Emmy's First Day of School

For weeks Emmy has been asking, "Momma, how many days until school?"

She could hardly stand the wait, especially when most of the neighborhood elementary school kids started the week before her. She finally got to meet her teacher last Tuesday and starting getting really excited, but still had to put up with her friends talking about recess and lessons and teachers. Finally, last Thursday, it was her day, and man did she let everyone know! She literally came flying out of her room at 6 AM and screamed (not uncommon for her!) as she ran though the house, "IT'S MY FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL TODAY!!!!". We managed somehow to get her dressed and through breakfast without her falling to pieces with anticipation.

When she was ready, she stood by the door very impatiently, waiting for the rest of us to get ready to go. No one seemed to understand what a hurry we needed to be in!!! I did get her to hold still for the required first-day-of-school picture.


Waiting for the gates to open at 9 AM.


Since this is the second year of preschool, Emmy gets to sign in by herself! She usually writes just "EMMY" so writing "Emerson" was a bit of a challenge, especially when it was so hard to concentrate on the first day! She sort of got the bottom half of the "s" backward, and maybe an extra leg on the "n" !!! We loved it, but we're still not sure what an Emercow is? HA!

Miss Three Tooth

Hadley decided at 10 months that she was tired of watching everyone else walk around on two feet so she pulled herself up and took a few steps!!! She copies everything Emmy and Gage do, so we aren't really surprised that she was interested in walking too.


Her first few attempts! Did I say 10 MONTHS??? Yikes!


She not only has started walking, but decided she likes to climb up on things and stand up there too!


She recently sprouted her third tooth, so I've been calling her "Old Three Tooth" lately! It is super cute and we're not looking forward to our last baby getting all her teeth and not looking like a baby anymore. We're trying to enjoy them every day just as they are. She was in the bath for the first shot.



One of her new habits is to crawl into Gage's dump truck and take a seat. The problem is, she can't get out on her own very well so she hollers at us every 20 seconds or so to help her out. Of course, then she climbs right back in again!!!


Hadley is getting pretty good at feeding herself now. And by "pretty good at" I mean, she can satisfy her hunger. A good bit of the food still doesn't exactly make it into her mouth.


Another of her new daily routines is pulling the tupperware out of the cabinet and investigating!!!


Of course, being a baby, she still takes a couple naps every day. She's waiting for the cell phone to ring. She loves it when it lights up and makes noise and can never seem to predict when its going to happen so she'll hold on to it for hours.


Just so this post isn't all about Hadley, here is a picture of all the kids from the end of August:

Summer Fun

I had to brush off a few cobwebs to get back to my blog after a long summer of fun. I know, I've neglected this badly and this short post won't hardly make up for it, but I thought I better throw up a couple pictures from our adventures. Summer seemed to last forever when I was a kid, but now it just flies by. The kids made the most of it, and Blake and I just tried to keep up. A few of our fun memories from the summer:

A trip to the aquarium

One of our neighborhood block party BBQs. The kids were let loose to eat and play, and obviously were not cleaned prior to photo time!!! A little waterfight after lunch took care of most of the mess and the heat! Emmy playing with one of her friends from school As always, playing a little dressup (Emmy's favorite) Dr Seuss inspired block castles Hadley playing her new favorite game! Peekaboo Hadley!!! One of our best memories of Summer 2008 was our big northwest road trip. Here's a picture from Glacier National Park in Montana, but I think I'll save more vacation pictures for another blog. Hope everyone is enjoying back to school time!

Little Man

Blake always calls Gage "little man" and this post is all about our cute little monster.


Emmy will get the honor next time. Maybe when Hadley does something besides drool she'll get a whole blog entry to herself! Oh wait, she can roll over, and she has a really cute laugh, but I digress... Today's post is for Gage. Hadley will get her chance, and I think I'll find a few more things to mention about her than her excessive drool:)

Gage's favorite things:
Rocks (Rots)
Trucks (Ruts), and
His Blanket (mah-mit)

If you only got to know one thing about Gagey, I'd tell you about his love of rocks. It doesn't matter the size, shape, color, or amount of dirt stuck to it, he LOVES rocks!



At first his fixation was SO cute, but it has started to get old because we literally can not get him to walk past a tiny broken pebble on the way to the car without him hollering, "Rot, Rot, Rot!!!" and pulling away to pick it up and show it off. "Yes, rock Gage" we reply with a sigh, and tell him to put it by the car for later. Rocks have been banned from the car as at the moment of unbearable boredom during a car ride he will hurl it wildly and unwittingly toward his baby sister who sits in front of him. The fact that he actually lets it out of his hand is amazing because usually the only way to wrench it free is to trade for food.



Speaking of food, Gage is finally old enough to hold his own "big boy" cup and not do much damage.


Gage will be 2 in April, and he is really growing up fast all of a sudden. He actually isn't growing much bigger, but he is growing up. He started talking a lot in recent months and now frequently says two words in sequence. Emmy teaches him to count, so he can count to three sometimes on his own. He likes to repeat after Emmy as she counts to 20, but he's a ways away from doing THAT on his own I think. He isn't quite ready to dress himself either, but he does try putting on his shoes by himself.


The only thing Gagey loves more than rocks and his sisters is his blanket from Grandma Mimi. Actually, I think he likes his blanket better! He doesn't like to go anywhere without it, and I'm not sure he'd be able to fall asleep without it. He loves to dig his fingers through the holes, especially when he's really tired. He might just be the most happy in the world when he wakes up in the morning and drags his blanket to "his" rocker and climbs in.

He'll rock for an hour, just humming a little song to himself and holding his blanket. The only thing that will get him up is a promise to go outside and look for rocks!!!

He is temperarily over his obsession with cars and trucks, but still likes to get them all out of his drawer and line them up on the floor, couch, or table, and make little "vroom vroom" sounds as he drives them on the furniture.

Some other things Gage likes:

GIVING KISSES


TRYING TO BE LIKE HIS BIG SISTER



HE'S ALWAYS LOVED BALLS!


WHAT KID DOESN'T LOVE CANDY!!!


HE'LL DO ANYTHING OUTSIDE


and his favorite hobby of late? HUNTING SPIDERS!!!!




We Love Our Little Man!

First Beach Trip of 2008

I woke up Saturday morning at 5:30 thanks to Gage and his early morning hours. I actually like getting up early and I wouldn't on my own as often maybe so its a good thing, but I don't love jumping out of bed in the middle of sleep to get him before his hollering wakes up the whole house. While he drank his warm milk and rocked in his favorite chair (like he does every morning) I watched news footage of the winter storm that was blasting the midwest and northeast and decided that it was a good day to go to the beach!!! Ah, the weather in S California... It was in the 70s and perfect for a spring day at the beach.


Hadley wasn't overly impressed. Kids these days...they just don't appreciate what they've got:)


I rarely get the three girls together in a pic so I was so happy to catch them all smiling at once!


Time to go set the clocks forward an hour. We love this time of year because there's actually time and sunlight to play outside now after I get home from work. Summer is on its way!!!

Seeds

Thanks Grandma Silly for the seeds and planting tray. The little peat moss pellets were really fun to use. We had never seen them until now, but of course now that we know what they are we see them for sale in all the garden stores. They start out hard as rocks, but with some water they swell 3 or 4 times their size and the seeds poke right down in.


We love springtime every year and the peas and beans apparently love it too! We couldn't believe how fast they sprouted. It must have been the little greenhouse cover that comes with the tray. They are too tall now to keep the cover on. We'll have to find a place to transplant soon.


And since we're talking about Grandma Silly (who by the way would remind me not to start a sentence with "and"!), I learned most pictures are boring without people in them! So here's a couple of my favs from late 2007 that I never got time to post.


Happy March everyone!

Out and About in February

I was trying to keep up with at least one post a month, but even that's starting to slip. I have no excuses now though because we finally got wireless and upgraded from dial-up (yes, we still had dial-up at home... I know, hard to believe) so now I can sit on the couch with the laptop and post away. No excuses... :)

This post just has some pics of random things we did in February. We had the flu in early February (no pics of that!) and it drug out for 3 weeks before everyone worked through it. Besides that time though we've been trying to get out and do more fun things.

"HIKING" AT A PRESERVE IN IRVINE

I usually don't call it hiking unless you at least go up or down a little, but a lot of our regular weekend hiking spots we closed from too much rain so we decided to try something new and had a great time. It is right in town and you'd never think there was so much open space in the middle of Orange County, but they've done a good job keeping open space all around.


This was some drying algae, but Emmy called it spider webs. It did look a little creepy on an overcast grey day in the swamp. Emmy asked if there were aligators in Irvine. We got a kick out of that one.


BOOMERS

Emmy and Gage have sticker charts for their daily chores and if they get enough we get a special weekend treat. You can see their charts behind them on the wall. I love this picture anyway but it just happens to show the charts. Emmy and Gagey are both being their classic silly selves.

They did so well with their chores the last two weeks we took them to a little amusement park for a few rides and games.

Emmy really wanted to go on the ferris wheel and Blake couldn't believe it because she is terrified of them. She almost scared Emmy out of it:

Hadley thought it was a bad idea too :)

But Emmy insisted and we got on!

She did get a bit scared, but mostly enjoyed it.

After a little convincing Gagey went on a smaller ride too.


That was enough for him though. After that he wanted his blanket back and wanted to be held and just watch for awhile. He's having his timid phase.


Going inside for a little skee-ball was a good rest after the rides, and it's Blake's favorite game too.


Of course everyone's favorite after a fun day is to come home and relax.




Goodbye February 2008. No more leap years for 4 more years...