haircut

These pictures are from early February, when we decided to trim E's bangs/"fringe" ourselves. Before, I had always asked my hairdresser to do it when I went for my own haircut; but Patty the hairdresser broke her wrist late last year and I haven't gotten around to going in to see anyone else. Barrettes were just not working out for Emma, and I hadn't bought the right kind anyway. David was going to do the cutting but I really wanted to and he let me.

tired baby with hair in her eyes

This was a lot harder than I expected, and the pictures kind of shocked me - how close the scissors were to those blue eyes!

Of course she wanted to see the scissors, but luckily she was too tired to struggle much.

after her bath

little red armchair competition

On Friday I purchased two little chairs for Emma, at consignment sales. She has been practicing sitting in them all weekend.

This morning when she and I got up at 6 am, we saw that Ellie May likes the little red armchair too.

As soon as I set Emma down, she tried to sit in the chair with Ellie May.

Ellie May didn't budge right away, so Emma tried to squeeze in on the side.

Emma gave up momentarily, and Ellie May gave her a look.

Emma got a little more assertive.

Emma won the chair, went and got a book, because that's what you do - sit in chairs and read books.

But then it was time to get up one second later. Gotta get a different chair or a different book. Or more Cheerios. Whatever. Ellie May disappeared. (That's the other cat watching from under a chair, with her eyes glowing.)

a daddy-daughter day

When I came home from work on Feb. 6th, I burst out laughing at the scene I saw.


Daddy was sitting on the living room floor. Emma was walking around carrying things.


Both were wearing Emma's hats.

This was David's half of the scene.

He had put the hat on her first and then she brought him one to wear.

The light blue one had been getting too tight for Emma, so Daddy did her a favor.

Walking around happily in a hat.

the done list

My to-do list never seems to change, so sometimes for morale reasons I make "done" lists instead. This week in my one hour between Emma's bedtime and mine, I accomplished the following:
-- changed sheets on our bed (Mon)
-- vacuumed half the house (Tues)
-- had a work telephone meeting that only added one thing to my to-do list (Wed)

On Monday night I actually stayed up really late (til midnight!), reading an inspiring book: True to Our Roots, by Paul Dolan, president of Fetzer Vineyards. It's about leadership and courage and taking a stand, all that stuff, in the story of how they transformed into an environmentally sustainable business. Great lessons in there, and an easy read. My favorite chapter is titled, "There is a way to make an idea's time come"!

David kept E yesterday and will do so again today. Last night he said she has figured out how to take off her shoes, so that she can bring them to you to put on again.

miscellaneous February photos

See how she has 3 teeth in a row on the bottom? I think this was taken in early February. It was like that forever but this month the 4th tooth finally started appearing. I don't remember when I noticed it, but now it's halfway up.

watching Daddy play

another play date with Victor in his kitchen

playing with Mommy's gloves

anointing Victor with the big glove

a girl with her books

reading Hop on Pop

anything to read in here?

sleeping cutie

dragon dance pictures - evening out with friends

These pictures didn't come out so great, but I think you can tell I had fun anyway. And my friend held Emma all the time so I got to take full advantage of the all you can eat buffet!

No photographs please (and I coulda hadda V8)

Emma eating jello (as much a highlight as the dragon dance)

Emma pointing

Dragon comes to our table, tries to eat Mike's hat

Emma studies the dragon

The kids feed the dragon new year money

"sizz"

Emma's word for shoes sounds more like "sizz". Here she is trying to put sizz on by herself.

Pausing to re-evaluate her strategy.

Today (Sunday) I was incapacitated by a migraine with nausea until about 7:00 pm. Poor E got unceremoniously set down a couple of times as I raced for the bathroom. She looked at me a little more intently today. She had to know I wasn't right. David took care of everything while I slept and retched and pressed my forehead into an ice pack. It even made me sick to speak. They're not always this bad, thank goodness. My body just over-reacts to nausea. Long after the problem is out of the stomach, my guts are still playing it up, repeating their complaints over and over like "I can't believe you did that to me!".

Yesterday E and I went to the park in the morning, in the biting cold, but well-wrapped up. She practiced climbing and sliding. And for dinner we went to a Chinese restaurant where they were having a dragon dance for the Chinese new year. Met up with my two best college friends and their families. Emma wasn't scared of the dragon. Kept pointing at it. Danced to the drums a little bit, but of course never when I had the video camera on. She was too distracted to enjoy her first Chinese buffet. I gave her several desserts just so she would have more in her stomach - it was probably the unhealthiest meal of her life so far!

new routines

Emma's sleeping late today! I think I told you all I can't "blog" when she's around anymore. Even if she seems distracted somewhere else in the house, she hears the keyboard and the computer sounds and she comes running. She is taking after her father in regard to the irresistable lure of the computer.

She is also taking after both of us - more times than not in the day she's got a book (or two) in her hands. It's been fun to watch her changing awareness of books and how she interacts with them. At first she gnawed on them and just liked to hold and pat them. Then she learned how to turn and rifle the pages. Then a couple things happened together, I think. As she became mobile she liked to carry books around from one place to another. And she noticed that a grownup would say things when they turned the pages, and sometimes those things were funny. Then she started really noticing the pictures, and eventually recognizing things - like cats. And she'll make her high-pitched "awwww" cat-recognition sound. I showed her how to "pet" the picture of the cat. Spontaneously, she started laying her head down on the page when there's a cat. She'll make a barking sound for dogs sometimes, or point at the window toward the neighbor dog. She has occasionally quacked or moo'ed, and once she "sang" "LaLaLa" for the 3 singing pigs. There's a Dumbo book that has a picture of snoring clowns in it, and she now seeks out that page specifically and tries to mimic my snoring sound. She stares at my mouth but of course can't see the mechanics of the gutteral part of the snoring sound. And now in the last month or two she brings books to you and expects you to hold her in your lap and read them. She wants to turn the pages most of the time, and doesn't yet care if a page gets skipped. With bigger books with paper pages it's kind of a dip-in-at-random approach, whereas board books usually go in order. The pace she accepts for getting through a book is gradually slowing down. I have abridged all her books down to one or two words per page because she has been such a speed reader. One of her favorite lengthier books is The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales. Of course the humor in that book won't be fully appreciated for years and years, but she has been fascinated with it ever since she first saw this book. Her favorite part is the little red hen on the back cover, saying "blah blah blah blah" forever. She watches my mouth when I read that too, and laughs. Yesterday she said blah blah while she looked at the back of another book, but she sounded very tentative about it. The other thing that's neat is that E can enjoy a thick, picture-less adult book almost as much. She doesn't care about it being read to her, but she likes carrying it and turning the pages, and she looks at the covers a lot. She's always been more gentle with books than most other babies. I could count on one hand the books that have gotten torn, and I think it's always been an accident. She likes reading greeting cards just as much as books, and enjoys magazines too. Yesterday she brought me a dvd case to read!

happy valentine's day

The t-shirt designed by Emmaleora's valentine, her daddy.

eating lemons

sigh

I'm so sleepy! Even after 2 cups of tea. E just went back in her crib for more sleep. How I longed to climb in the crib and curl up with her!

I need my sleep, apparently more than some other people. If I'm sleep-deprived, to me that's the same as sick. Others seem to think it's just an inconvenience (but then they drive their cars into guardrails...). I'll forget all kinds of things when I'm sleepy. It starts to look like dementia. One day not too long ago I forgot to rinse the conditioner out of my hair (it dried a little crunchy). Whatever someone says to me will go in one ear and out the other. I'll never forget how embarrassed I was when a friend called to tell me her dog had died, and then about 2 minutes later as we went on to another subject I said, "You sound kind of down - what's wrong?" !!

Last night I went to bed early but couldn't relax. I was woken up by a whimpering child at 1:30. I decided to go in. Held her for a while and it became clear that was what she wanted and had no intention of going back to sleep anytime soon. I got so desperately sleepy myself I put her in the crib and shut the door. Short protest and she quieted down. Then I decided to go put the blanket on her before I fell back asleep. That woke her up again and she wailed and wailed and stood up - and I knew the blanket was hopeless. I couldn't stay awake long enough to wait for her to go back to sleep, to put the blanket back on. So I turned the heat up to its daytime level - which meant I didn't sleep as well from then on. All E's really warm pajamas were in the dirty clothes. I should invest in more fleece pajamas and dress her so that I don't worry about the covers. Then I got up at 4:30 and soon decided to go back to sleep, but E got up before 5:30. I can't do anything while she's up that early, because she's not fully awake and she's clingy. I can't type at this blog when she's around anymore. She wants to "drive" at the keyboard and never tires of it.

I guess I'll go get ready for work now. *sigh*

15 months old today

visit to Mommy's work

Friday, Jan. 26th, when I took E to work with me for a while. What I don't have a picture of is her in her stroller in a big creative brainstorming meeting I was in, playing with a bunch of post-it notes and eating bananas and Goldfish. Then a co-worker who wasn't in the meeting asked if she could take Emma around to show some people (other nostalgic grandmothers like herself, mainly!). So I had a break, focused on my brainstorming, and after an hour went to find her at the employee health fair in our cafeteria. I had been planning to take E for lunch in the cafeteria, but they were not serving lunch due to a water leak, so she just had strained carrots in my office (which is what you see on her shirt, and is also now barely visible on my office carpet). She was exhausted by then with all the stimulation, so I put her in the playpen I had brought with me, gave her lots of toys and her green blanket, and turned the lights off. I tried to do some email management while she wound down. She talked and played for an hour and ALMOST went to sleep, but couldn't quite let go. So I think we left at 2:30 or 3, and of course she passed out in the car.

E and one of my co-workers

E loves for me to put her shoes on. Sometimes she brings me a third or fourth shoe to put on after the first two.

My colleagues seemed to enjoy E's visit as much as she did.
(by the way, these are NOT the grandmothers!)

computer skills

This morning I let E type some, and it was the first time I've noticed her looking at the computer screen to see what she was typing. She also demonstrated that she knows the right way to hold a mouse. She covered it with her hand and moved her fingers. She actually clicked on some commands. I'm always impressed with what she's able to do so randomly: resize a window, insert today's date, select text, delete text, etc. She even shut down one time. Today she looked up a translation of capital U (MS Word has a translation option if you right-click on selected text).

helper loves cats

. nb m
ca , m't think of anything to write this morning. New pictures soon. E had a nightmare or something at 2 am, :went back to sleep without nursing - yay! But I bvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvb b have bbeen mostly awake since then. A s you can tell E is helping me . Just now she took a bookmark out of myd book. It has pictures of kittens on it. She made high=pitched noises and laid her face down on the bookmark! (0m n whixh4 111i41is 0what she does to cats0)

Where's Emma...?

This green blanket, knitted by my friend Kimberly, is the item E is most attached to right now. She picks fuzz off it and either eats it or rubs it against her face. It's also great for playing peek-a-boo because you can see through it as you walk around. This is prime peek-a-boo time now - definitely her favorite game.

another Monday

Sorry Lynn and others... no time to write today. I needed extra sleep, will have to make up the time at work. News from the weekend is that E can climb up on an ottoman and from there to the couch. She loves looking out the window.

playdate

Last Saturday, our family went to Victor's family's house and babysat. After a while, David took Emma out to visit his friend Phil. Victor soon fell asleep, so I had time to myself in a different house - so no "ought to do's"! I felt very strange.

Victor spies on the strange man who comes to his house and takes a nap.

Victor refills the salt and pepper shakers while Emma puts some macaroni on to boil.

Victor checks to see if she did it right.

While Emma talks on the phone.

Emma picks up a few groceries.

Victor wonders if he can work my camera.