morning she was not interested one bit in drinking her milk in anything but a bottle. She wouldn’t take it from her sippy cup, an adult cup, her yogurt bottle – nothing. We tried everything but she is so smart and knew that we were putting milk in these things and she wouldn’t budge. That went on all day, night and Monday morning. Thank goodness we were going to the doctor for her well-baby check up. The doctor said to give her chocolate milk and then gradually limit the amount of chocolate we are putting in the milk till she eventually just drinks regular milk. I was a bit skeptical of this but when we left the doctor’s we bought chocolate milk and guess what – Emma LOVED it!! She wanted more and more and that made us so happy! We already are putting less chocolate in each cup so this trick works. She really is my daughter because if you all remember my favorite food during my pregnancy was Nestlé’s semi-sweet chocolate chips. We of course now brush her teeth really well at night since she is drinking sugar but hopefully she will be off the chocolate soon.

But Emma is so funny and smart. She really notices the little details. She will look at the color of the milk before she drinks it – she has to make sure it has a brown chocolately tint. It will be interesting to see how long it will take for her to go back to regular old milk. Speaking of how observant she is, Jamey and I have electric toothbrushes – Oral B to be exact. There is a little colored ring at the bottom of the toothbrush that you put on to distinguish who’s toothbrush is who’s. Well we took Emma’s ring off because of the chocking hazard and Emma no longer likes her toothbrush. She wants mine or Jamey’s – and she knows the difference. It is annoying but it is cute and kinda cool that she knows.

In addition to us getting rid of the bottle, we are also making a few changes with Emma’s schedule. We are moving her to one nap and we are also pushing her bedtime back to around 7:30pm so she will sleep a little bit later. The doctor said that it will take a few weeks for the new bedtime to take but so far she has been great. She isn’t sleeping as long as we’d like but she is sleeping till 6:15 or so and that is better than her 5:45 wakeup calls. Hopefully she will wake up around 6:30/6:45 so she gets a little more rest but we will see. We also decided it was time for Emma to take one nap. She is super tired in the morning but we have been putting her to sleep around 1pm and the last couple of days she has slept around an hour and 15 minutes. Our goal is for her to sleep at least 2 hours. Hopefully she will.

On Saturday we had a nice day. There was a street fair on 24^th Street and we got Emma a balloon. This balloon was a source of entertainment and sadness for the days to come. Emma loved the balloon. She even started to say balloon. She was playing with it and carrying it around with her all over the house. Unfortunately, on Sunday the balloon popped. She was so sad about it. She got over it but then what was remarkable is on Monday out of the blue she went to go look for the balloon. Emma would run to the place in the house where the balloon was kept and would point up to the ceiling and say balloon. She didn’t understand that the balloon was gone and would get sad and even frustrated that it wasn’t there. Her memory of this balloon was incredible. She finally gave up last night but then this morning after she was up for an hour she started talking about the balloon again. We asked Judith to go get her some balloons today so hopefully that will fulfill her balloon need.

On Sunday we went to a birthday party for one of Emma’s friends at the park. It was really nice to meet some of the parents of the kids Emma hangs out with everyday. Emma had a great time and it was really cute to see her play with her friends.

Grandma Barbara also came to visit on Sunday and Emma loved having her around. She learned how to say Barbara and it was so cute. Now she says Barbara so that’s another new word for her. Barbara got her a bunch of books and read to her a lot. She was also teaching Emma her ABC’s. Emma was on her best behavior – she was happy, loving and was her sweet herself. We went out to dinner Sunday night and Emma loved being out. She was observing everyone and she ate really well.

On to her doctor’s appointment: The doctor said something that we already know – Emma is perfect. She said that she is even advanced for her age with the number of words she says. Emma weight 24.4 pounds, is 32 and 2/3 inches long and this puts her in the 45^th percent tile for weight and around 75^th percent tile for height. We asked the doctor about her feet turning in and she said that it is normal and that her feet will continue to straighten out until she is 5. So there is nothing for us to do because again, Emma is perfect. We don’t go back to the doctor until she is 2 and Jamey is taken aback by this. He can’t believe that she doesn’t want to see Emma for 6 months. The doctor said that when a baby has issues she wants to see them at 21 months but because Emma is perfect she doesn’t need to see her.

Emma’s new favorite thing to say is “WOW.” It is so cute to hear her say it. When she gets something she wants like she wants the keys and we give them to her she will say “WOW.” It is so funny. She also likes to look at herself in the mirror. Take note of the cool shoes she is wearing – Randi made them for her. She really likes them!

Emma also got a new stroller to push around and she loves putting Tulane Monkey to sleep in it. She will put Tulane Monkey in it, give him a kiss, then get a blanket and put it over the stroller. She will then say night night and push the stroller around. She will say shush to us and hold her index finger up to her mouth. It is amazing to see her do this. What is hilarious is we put the blanket over her stroller when we put her to sleep and she caught on to this and does this with her Monkey. She really is one smart cookie.

Here are some other words that Emma says. These are either words I forgot to write down that she said by her 18-month birthday or words she has said the last few days:

Drea (for Andrea)

Ardo (for Eduardo)

Salsa

Hat

Night

Go

Alla (it’s Spanish for over there)

Wow

Barbara

Balloon

I

Emma’s 18-months old

Where has the time gone? Little Emma isn’t so little anymore! She is an amazing little girl who loves to explore new things, watch people and observe her surroundings. She runs all over the place and loves to climb up things. She talks and talks and learns new words all the time. It is amazing how much her vocabulary has grown over the past month. Experts say that bi-lingual children will sometimes be delayed in speaking and when the light switch goes on it is non-stop talking. Well, Emma has always been a talker but all of sudden she is speaking tons of words. Jamey and I decided to write down a list of her words to mark her 18-month old birthday. We may have missed some but here are the ones we remember in no particular order:

Mama
Dada
More
Mine
Uh-oh
No
Agua
Gracias
Hola
Bye bye
Up
Nana
Hot
This way
Dog
Dado (this is an Emma word – she uses it to say give me this or I want that)
Ba-bu
Pa-poo
Poo poo
Este
Esto
Ruff ruff (yes a sound but she will also stand in front of a house and bark waiting for the dog to come out)
Hi
Baby
Doll
Out
Patos (as in zapatos, shoes in Spanish)
Yolo (yogurt, her friend at the park says yolo for yogurt and Emma copies her)
Bagel
Alex
Slide
Ball
Sign

Emma is also getting new teeth. While she has her bottom two front teeth the ones on the sides haven’t come in yet… until now… well sorta. On the right side of her mouth she is not only getting the tooth next to the front one but she is getting her bottom eye tooth too. So it’s a double whammy. And then today I decided to see the progress oh her two new bottom teeth and saw that they really broke through. Since Emma was being so good I decided to explore the rest of her mouth. Guess what I found… yup – more teeth. Both her top eye teeth are coming in. So my new nickname for her is going to be Emma the tooth lady. As always, Emma has been a real trooper with her teeth. I mean, seriously, I didn’t even know she had new ones. She hasn’t been irritable or running a fever… if anything maybe I can blame her teeth for her incessant 5:45 am wake-up calls.

You read that right – she has been waking up way too early the past couple of weeks.!! We don’t get her until after 6 am but it has been hard waking up so early. She will call out (my nice way of saying screaming, crying or just repeating words like a broken record) and say, Mama, Dada, No, Agua, Pa-Poo (her way of saying she went poo poo). I should point out that when we do finally get her and we check her diaper she doesn’t have a poo nor does she want water. She has already learned trigger words in which Jamey and I will jump up and get her. But little does she know that we are on to her and we don’t listen to her.

A huge achievement/milestone for Emma is she finally has hair!! It is growing really fast and it is coming in curly. I guess we all should have known since she is a mini-me and I have curly hair. Her hair is really light – a light brownish blond. It is a really pretty color and my mom said it looks like the color I had when I was little. We will see if her curls turn into tight ringlets like mine were. It will be nice when her hair gets long and we can start doing things with it.
Emma’s likes to take walks around the neighborhood after she finishes dinner and before she takes a bath. She loves to say hi to everyone especially the dogs. She gets upset when she doesn't see any dogs, but we do live in Noe Valley where dogs show up all the time. People on the street tell us that she is the friendliest girl ever and that everyone loves her. I mean how could you not… she is so cute and sweet and loves seeing people. It is fun to watch people gravitate towards her.

Emma continues to be a kissing machine. It is so cute and sweet that she gives kisses so freely but at some point I am going to get concerned. She blows kisses to almost anyone and if we ask her to kiss someone she almost always does. She is the best kisser and makes such a good kissing sound that Cousin Danny even asked if that was really her or wondered if we just made the sound. Emma doesn’t have stranger anxiety still which is great. It is nice that she will go to anyone, but we have to be careful because she really will go to anyone.

Emma has gotten better with allowing us to change her diaper but the distractions continue. Her new interest is floss – she loves to floss her teeth! – and so we give her the floss and she will floss her teeth while we change her diaper. We are going through floss like it is going out of style but hey, if it keeps her occupied and allows us to change her diaper who are we to complain. And she has the best looking teeth at the playground!

We had a great Father’s Day yesterday and Jamey is tasked to blog about that.

That’s all for now. Enjoy the pictures!