President Obama

Emma is calling John President Obama. Don't know why but it does indicate my radio selection in the car - NPR.

The Ocean

Emma slept in a little longer this morning and came down stairs before she had a chance to come to all the way. When she got to my room she *snuggled* up with me. This kid is my anti-snuggler. Yesterday I gave her a choice of going potty or hugging me and she chose going potty. She hates going potty. Anyway, so back to this morning. I told her that I love it when she snuggles me. She responded, "this isn't a snuggle." I asked her what it was since we weren't snuggling. Her response: "This is the ocean." I now love the ocean.

Ten Months

John is 10 months old now. He still smiles and laughs a lot. He explores the house and on occasion will come to me when he needs his diaper changed or if he is hungry or just needs some social time. Other than that he is off exploring and by exploring I mean chewing on stuff. He has teethed on our chairs and just about every toy in the house. Unfortunately he is a biter and I don't know what to do about it. I don't think I can bring my self to bite him or flick his face when he does it. Right now I am hoping he will grow out of it before we get to nursery. When John sees another baby, he gets super excited and has no concept of personal space. He will crawl on top of the baby and give the baby either kisses or bites. Social experiences for him are costly for the other person involved. John has made peace with formula and is taking it better now. He has also decided he really only likes carbs. He giggles at oatmeal for breakfast and at other meals he complains loudly until I give him cheerios. He won't do fruit even - just a little bit. He will sit in his high chair forever eating cheerios as long as you are sitting by him. If I walk out of the room, he just screams. So he is a social carbivor. He loves Emma and Aaron. He gets upset if Aaron comes home from work and doesn't pick him up immediately.

John lives for getting a hold of the broom to chew on it, finding an open bathroom door (especially when he can find my toilet cleaning gloves), and an open laundry room door to chew on shoes. Oh and the pantry is a special treat, as well as an open dishwasher.

John still army crawls. He can crawl with his belly up but I think he army crawls because he is faster. If he is on tile floor with just a diaper on he will crawl with his belly up to keep it off the cold floor. He cruses around things but appears to be a long ways off from walking.

He hates his car seat and high chair and anything confining. He likes walks though in the stroller.

Emma lives for playing with John under the table. She keeps asking for a bike with pedals and is hoping Santa will bring her one. She also thought about asking Santa to bring her a trumpet but I explained to her that Santa is nice to moms and doesn't bring children trumpets. So now Emma will tell people that Santa doesn't bring trumpets. The other day Emma asked if a tiger has a handle. I told her no. She then asked if they would get their tails dirty when they pooped. Emma lives for dressing up in ballet and gymnastics stuff, riding her bike. We also play a lot of blocks together and she is actually quite patient at building towers. She knows all of her letters and their sounds. She can write some of them like the letter 'f.' Emma lives for leaving the house and going and doing things. Her first question when she wakes up (ok, second, the first is "what are you doing?") is "where are we going today?" One time we were out running an errand and we were headed home. She asked where we were going and when I told her home, she said, "Don't we need to get John more medicine?" She was distraught that we were going home and would rather go through the Walgreens drive thru than go home.

Just Cute

Aaron and Emma were coloring on the kitchen floor and it was too cute to pass up.

Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving with some friends and Aaron's brother Rex. It was a traditional Thanksgiving feast. I have thought about what traditions I would like to do in our family. One of them is that I want everybody to choose one menu item for the dinner. I want everybody to have something they love at the dinner. Aaron had given his input. Emma didn't really know what was going on so she didn't get input. She knew we were going to eat turkey but I don't think she really knew what that meant. She has eaten a lot of my rolls since Thursday so that can make it on the list next year.

On Friday we went to the Sam Houston museum. We were going to do our traditional hike in the Huntsville state park, but it started to rain so we changed plans and went to see the museum and statue. This statue is huge - 77 feet tall. Taller than the statue of liberty. Who is Sam Houston? He kinda founded Texas. You drive down the freeway and then all of a sudden there is ridiculous statue of Sam Houston. We have always wanted to go see it but we are always driving somewhere else. So, this statue was on my bucket list because it is so ridiculous.

After that we went to an area where there were a bunch of museums (more like historic houses) but they were closed. There was also a pond in the shape of Texas and a whole bunch of ducks, geese, and roosters. We had a picnic lunch and watched the birds fight. It was very pleasant.

On Saturday we went to a baptism. Emma loves to see baptisms. She always talks about how she wants to be baptized. I think she thinks it will be like swimming. Then we went to see the Nutcracker that was put on by a local dance company. I thought it was very well done considering it was a small local company and I have no experience with ballet. Emma loved it. She sat there glued to her seat until the very end and then she got a little wiggly. Then the most amazing thing happened. She whispered, "Mom, I am tired." Who knew she could utter those words. That is up there with "Mom, I am hungry." So I offered to let her sit on my lap and snuggle me. I was just that nice of a mom to take one for the team. It was just only too bad that there was only 15 minutes left in the ballet - it was the best snuggle time ever. So what did we do with John? We actually took him with us. Fortunately we went during nap time so he was so tired he didn't have the energy to wiggle too much and he had his pacifier so he didn't make much noise. I did have to take him out once. But all things considered, the kids did great.

One Minute or Two

I have a theory that all destruction can be done in one or two minutes tops. It seems like all stories from moms start with "I walked away for one minute and...." From there crazy stuff happens. I didn't have total destruction but I am amazed at how fast babies can move. I was feeding John dinner when I walked away to open the laundry room door for Emma. I came back and John had grabbed the spoon off of the table (which wasn't all that in arms reach, or so I thought...). He had also knocked his bowl off of the table splattering it everywhere. Apparently, John was concerned that he might starve so he took matters into his own hands.

John was also was feeding himself cheerios and ended up like this:

Father Daughter Campout

Aaron helped to organize a father daughter camp out for our ward. He took Emma and I don't have all of the details since I wasn't there. But here is what I heard about: Emma loved it. She wasn't fond of tinfoil dinners. She did like marshmallows but not so much smores. She understood that the fire wasn't to be messed with. Aaron and Emma slept in the civic with the back seat folded down. I use the word "slept" very loosely. Emma and Aaron got in the car about 10:30pm and to sleep around midnight.  Apparently Emma would play with Aaron's face, kneel down, look around the trunk, pretty much anything but go to sleep. She did seem to like the sleeping bag. They got up around 7am. They played kick ball and Emma just kept giggling through the game and saying, "kick ball." Aaron and Emma went for a hike near a creek. Then they came home for lunch and after lunch Emma was too tired to stand up to take off her clothes to get into the shower. At naps she just totally crashed.