To Cut or Not to Cut???

I'm thinking that it is time to get Emery's hair cut for the first time. She has quite the mullet going on in the back. It's just about long enough to put in one pony, but when I leave it down or do pig-tails just on top, the back is oh so bad. I'm thinking that if I give the back a little trim, then it will start to be a little thicker. What do you think?

Here is Emery's new trick. She absolutely loves to put my shoes on and walk around the house. Such a big girl!

15 Month Update

We had Emery's 15 month appointment today and below is her update.
20.8 lbs - 15th percentile - only gained 8 oz since 12 month check-up - She is skinny right now, but Dr. Ring is not concerned about it. She figures that she is naturally thin and will pick up some weight at her 18 month appointment.
30 inches - 50th percentile
8 teeth
loves to mimic anything I do
helps around the house with laundry, trash, cleaning up toys
absolutely loves books and cuddling with blankets
starting to babble a ton
loves all foods but is very picky about when she decides to actually eat something
favorite foods are raisins and milk

Here is Emery this morning feeding herself some good old egg burritos and hash browns from Del Taco - shh, don't tell Ivan's Mom! :)


Emery loves to play with Ivan's beanies and I swear, she does this to herself and walks around the house. She does have the occasional bump into the wall, but she still loves it!

The Simple Things

It's the simple things that make Emery the happiest..

Carrying around her diaper bag like it's a purse
She played with the bowl and utensils for 30 minutes - seriously, for a 15 month old to stay focused on one thing that long - it's gotta be good!

Story Book Time at the Library

I discovered recently that the local libraries have story book time and other activities scheduled by age groups. I figured it would be great for Emery since she loves books and another bonus is that it's free entertainment. The class for 0-2 1/2 year olds starts at 10:15a which is a little early for Emery, but I really wanted to try it out.

So, she finally woke up this morning at 9:30a and I got us both ready and out of the house in 30 minutes -yay! We got to story time and Emery was a little shy at first. After 5 minutes she was walking around saying hi to all of the other kids and parents. The rest of the kids in the room were probably less than 12 months old. They all (except for Emery and one other girl, 17 months old) sat quietly and nicely in the parents laps for the whole 30 minutes. Not Emery! She walked around and talked, waved and laughed with everyone in the room. I figure this is normal behavior for a 15 month old baby who is walking, right? I'm just not sure if we were "those people" who disrupted story time. I want to go back, but I'm not sure if I should wait until Emery will sit quietly in my lap for 30 minutes, which I know that will be NEVER. Thoughts?

My Little Helper..

Emery definitely takes after me with cleaning and tidying up. She has already become a good little helper. The other night, after Ivan finished making dinner, Emery was picking up crumbs from the kitchen floor and bringing them to me, one by one. She has also helped me put socks away, she loves to dust and she regularly puts her own toys away. She puts her diapers in the trash and also cleans up after her own bath time. And, if she sees the corner of a rug flipped up, she'll go over and fix it. I think she spends way to much time watching me clean up! How long until she's big enough to clean the bathroom and the kitchen floor??

Eating at the Gallegos House

So, Ivan and I made a few new household rules last week. I will handle the cleaning, laundry and shopping for the house and Ivan will handle the cooking. I am not into cooking anything these days, yet we are trying to start cooking so Emery can eat healthier. So, in the last week, we have had some great home cooked meals including: steak with mushroom sauce and baked potatoes, homemade spaghetti and meatballs and roast and potatoes. It's been GREAT!!

And, Emery started feeding herself tonight ... enjoy!

Utah Football Parade

There was a parade for the Utah Football team on Friday at Washington Square. Ivan was off so we headed down. The weather ended up being decent and we had a good time. Emery did pretty good, other than getting a little scared when the band and football team came into the area. I think she was just a little freaked out by all of the people and the noise.

Cute Moments

I have been a total slacker about posting these days .. not sure why ... anyway, here a few pictures from the last couple of weeks.

Emery loves to play on the computer. With me, it's blog's, banking and babycenter. With Ivan, it's Grand Theft Auto - nice! The funny thing is that she knows to get on our lap, put the headphones on and grab the controler. In this picture, the headphones are missing, but she is really using the control and playing the game. Get the bad guys Emery!

Emery loves to sit on the rug right below the kitchen sink. She'll bring over her blocks and sit and play with them for 20-30 minutes at a time.
She also loves to play with her bibs. Here she is with about 6 bibs. She walked around the house just holding them and biting on them. Lucky for us, most days, she takes most of them back into her room. She definitely has a bit of my OCD and is already figuring out to put things back where they belong.

Accident-Prone Household

Something must be in the air these days ... Wednesday night, I was at work and ended up twisting my ankle and getting stuck in the revolving door while holding a large, somewhat heavy box of computer equipment. Quite embarrassing! My ankle is swollen and has been killing me ever since.

Then, yesterday morning, Emery fell INTO the bathtub while I was showering. I still don't really know how it happened, but all of a sudden she was in the bathtub, head first when I was trying to shower. I quickly picked her up and put her on her feet outside of the bath and she whined. The only reason she whined is because her sippy of milk was still in the bathtub. I handed it to her and she walked away drinking her milk - didn't even cry. So, I went on and enjoyed my steaming hot shower. I took pictures afterwards just to show how drenched her head was. She literally was head-first into the bathtub.




Hopefully, the air has cleaned up and we won't have anymore freakish and embarrassing moments in this household.

Emery's Accomplishments

I feel like I don't do updates on Emery's accomplishments anymore now that I'm done taking monthly pictures. So, here is a little update. In the last few weeks, Emery has begun to:

• put her toys away, well, put her blocks away, Ivan and I still have to put away the rest of her toys
• give kisses - they are open-mouthed and slobbery, but what else would you expect from a 1 year old?
• started loving to cuddle with stuffed animals and blankets. My Aunt Wanda gave Emery a "prayer bear" that speaks in a little girls voice and says prayers. Emery loves it and goes to bed with it every night
• run with her eyes closed and the biggest smile ever on her face
• dance and shake her bum when she hears music or our cell phones ring
• throw tantrums - she slowly lays down on the floor and then screams
• pushes us around by pushing on our legs to get us where she wants us
• will nicely put down her sippy when she's done drinking. Most things get thrown when she's done with them, but she actually stops, bends over and ensures her sippy is upright on the floor or ottoman before she walks away from it
  

Oh, and we are back to attempting sleep without the binky. Emery just went down for the night and it might be a rough hour ...

And my baby is back...

Well the binky is back .. Emery did great for two nights, but then she came down with a nasty cold today. She looks like Rudolf because her poor little nose is so red. She is a snotty little baby today! I put her down for bed and couldn't stand to hear her cry. So, back came the binky and she went down with no problems at all. Hopefully she will be feeling better soon and we can go back to our binky days.

oh and Jodi .. how about you have another one first and get us all started again? :) :)

Where did my BABY go???

Emery's been walking since about 9 months ... off the bottle/formula since 11 months ... now, the binky is gone too! I'm happy that it's been so easy to break the habit of these things, but the only baby-like thing I have left is diapers. I can't say that I'm necessarily excited for that one. Oh, and I guess the crib too, but it just doesn't feel like she's a baby anymore. So very sad...

Dinner Time with Emery

Emery is teething again and hasn't been eating much food these days. Ivan and I were having Sonic last night for dinner and trying to get something into Emery's tummy. This is how it went:

"Emery, do you want some bread?" ... she shakes her head no
"Emery, do you want some meat?" ... she shakes her head no
"Emery, do you want some fries?" ... she shakes her head no
"Emery, do you want some coke?" ... hands go in the air for the 44 oz coke - no way jose!

I am completely obsessed with fountain cokes from Sonic - they have crushed ice which makes them so much better than a fountain coke from anywhere else. Emery must want to jump on board with the coke obsession after going to Sonic every single day with me for my fountain coke fix.

Christmas in a Nutshell.. well, with a lot of pictures..

We went to my Aunt Vickie's for a quick brunch Christmas morning and then had an official Christmas celebration tonight back at Aunt Vickie's. We had a rule today for dinner that everything we ate had to be a new recipe. I have to say that it turned out really good. And, it was a much healthier dinner than we usually have at holidays, lots of meat and veggies. Thanks to Aunt Vickie for offering up her house to all of us.

We have 3 kids now, Emery is the oldest, Brandon who is 7 months and Quinlan is 4 months. It's a whole new atmosphere with the kids around, but a fun one.


Brandon on Christmas morning


Emery opening her gifts at our house
Don't you just love the bow in her hair! Now, she thinks all bows from presents belong in her hair .. to cute!

From left to right: Brandon, Amelinda, Quinlan, me and Emery

Us with my Mom
Emery and Grandma Lola

Brandon crawling UP the stacked boxes!
One quick picture of Quinlan .. why do we always torture our babies with hats, bows and clothing? :)

A Visit to Santa

Ivan and I tried getting a picture of Emery with Santa a few weeks ago at Gateway. She screamed the whole time and I couldn't get myself to spend money on such a bad picture of my baby.

Just this weekend, several of my friends told me that I just had to get a picture of Emery with Santa and that I would regret it if I didn't try. So, I was off today and decided to head to the mall. I did a little bit of shopping and then decided to get a pretzel at yummy pretzel maker so I could keep Emery entertained while in line. We grabbed our pretzels and headed for the line. I was surprised that it wasn't very long. Until I realized that Santa was at lunch for 45 minutes! I decided there was no way I was standing there waiting that long.

So Emery and I headed down to the little children's play area at South Towne Mall. She loved running and around and watching the other little kids. Her most favorite part was going down the slide - she had the most adorable laugh!

Then, back to Santa. By now, he was back from lunch. We ended up waiting in line for about 1 hour, 15 minutes. Luckily, Emery held up pretty well. We got to Santa and she clung to my leg. I handed her a little candy cane in the wrapper and then set her on Santa's lap. She was fine! yeah!!

Snow Update

Ivan guilt tripped me into actually going outside to let Emery play in the snow this afternoon. So, I got her all bundled up (with the little amount of snow stuff we actually have) and we headed outside. Emery wasn't too fond of the cold or the snow, but I still got some cute pictures.

Emery's favorite part of it was when I was bouncing her up and down trying to shake the snow off her pants and shoes.

For what it's worth, I still wished I hadn't gone outside. If only you could see me, I was still in my flip flops, mid-December when it was about 30 degrees outside.




And, just a couple more cute pictures from tonight. Emery loves walking around the house with my shoes!

Snow, Snow, Please Go Away!!

I've taken several days off over the last two weeks since Ivan's Mom has been on vacation. I think Lola will be amazed with Emery when she gets home. She's changed so much in the last two weeks. She's become much more vocal, like she just really figured out how to make sounds and now, she won't stop! The other morning, she had just woken up and I was changing her diaper. As soon as I laid her down on the changing table, she said "daddy" and it was the cutest thing in her soft, innocent voice. That was the beginning ...

She's also become somewhat of a high-needs baby. As I read more and more, I think (hope) it is just a stage she is going through. She would follow me everywhere crying until I would pick her up. At first, I fell for it and picked her up. After a couple of days, I realized I couldn't walk around holding her all of the time, and there was not a thing wrong with her. So, I let her cry until she finally stopped and went about her own thing.

Some days, we would go to Walmart for something little just to get out of the house. I get stir crazy being stuck in the house everyday and Emery does too. So, I'm off today and had a small list of random places to go, kind of just to get out of the house, but errands that eventually need to be done. But then, I woke up and there's so much snow out there. I have yet to step foot outside (the trash is piled by the door and I'm sure will stay there until Ivan gets home), but I can just imagine how STINKING COLD it is! So, needless to say, I've stayed in all day. But, I do have a very clean house and all of our laundry is finished since we stayed in. I guess it's not all bad ...

Here are some pictures of the snow, from inside the house of course.




I think it's supposed to snow everyday for the next week or so ... crap! I guess I will just have to try to fill my need of getting out of the house by shopping on the internet! I better go back to work soon ...

Should I be Worried?

A few weeks ago, my friend Amanda posted about blog safety and some changes that she had made to her blog. Basically talking about not posting any personal info, address, when you're going on vacation, etc, which I don't feel that I really do. (I did post about going to NYC and I've since learned and won't do that one again).

Anyway, she also added a site feeder (is that what it's called?) to her blog so she can see where people are located when they view her blog. So, I made the same change to my blog.

Now, I look at it and people from all over the place are looking at my blog. I mean, Texas, Oregon, California, Colorado, Arkansas. Most of the places don't bother me because I know people who live in those states so I'm assuming that it's the people we know looking at our blog.

BUT ... now, there are people from other countries looking at our blog - Yoevill, Somerset and Stockport - I don't even know there those places are! And, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh - is that a country somewhere?

I'm just starting to wonder if I should make ou blog private so I can monitor exactly who is looking at it, or am I being a freak? I'm on both sides of the fence on this one. For the most part, I don't think there's anything wrong with people looking at my blog. I don't post personal information on it anyway. But then it kind of creeps me out a little to think about strangers in other countries looking at my blog.

Maybe I should just take the site feeder thing off so I won't even know about it ... your thoughts?

The Discovery Center at Gateway

We took the kids to the Discovery Center down at Gateway this afternoon and had a blast! The last time we took them was in July and Makayla loved it, but Emery wasn't mobile yet, so she stayed in her stroller the whole time. This time, Makayla loved it like expected and Emery loved it even more. She walked all throughout picking up all of the toys and watching all of the other kids.

Here we are doing some coloring in the arts and crafts room.


Emery loved this truck! She kept going on and off of it and playing with the steering wheel.
Makayla loved the rock climbing wall too..

I promise, no babies were injured while taking this picture :)