New teeth AND new words

I forgot to mention some other excitement in my last post....Emmy has 2 new teeth coming through (though I don't think that is really all that exciting for poor Emmy) and she has said a few more words!!! We noticed her right upper cuspid on 12/23 and the left one the following day! Needless to say, she might have been just a little fussy but who can blame her?! We were eating breakfast (pancakes by GiGi I do believe-yum!) on 12/23 and Emmy dropped her paci on the ground and excalimed "Uh Oh!". We laughed and laughed-how cute is that?! ?Now she says it all the time...usually appropriate to the situation. She also starting saying "Bye" as well. I think she said "cat" a few days ago too but I don't know she has repeated that one yet. Now, can we just get her to say Mama and Daddy?! She also wants to stand more often and can get up and down the half stairs at Grandma J's house. I think walking might be in our future sooner than we think! Have a great Monday!
Love
Erika, Matt and Emmy
PS New pics from Christmas are coming. We had to get a new computer due to the cat+coffee+computer "incident" (See not me Monday post for details of that one...) and we haven't loaded the software to upload pics from the camera yet!

Merry Christmas...just a little late!

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I know we sure did!!! We are so incredibly blessed that sometimes I can't believe it! We spent Christmas eve at my parents' house with my family and my sister's inlaws. We all went to church together and then had dinner at my mom's house. Emmy went to see Santa that afternoon. We have a decent pic of her with Santa (all business though) before she realized she didn't know the strange bearded man that was holding her!! Aunt Kristen tried to convince her all was ok but she cried. Oh well. Still a cute pic, just no smile. We opened Christmas gifts as well after Emmy went to bed. We woke up on Christmas am and had a yummy breakfast made by Gi Gi and then Emmy finished opening her gifts. She loved her gifts...especially her new cabbage patch baby! The look on her face when she saw her new baby was priceless. She pressed her little face against the plastic on the box and then kissed the box. Uncle BJ got her new baby out of the box and she was in love!!! We have some awesome pics of her on Christmas am with her new toys and books. We left after we were all done with gits headed to my grandparents' house in Dubuque. We stopped in to see Great Grandma and Grandpa. Emmy had a wonderful time playing with them too! Emmy of course needed a costume change before we could leave their house. She opened gifts from Great Gma and Gpa and ate lunch there too. We made it home to IL around dinner time and then stopped in to see Grandma J for a bit too. We ended up eating dinner with Grandma J and told her all about out trip. We got home close to 9pm and Emmy was SO ready for bed! Matt and I were beat too. We got Emmy off to bed after some more play time with her baby and other new toys. We did our "bare minimum" ( as we call it) of putting things away and then headed to bed too. On Friday we got up and I had to finish some shopping and Mat had to finish getting some things ready at home for our Klitzke/Luxon Christmas. We went to Grandma J's for the rest of the day to be with Seth, KAte, Connor and Aunt Joanie. We had a wonderful time eating (and eating lots), opening gifts and just being together. Emmy and Connor "played" together...I think Connor watched as Emmy crawled all over him and showed him her new things.
We are still trying to figure out when we will be doing Christmas with Papa Mike and Gran Diane...soon we are hoping!

We had such a wonderful Christmas and want to thank everyone. We love you all!!!
Love
Erika, Matt and Emmy

Not me Monday

Welcome to "Not me Monday"! I am trying to figure out how to get the button from MckMama's page....maybe next week I guess. Enjoy (and please try not to make fun of ME too much!)

My computer totally did not die after the cat knocked over an entire cup of coffee while being pursued by one of the dogs. Nope not me!

My dogs did not get sent outside and Emmy did not get parked in front of the TV watching Sesame Street so I could clean up said coffee disaster (and the cat was not banished to the other room). Nope, not at our house!!

Emmy did not poop through her clothes on our trip to Iowa on Saturday and have to go immediately to the tub and the carseat scrubbed clean as soon as we arrived at the Davis'. Not us. No way does that EVER happens to us!

My sister and I did not go to Target 3 times yesterday and Walmart 2 times looking for the "perfect" highchair and some Christmas gifts. Nope, that would be silly. Why would we do that?

Have a wonderful Christmas, hug your family extra tight and tell your loved ones i love you one extra time!
Love
Erika, Matt and Emily

And we have a first word.....

Over the past 2 or 3 weeks Emily has been greeting us (and anything/anyone) with what we thought sounded like "hi". At first we kind of thought it was a "fluke" but now we don't think so! We have now officially decided that her 1st word is "HI!". She really does mean it. The inflection in her voice tells us she knows what she's talking about! Matt also said last night she said "baby". Hmmm....maybe she knows about the dolly (cabbage patch doll I HAD to get for her....more later....) I got her for Christmas????!!!!
We are going to a playgroup holiday party this afternoon-assuming the weather holds. We are expecting A LOT of snow later on today and into tomorrow (I saw a prediction of 12 inches for Gurnee-hopefully the weather man "has been drinking" as Grandma J would say). Maybe we'll post tomorrow if we are all snowed in! Yikes! Sure glad we have that snow blower now!

Making Baby Food-Yum Yum!

Emily and I spent the afternoon making homemade baby food. This is actually something we do once every week or so but yesterday it looked like the kitchen exploded (as Matt would put it). I think I had out 5-6 bowls and spoons, plastic wrap, trays to put food in to and the magic bullet AND not, to mention every toy Emily could get her little chubby hands on. Yikes. What a mess. We are experiementing with frozen fruits right now since it's a little difficult to come across really good fruit except for apples, pears and citrus( but we don't do citrus yet). So, we made some yummy mixes yesterday! We made all different combos comprised of apples (fresh) and then strawberries, blueberries and peaches (frozen). I am trying to make them a little chunkier so Emmy can get used to them while we are transitioning from baby food to table foods-my little sweet pea is growing up! She also got to sample the fruits as we made them and I even let her lick the spoon (when we were all done of course!). She love-love-loved it all!!!! Her little face and onsie were both stained with the berries though-oh well! Nothing like a blueberry mustache to make you giggle at your baby! Now ask her Daddy about the aftermath of all of that fruit.....glad I was at work!!!!

Helllloooo new blog!!

Attempts at Christmas pictures......

One of our very first pictures of Emily in the operating room (and is still one of my favorites!)

Welcome to our new blog. If you are new to our lives, here is a quick synopsis of how it all began.......
Matt and I were married in July 2003 in my hometown in the church where I was raised. We lived in Iowa City until the spring of 2004 when we moved to Nashville, TN. We lived in TN for 3 1/2 yrs. During this time Matt worked in TV news, a brief stint at the Melting Pot and then for a school district. I worked at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in the PCCU and also went to grad school to become a pediatric nurse practitioner. We decided to try to start a family in 2007 and became pregnant with Emily in May 2007. At this same time, I was finishing grad school and we decided it was time to move back to the midwest. So, in August 2007, (within a week's time) I graduated from grad school and we packed up (with much help from my parents and sister) and moved back to the midwest. Wow were we crazy. Within another few weeks, Matt started a new job and we unpacked the house and started to prepare for the birth of Emily, who was to arrive in February 2008. During the fall, I worked part time as an RN at a local hospital and studied for my PNP certification exam. I passed my PNP exam in November 2007 and continued to work as an RN until Emily's arrival. Emily arrived on February 11, 2008 (her Uncle BJ's 25th birthday) via C-Section (yes, planned). She weighed 9 pounds, 15 ounces and was 22 inches long-whew! So, here we are, 10 months later. Emily is the love of our lives. She is a happy beautiful girl who loves everyone! She loves to play, read,chat, shop and go for walks (just like her mama!)
Hope you like our new blog. We were out growing our baby blog and I thought this would be a great time to transition to a "real blog". Hopefully with this blog I will be able to post more pictures and maybe some videos too (I just need to learn how to use this thing...I am open to tips and suggestions from you seasoned veteran bloggers!).
We wish everyone a wonderful holiday season as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ!