Take two

This week we had our second swim lesson and our second trip to the fair. I think it is very "fair" to say that the second of both were better than the first! :-) 

To start off lets look at some more of our favorite people at Just Like Home

All of these girls are getting so big!!

Emma "do you know there is a butterfly on  your shirt!!??"

Elle and Emma playing chase!

Hug and kisses from LaLa to end the day.

Audrey has moved up to the toddler room but we had to come visit  before we left

In infant 1 these two were mortal enemies

But look at them now!! 

Good morning LaLa

With only one week left I am sad to go but after visiting Montessori and Miss Hailey on Tuesday I am excited!! I think Emma is going to thrive there after the initial shock of the change...and speaking of change...they change them standing up! Crazy right, but like with everything else it has a purpose. It gets the kids used to pulling up their pants after they go potty. But what do they do with poopy diapers you say...they have them face away and then bend over to get it all wiped off! ;-D This is probably going to have to start happening at home too...oh brother! ;-P

With a week of seconds I almost forgot there was a first. Emma had her first tropical snow! I remember when they would put of the stand in Brinkley and that is when you knew summer was finally there! It was just as good as I remembered it being all those many years ago.

And I think Emma was a fan too!

Swim lessons went great but with daddy gone to the deer woods it left only mommy to gather up all our stuff and get us up to Bentonville on time! We almost didn't make it and I seem to remember forgetting something but we did make it. This class was the class of the daddy's! I was one of three mommy's in the water with all the men and their little ones. (there were 10 pairs total so it was a lot of babies!) Emma was pretty happy with everything except being put on her back to kick. That move she can most surely do without!

We start off singing "The Wheels on the Bus", do a little "Humpty Dumpty" and end it with "If You're Happy and You Know it Wave Bye Bye" Emma love the songs and she did so great going under the water. She would get out on the side and jump to me and go under without hesitation. Well not really jump since she hasn't master that move but she would fall to me. :-)

I was even able to get a sweet mommy on the side to snap a picture of us while we were in the water. 

If only there was a "cute" way for me to wear my hair while I am swimming... 

 

We had a good weekend but due to Mommy's lack of cooking skills in the kitchen Emma's dinner one night consisted of Slim's french fries and a confetti cupcake from Bliss Uptown!

We read lots of books and Emma has learned "Bible" and asks to read her bible all the time. Sometimes she will just read it herself in her chair!

She also fell asleep on me while she was sitting on my lap. Those who have been around my child know that she is like a boy in that she goes 0-60 in no time flat and rarely slows down! But we were playing on the floor and she crawled up in my lap and sat very still. I convinced her to let me move to the couch and she allowed it and was asleep in my arms in no time. I held her for a long time just loving the snuggling that I haven't gotten since she became mobile. Emma has also only slept in our bed on a few occasions and in her crib since she was 3 months old so I was surprised when she slept for an hour on the couch.  

I think it was the rain that lulled her to sleep so early...and I covered her up right after this picture!

Then when daddy got home from a fun weekend in the deer woods he was COVERED in chigger bites and seed ticks! :-( He feels sooooooo bad and nothing is helping but time.

This is NOT Michael but this is exactly what his legs, feet and the lower half of his back look like. (this is a picture of an adult with chicken pox but chigger bites look the same and itch as bad!) :-(

Daddy did save the day on Tuesday when I got the call that Emma was running a fever. She got picked up by her wonderful daddy and taken to the doctor. Good news was no strep, bad news was it was a virus that could last 2-3 days.

 She fell asleep on Michael while waiting for the doctor to come in.

She has finally reached 23 lbs after holding at 22 for 6 months. She is growing taller but not putting on much weight which explains the loss of some of those "rubber band marks" on her arms and legs. I got tons of work done on Tuesday after hours and came home to tag Michael and give him a break.

The bathtub has turned into Emma's own personal art studio. Showings are held daily at 7:00 pm!

 
Yesterday I stayed home with Emma and she had a great day! She didn't run a fever at all and we played in her swing, went to Walmart and Lowes, had lunch with some girlfriends to celebrate a birthday, I made a family photo flip book for Emma to put names and faces together and then...

We went to the Washington County Fair! :-) 

I really wanted some special friends to come along but as they say life happens and they weren't able to make it. Emma and I did have a great time and I finally got my carousel pictures I had hoped for from our first fair trip.

She got to feed the goat!

And pet the horse

    




And oh the cows!!! One even Moo'd at her!! 

Then we tried the carousel again and while I didn't get a smile I didn't get any tears so I think that is a vast improvement!

 

My FAVE!

 One last shot before we go. :-)

We are so excited for the start of college football so expect to see tons of Razorback and Bama photos from this weekend!! :-)

Be blessed!

Jill

Poppy comes to town

I know if may seem odd to some that my parents visit on separate weekends but it truly is a blessing. When they come together there is a "fight" for attention and one parent inevitably feels sad that Emma chose the other over them to show most of her attention and affections. I think this will change as she gets older and there are more things that she can do with both NaNa and Poppy but for now this is what works for US! :-)

So as the title suggests Poppy (my dad) came up for a visit. With owning a business he can never stay gone too long so we are lucky if he stays more than 24 hours but we pack in as much as we can in those 24 hours!! (side note...thanks so much to my awesome little brother Hunter for running things back home so Dad can eve get those 24 hours away!!)

Dad made it up by 5 on Friday and Michael arrive shortly after that. We were so happy to see that he had brought Emma a brand new pink John Deere wagon! 

Now Poppy was excited to pull Emma around but she would have none of that. :-( Maybe next time he comes for a visit they can take a stroll around the neighborhood in her cute little wagon! Not a lot else happened on Friday night but Saturday was a whole other story!

Morning we all rose and had a great breakfast prepared by our resident Chef Michael. Then we played around the house, in our swing and still refused to ride in the wagon. And by 9:35 we were on our way to the Walton Life Fitness Center (where Michael and I met 8 years ago) for Emma's first baby and me swim lesson. Because we could only have one person watching on the deck both Daddy and Poppy went to the upstairs viewing area. Next time Michael is there we will get some better photos for memories. It was not all fun and games but there was laughing and I think we will continue to go! ;-)

Here we are practicing jumping in and going under. She did remarkably well with this!

Here you can see some reach and pull action with the help of our teacher. :-) 

Then it was off to see some art at Crystal Bridges with Poppy.

Emma was pretty tired from all the swimming but she didn't feel like falling asleep in her stroller like mommy had hoped. Instead she insisted on being carried by her Daddy.  She really was a daddy's girl this weekend. :-)  We got to see some art but it was not the leisurely stroll you would look for so after about an hour were were off and EJ was smooth passed out in mere minutes once the car was moving. This nap took on a 3 1/2 hour slumber and we finally had to open her door to hopefully wake her up before 4. She did finally arise around 3:45 and we went over to get our photo shoot on!

Poppy must have just said something very funny! 

It's a bit dark but she was having soooo much fun 

Poppy left shortly after our photo shoot but he could not have been happier. Emma said Poppy all the time, she gave him hugs and kisses and let Poppy hold her! We grandparents don't see their little grandchildren often they can shy away from this "stranger" but that is no longer the case with Poppy!! Hooray!

And on Sunday we finally got our 17 month pictures done! :-) And you are seeing correctly...my little girl is losing her sweet little belly. :-(

Running...

Making it a little fancy with our pearls that mommy got for Tri Delta national convention! 

That will do it for us this week! Here is the start to a GREAT new semester for all those faculty, staff and students at the UofA and schools everywhere!

Be blessed!
Jill

Fairs and Fun Times

 Lets start the week off with some more JLH photos of Emma and her friends! 

Emma is thinking "what do I want to play with first?!?"

 

Miss Michele our lead teacher

Miss Kim our assistant teacher

And throughout the day I get the funniest pictures of Emma eating, drinking, doing art work and playing!! Have I mentioned that I am REALLY going to miss these guys!?!

This week we decided we would brave the Tontitown Grape Festival to get some fair food, ride some rides and eat some grape ice cream. Well that sort of happened. Mommy and Daddy didn't do a good job remembering a stroller so we had to carry Emma around the fair and needless to say my arms were on fire by the end since she was having a "mommy night". We started out a little later than we had hoped and we are pretty sure Emma wiped some sunscreen in her eye right before we left so all photos were with her new babyators on so you couldn't see the red splotchiness. :-( Mommy fail!

As soon as we got there Emma was ready to eat so we split a corn dog. This made her pretty happy! We then let Daddy eat something very messy while we watched the bumblebees. Our favorite song is about bringing home a baby bumblebee so we got pretty excited to ride that one. (Note to self...should have gone on that ride 1st!!) So our first ride was the carousel.

 Per normal with my child it took a little while to warm up to this ride thing

But soon she had the hang of it and was waving like a movie star. 

She loved finding Daddy and waving or pointing at him as we went by.

 
Once we road the carousel we decided that the giant slide was a good next step. This was both scary for the parent climbing way up into the sky with a 17 month old and the parent on the ground watching it all go down.  Luckily everything went smashingly and again...she liked it after the ride was done so we did it again. 

We then made it to the bumblebee's and this was where it all went down hill...1st this ride had a line when we got there so we had to watch the bumblebees instead of ride them at first and that sent us into a crying fit that could not be consoled. Then we got on....

At this point all I could do was smile...She was screaming even with her passie in. :-(

 1/2 way through we tried the waving trick again and that seemed to keep her calm until the ride stopped.

 

We still had 6 tickets left so lets try the carousel again with Daddy. She liked it with Mommy so it should be great a second time, right? WRONG! I think I mentioned before that she was having a Mommy night and leaving Mommy's sight was not okay.

Again what can you do but laugh? She is arching her back and kicking so hard we just walked off and went right to the car! 

I think it could have gone better since a corn dog really isn't totally fair food and I didn't get anything odd deep fried AND we didn't get any grape ice cream... but it was our first trip to a fair and next time we will be prepared!

1. Stroller
2. get photo of us on the carousel before we are moving
3. Bring food we know Emma likes
4. Go before 6:30
5. Keep on laughing at our little girl and her personality

Because when she is done...it's done! 

We worried that Emma might catch whatever sickness was going around JLH last week in her room but all seemed to be fine. We played Saturday morning and then Mommy got to meet up with some of her pledge sisters for lunch and to celebrate a new expected baby boy!! Ashley I could not be more excited for you and Shane's soon to be newest addition!

I love any excuse to hang out with my girl friends and this was a great one! We ate at Fresco's off the square in Fayetteville and the food was delish, but the company was by far the best thing about the whole lunch!

From there I booked it over to Rhea Lana's back to school sale. I consigned for the first time this year so I could get in early to shop...next time I am going to volunteer since I can get in even earlier then. I was able to find Emma 4 pairs of shoes, 12 outfits, 3 dresses, 3 pairs of pajamas, 2 razorback cheerleader outfits, her winter coat, a rain coat and a fleece pullover all for less than $5 an item on average! I really do love a good buy and I think my favorite purchase was a pair of purple keen sandals I found in the little boys shoe bins.

These sell for $50 new and I was able to get them for $6.50!! And they look good as new to me! :-)

We rounded out the weekend with a play date with Jack Jack! We wanted to come visit Leah and RJ's new house anyway so this was the perfect excuss to get together. Their neighboorhood pool was perfect for the two kiddos to play in and eventhough Jack didn't want to have anything to do with Emma. ;-) Maybe his heart belongs to Elle!

Emma has no fear of ANYTHING including practicing swimming in the kiddy pool. She swallowed a lot of water but kept going to her tummy!



Here is the closest I could get to the tow of them posing for a picture. ;-)





Once we finished swimmng the fun continued with some backyard diaper play time!

Love cars!

I'd like to think either of them were playing with each othere...but alas no! ;-D

By the end I think they were liking each other a little more! Emma sure loved Jack's giant teddy bear and Molly was a big hit too! We will have to do this again very soon!!

Be blessed!
Jill