Trying to Decorate Emma's Room Pottery Barn Style But Not

The Orange Crayon

Emma has 8 crayons. She typically uses the orange or purple crayon. They seem to be her favorite crayons. One Saturday Aaron was coloring with Emma and accidentally broke about a half inch of the orange crayon off. Emma looked at it and kept saying over and over "Daddy broke it! Daddy broke it!" Periodically she would interject, "Why break it Daddy?" She would also come show me the broken crayon and tell me all about how Daddy broke it. This went on for about 20 minutes. We have never seen Emma go on and on about anything like this. Aaron felt so bad for breaking her crayon and that it obviously bothered her a significant amount.

I kept telling Emma it was OK and that she could still color with the crayon and she kept telling me that Daddy broke her crayon. So two weeks later, she still is talking about how Daddy broke her crayon every time she pulls out her crayons to color. This past weekend we had a break through. She said, "Daddy sorry so much!" and then later she pulled out the crayon again and said, "Its OK." It appears she made it through the seven stages of grief and has reached acceptance.

Birthday Part II

Emma was sick on her birthday so we waited to give her her present until she felt better. And by waited, I mean that really, I procrastinated wrapping it so it was quite a while after her birthday that she got it. We got her a zoo Lego set.

She has loved playing with her Lego's. It is hard to say what she likes more - playing with the normally, or taking them out of the bag and then cleaning them back up.

Emma-isms

Now that Emma is talking more, she is saying some funny things:

1. She was climbing on a box to jump off of it and fell backwards on accident. She laughed and said, "It's good one!" So when she does something on accident (that usually involves falling) she laughs and says that.

2. Apparently Emma really listens to my phone conversations. She insists I talk on the phone on speaker phone so she can hear the conversation and participate. My sister Mary will sometimes say "Peace out" but usually in the context of "I am all done with this situation and am leaving now." Usually it is related to her work. One morning Emma was walking by one of her blocks that had a ladybug on it and I heard, "Peace out ladybug!" I was cracking up so hard. So now she says it randomly.

3. Emma loves to play chase. (What kid doesn't?) One day she was sitting in her high chair and eating a strawberry. She said, "I'm going to get you strawberry!" and the proceeded to eat the strawberry.

4. Whenever we are in the grocery store or where ever, and Emma sees an older gentleman, she points and calls him "grandpa." She knows that he isn't her grandpa, but it is more of her labeling the guy as an old man. We were at a friend's house (who is our age) and she was pointing to one of our friends and calling her "lady." Later that evening she pointed to out host and called him "grandpa." He doesn't have gray hair, or any of the typical identifying grandpa features so I have no clue but she wouldn't change her mind about it.

5. I was making her oatmeal in the morning and she looked at it and said, "Oatmeal stinking hot." It was quite matter of fact. I think that she got that one from me. We have had an extremely hot summer and I think I use the phrase "stinking hot" to describe our weather.

Sunday Naps

I grew up in a family where we all happily took 3 hour Sunday naps. It was really a continuation of church. Aaron grew up in a family where naps where under appreciated. I don't get it. Emma has adopted the Russell attitude. This next kid is hopefully an Anderson.

Here, Emma played for a while instead of napping so it was hard to get her up when we normally get her up because she hadn't been asleep for too long. We brought her down to our room and she didn't want to snuggle with us in our bed so she made herself comfortable on a pillow on the floor and continued her nap there. Aaron and I didn't stop her cause we may or may not have fallen asleep ourselves.

A couple of Sunday's ago Emma's jammies were dirty but we didn't discover it until it was time to put her down for a nap. This was a crisis. I tell you why. Emma is still a nudist. But it has progressed to taking off the diaper. I have found her sleeping, diaper off, in a puddle. The puddle wasn't drool. So we have a single pair of footy jammies that we turn inside out and zip up. It is the only piece of clothing we have found that is strip proof. This is also the only pair of footy jammies that are not fleece and this is key in Houston in the summer. Hence the crisis of the dirty jammies. So we decided to play Russian Roulette and put Emma in normal jammies - pants and a shirt. We ran up there 3 times to either stop her mid strip or full strip and put a diaper back on her. At this point, we were desperate so we did this:

What you can't see is that we also taped her diaper on underneath her jammies. This was really in case she figured out how to get the tape off. But in actuality it just was a sign of desperation because she shimmies out of her diaper so the tape wouldn't have confounded her if it really came to it. Once she figured out that she couldn't free herself from the prison of her jammies, there was much weeping and wailing. That is when she tried to escape a couple of times from her crib. That meant more running up to stop her. This was not a restful nap time for anyone. She never napped.

This is just a cute picture. Emma loves her puppies. In fact, Puppy (the big one) has become her favorite toy. It goes where Emma goes, unless I can stop her of course. I am terrified I will loose it and it will break her heart. So we try to keep Puppy at home.