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.
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