Gardner Village

I have family in town this weekend from California, Nevada and Arizona. We decided to head out to Gardner Village this afternoon, although it wasn't exactly what we expected. Most of us had never been to Garner Village during Halloween season and while there were lots of fun shops to go into, we didn't think about the fact that there were 3 babies, 2 kids and about 10 adults. Needless to say, we didn't get much shopping done, but we did enjoy the warm weather and being outside. Here are a few pictures from the day (not surprisingly though, I have the most of Emery).




Emery had her first taste of a donut. Of course, like her Mom, she was in love at first taste and couldn't get enough ...

Self Feeding..

We've been trying to get Emery to self feed for the past few days. She loves Cheerios (will seriously get all excited and dance when she sees the box of them) so we decided to practice with them. Ivan and I were sitting on the couch feeding her Cheerios. Ivan ended up putting a Cheerio on the couch instead of putting it into Emery's mouth. What did she do?

She leaned over with a huge open mouth and put the Cheerio directly from the couch to her mouth without any hands! I totally knew that's what she was going to do and it was hilarious!

After that, Ivan realized he had to put the Cheerios further back on the couch so she couldn't reach them with her mouth. She finally figured out the concept of self feeding and is getting better and better as the days go by. I'm hoping she'll have it down enough by her 1st birthday so she can feed herself cake!

Emery's 11 Month Pictures

Yes, I'm late ... I love the idea of taking monthly pictures like this, but I have to admit I'm glad there is only one more month ..

Anyway, below are Emery's 11 Month pictures. I love the 1st one other than 1) she isn't smiling and 2) she has a dirty sock in her hand. Which one is your favorite?

Things this past month...

• Emery now has 4 teeth - two top and two bottom
• She loves to sleep - sleeps roughly 16-18 hours/day still
• She loves all table food
• She loves to rough house with Daddy and Carter
• She loves to play with books, shoes, socks and all electronics
• She loves to race around the ottoman in the living room

Fruit vs. Veggies??

Overall, Emery is a great eater. She loves table food and will actually "run" to you when she sees food. The other night, I had just fed Emery her 2 containers of baby food and then I was eating dinner. Sure enough, my little shadow ran over and had to share whatever it was that I was eating. There aren't any table foods that I can think of that the child won't eat - including pickles, salmon, yougurt and steak.

Anyway, Emery has been refusing to eat her baby food fruits for about 6 weeks now. The craziest thing is that she can tell which are fruits and which are veggies - how, who knows? It must be something about the colors of the foods? I won't even say anything about which I'm feeding her and I'll mix up the order between fruits and veggies.

As soon as I put a little bit of fruit onto the spoon, she looks away and refuses to open her mouth. If I actually happen to get the fruit into her mouth, she spits it out. It's funny to me that she is so particular and actually prefers veggies over fruits. Oh well, I'll keep trying to get some fruit in her here and there.

Are you there?

I saw this post on another blog and I can totally relate:

Have you ever been engaged in a conversation with another person and they are completely ignoring you? That's what it's like to blog if people don't leave you comments. I know you all check the blog, so use your highly honed computer skills and start leaving me a comment every now and then. I'm not going to name names, you know who you are. That's enough for now.

Have you wondered HOW to leave a comment? It's easy, just follow the steps below:

• At the bottom of each post, it says who posted and the time posted. Click on "comments".
• A page will come up where you leave your comments
  
• Yes, you have to do some validation by typing in some weird letters that pop up by the website
• It's as SIMPLE as that

So, Mom, Danny, Brenda, Karen, Mac - I know you guys are out there. And, I'm not sure who else checks in regularly, but start leaving comments please.

Thanks to my friend Jodi who always supports my blog by commenting on it!

Last Pictures ...

Emery with her cousin Elysia who is 4 months old. We really discovered Emery's love for other babies during this trip. I need to find a playgroup in my area so she can interact with other babies her age.

I don't know why, but bath pictures are always my favorite.
Do you see Emery has a fat upper lip? She was trying to walk in the hotel lobby and fell - she was a trooper about it though. She is one tough little girl.
On the plane on the way home. Emery has discovered her infant carseat and thinks it's a toy now. She stood in it backwards and played in it for about 45 minutes on the plane ride home. The only time she screamed the entire plane ride was when I took the carseat from her because we were getting off the plane.

Emery, Emery, Emery...

With teething, Emery wants to chew on everything. She found the Tylenol bottle and sucked on the top like it was a binky. She also enjoyed chewing on the lid. How beautiful are those big blue eyes??Sleeping in her pack-n-play in the hotel..


Emery is finally getting enough hair for me to try pigtails. What do you think?

Us on the subway ...




Mama Emma and Emery taking a nap on a long car ride..

Emery with family...

Emery with Grandma Lola and Mama Emma

Her Uncle Eduardo (Rodolfito)
Uncle Manuel
Aunt Bella and cousins Natalie and Pamela
4 Generations

WARNING - Picture Overload!

Here are some cute pictures of Emery - in the stroller at the airport and in the plane on the way to NYC.




How adorable is this? Emery has become attached to her binky on this trip - we definitely let her have it more during this trip than she ever has it. It normally stays in her room and she only gets it when she goes to bed. That's a habit we'll have to break quickly now that we are home.

We're HOME!!

It's so nice to be home! We had a good trip in NY and got to visit with all of Ivan's family. It was nice seeing them with Emery and knowing how grateful Ivan's Mama Emma was that we made the trip out there. It's late, so no pictures tonight, but I will post some tomorrow. It's crazy, we were only gone for 5 days (including traveling days) and Emery changed so much. During this trip, she learned to FINALLY hold her own bottle and put her binky back in her mouth.

We didn't make it to Wicked, the tickets were sold out by the time we decided we were really going to go. So, we didn't experience anything that NY had to offer, but we got in lots of family time. The trip was really to visit family anyway, so Ivan and I weren't disappointed.

Day #1 in NYC

Yesterday was a bit of a challenge. Emery slept ok the night before, although, she did wake several times for her binky, but she got a good amount of sleep.

We got up, had a little continental breakfast at the hotel and then headed out around noon. I've always said that I'm not made for a bit city, and now with Emery, I believe it even more. We headed out with the baby, diaper bag and stroller. Wow - it was lot of stuff. We took a shuttle to the subway and then went through 2-3 transfers on the subway. We finally made it to Times Square.

We walked (in sprinkling rain with humidity) down to a little steakhouse called Tad's Steakhouse. The restaurant greeter was hilarious - very friendly and a huge flirt with all of the ladies - pretty entertaining.

Ivan and I had a good lunch and then headed out to walk around. Right at that time - Emery's meltdown started. She wouldn't go into her stroller, she wasn't sure that she wanted to be held and she was just screaming. Our child doesn't EVER behave like this and Ivan and I weren't really sure how to even react. The good thing is that we didn't start fighting and kept our cool. We walked over to Macy's to see about trying to feed Emery. No go! So, we decided to head back to Ivan's Grandma's to try to let Emery take a nap. First, I wanted to change Emery's diaper. We spent about 10 minutes trying to actually find a restroom (not a good time to be in such a large department store). Emery was screaming the entire time. I was so ready to cry! Finally, I decided to take off her shoes just to see what would happen. Silence - it worked! I'm not sure what the deal was with the shoes, but I can guarantee that Emery will never be wearing those shoes again.

Once the ordeal was over, we were still a little nervous about heading out to the town again based on Emery still being tired. So, we headed to Ivan's Grandma's apartment. We got there and Emery went down for a nap (I joined her) and Ivan got to visit with his Mom and Grandma.

We then went for a quick dinner and then back to the subway (a train was down so a 10 mile ride took 1 1/2 hours to get home). We got home at 10p, settled down, and went to bed. Luckily, Emery slept the whole night through until 10a!

We are going to meet up with family and visit this afternoon and Ivan and I are hoping to get to Wicked Sunday afternoon. Hopefully we have better days to come!

We made it to NY!!

We were up early and left the house at 7a. Now mind you, when we don't have to wake Emery up, she usually sleeps until 1030a - yes, from 9p-1030a straight. Yes, we are very lucky and very spoiled.

Anyway, I was worried about the 4 1/2 hour flight to begin with but then even more worried since we had to wake Emery so early. She ended up doing very well during the flight. The first 15-20 minutes were quite rough, but that was just because Emery was over-tired by that point and wasn't in her crib to take her nap, so it took a bit for her to get to sleep.

She ended up sleeping for close to 2 hours and then drank a bottle and played a bit. I walked her up and down the isle of the plane once and then it was time to land. I feel really good about how she was on the flight. Let's just hope she is the same on the way home Monday.

It seems like we spent most of the day in the car. Ivan's Uncle Manual was nice enough to pick us up from the airport. We then headed to the hotel to check in and drop off our luggage. Then, off to pick up Ivan's Mama Emma and cousin Rodolfo. We ate dinner at a very delicious Mexican Restaurant and now we are winding down for the night. It was a very busy day, but a good day. I can't wait to get home and post pictures of Emery with her daddy's side of the family.

I finally did it!!!

It's very sad how many times I have tried to get a cute background on this silly blog. But, I am proud to say that I finally did it all by myself! yeah!

Now, the question is, will I remember how to do it again? You will be able to tell by whether or not the background ever changes.

Oh, and my new camera finally came in today. I'm so relieved it is here before we head off to NY!

Crimereports.com

I actually watched about 20 minutes of the news the other night. For those of you who don't know, I despise the news because I think it's all negative. They never talk about something good that was done in the community or country, just about deaths, crimes, etc. Anyway, in the 20 minutes that I saw, they actually talked about a cool website.

crimereports.com

Check it out - you type in your address and it will show a map of your neighborhood and the crimes that have taken place. You can even put the mouse over the little symbol and it will tell you the month/year of the crime and how far in miles from your house it occurred.

I feel good to know that there's not much crime in my neighborhood. Most of hit happened at the Family Center area - but that's expected since it's a shopping center, right?

I hope everyone lives in safe, crime-free neighborhoods too!

Emery is WALKING!!!

Well, she's taking 3-4 steps by herself. That's just the beginning of walking, right? She took her first few steps on Friday night. And, dare I say that Ivan and I encouraged it? I am torn because it is so dang cute, but I also am totally not ready for her to start walking on her own yet. Below are the pictures that I attempted to take of her first steps. (my new camera BETTER be here before we leave for NY)

And, Emery has also figured out to smile for the camera - YEAH!! Here are some cute pics of her bath time last night. Emery loves the bath and speed crawls into the bathroom every time I mention bath time for her.

Emery's Favorite Toys..

Ivan keeps telling me to stop buying Emery toys. Based on the pictures below, I think I should start listening to him.

The baby monitor .. here she is squeezing herself between the bed and the night stand to help herself to her "toy".
And, any stroller. If you notice, there are 2 here and a 3rd in my trunk. Yes, I have a problem with buying baby items. But, I do actually have a good reason for all 3 strollers. Different sizes for different outings. Anyway, I justify it to myself..

Emery loves playing with strollers. She will seriously entertain herself for 30 mins+ with any/all strollers.

Here new favorite thing is to crawl over to the stove, pull herself up and look at her reflection. Occasionally, we will also catch her sucking on the stove door. Don't worry, we don't do much cooking so the oven isn't ever hot..

It's a very sad day...

Our friends, Mike and Candice Greene lost their little 5-year old boy, Jackson, last week. We are attending the services today in support of the family. Although I have only personally met Mike, Candice and Jackson once, we are very close with Mike's brother, Mac.

It breaks my heart to imagine what the Greene family is going through right now. Jackson was diagnosed with cancer back in July and his little body wasn't strong enough to stand the chemo. Since having Emery, I understand the love and bond between Mother and child so much more now. I don't understand why things like cancer happen to such little, innocent beings.

I hope the best for the Greene family and hope that they continue to cherish each and every moment with their other two children. A piece of me thinks about their family daily and wishes them the strength to get through this tough time in life.


Below is a link to the obituary and a beautiful picture of Jackson Greene.

http://www.legacy.com/saltlaketribune/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonID=117389677

We almost lost our entire blog!!

As you all know, I am extremely technically challenged. It's pretty bad and to the point where if I ever actually have to call tech-support on my own computer (and, only once and it was before Ivan and I were dating) they have to start with questions like "what color is your start button". I seriously know nothing about computers and technology and don't have the patience to learn. I try to do things and then I just get frustrated and either give up or make Ivan help. Well .. this evening, I decided to make some changes to the blog .. I wanted to change the background to cute one's like my friends have and add a view counter.

So, I attempt the view counter. Nope, can't figure that stupid thing out. And, there are step by step directions on the stupid page where you download it from. Still can't get it, so I just give up and figure, "ooh well, I didn't really want one of those anyway". All the while just trying to convince myself of that so I don't get too frustrated.

Next, the blog background. Now, Ivan set the last background for me because I couldn't figure it out. So, I don't even try. I pick a background that I like and then call for Ivan. He comes and tries to do it and all of a sudden all of my posts are missing. I am trying to not openly freak out and deep down Ivan is freaking out too. Luckily, he was able to restore the posts, but he couldn't figure out the background. I think he just isn't willing to take time away from his Utefans.com or Diner Dash game to figure out my needs. Ooh well, needless to say, I'm back to a boring, old, background.

Learning Boundries or Parent Denial?

Okay, for you experienced Mommies out there ... could Emery really be learning her boundaries at the the ripe old age of 10 months, or am I in denial?

There aren't many things that we won't let Emery do/touch around the house. Not that we are push-overs, but we have more so baby proofed the house instead of having to walk after Emery saying "no, no" to everything. Below are some of the things we won't let her play with:

• The stereo/DVD player/DirecTV box
• The tray on our ottoman that usually has drinks on it
• Carter's dog food/water (although this WAS one of her favorite toys)
• Carter's bones and raw hides

Now, since we have been telling her no each time she tries to get into any of the above, now when she tries to get into any of them, she gets close, stops and smiles/smirks at us to see our response. Now we just have to give a simple "no" and she basically leaves the item alone.

Could it be that she is already learning her boundaries and will really be that good of a child? Or, is it all DENIAL on my part?