20 months

Emerson,

You are 20 months old now and quite a ham!  Most days I am just loving the stage you are in and enjoying watching you learn and become more independent.

You love to sing lately.  It was like all of a sudden you knew lots of words to lots of songs.  And you like to sing with us, even if it's a song you just heard for the first time (like jingle bells).  It melts my heart when you sing with us.  Even when I am trying to sing you to sleep,  you insist on singing with me, so it defeats the purpose of getting you to fall asleep.

You speak clearly and you have a vast vocabulary at this point.  Three word sentences are pretty common for you, and sometimes you'll make longer ones.  You imitate everything we say right now.  For example, you fell down when Nana was here last week and she said, "did you fall down, buddy?" and you replied "fall down buddy".  So it always sounds like you call people buddy because we call you buddy a lot.

You recently, suddenly knew how to count to ten and I have no idea how you learned it.  And you know quite a few shapes.  You might just be left brained like your father.  It amazes me how you learn things that I don't recall teaching  you.  You are a sponge.  It does make me laugh because I've caught you inspecting the axles of your car before and watching the garage door opener work as it opens the garage.  Future engineer maybe?  We'll see.  Coloring only entertains you for a minute.

You have become more creative in your play, lately.  Sometimes I'm surprised at what you've come up with.  For instance, you'll turn your nesting blocks upside down, line them up, and put your animals in as passengers to a train.  You are very into trains right now.  Your imagination and pretend play is so fun to see develop.  I think you will like having a sibling around to play with, since it's just us most days.

You will hug "baby sissy" and kiss my tummy sometimes.  Who knows how much you really understand, though, because sometimes you'll point to your own belly and say baby.  When mommy holds cousin Callie for very long, you tell me to lay her down so I can hold you.

You are very into Christmas right now and I have had to try extra hard to emphasize Thanksgiving, since something has sparked such an interest in Christmas in you.  I know that Christmas will be so fun with you this year, though, because you are already anticipating it.  I am excited to do our new advent with you.  I think you will really enjoy it.

Emerson, you are a joy and blessing and we pray for you every single night.  What a gift motherhood has been to me and I am amazed as I watch you grow up.  I think it really is glorifying to God just to see the miracle God has created in just a small person like yourself.  I love you.

Love,
Mommy

PS- Here is some 20 month footage.  I tried to capture how cute Emerson is when he sings, but he is much too fascinated with seeing himself on video for me to get anything.  He loves looking at photo albums or videos of himself/our family, which is why it is impossible to get a decent photo of him lately.  He'd rather be on the other side of the camera.  Watch this:



While cooking dinner yesterday, Emerson was helping me put something back into the fridge, and when I turned around, this is what I saw:

Yep, that's a broken egg on the floor.  Somehow, mysteriously, the egg compartment was opened and the lone egg in the carton was dropped on the floor.  Of course the first thing I did was grab the camera, as any good mother would do. 

Rake Day 2012

A week after moving in, we began the endeavor to rake our millions of leaves.  While it was kind of fun, we will probably be implementing more high-tech leaf control methods next year (leaf blower? mulching?  it's all new to me).  We sent 20 bags of "yard waste" off to the compost today and turned back around to see leaves already covering our yard again!!!  It literally doesn't look like we've raked yet.  Kind of humorous.  Kind of not.  Here are a few memorable shots from our gorgeous rake day:

This is a sandbox that was here when we moved in.  I think if we put a little work into fixing it up, the kids would love it.  Emerson has already found several army men and other "treasures" hidden in the sand.

Daddy climbed the tree

So Emerson had to follow.

I think we had over 14 piles of leaves in our front and back yards.  Whew.  We had our workout for the week!

Tour de our new house!!

Dear goodness friends, I tell you I am so worn out after the last few weeks!  There was packing (blah.) and moving and unpacking (a little less blah but still tiring) and organizing and raking (oh the raking!).  But I tell you, after all our hard work we are pretty much settled in our new home.  I don't like living out of boxes, so we were pretty quick to unpack.  This is why I have been silent on the blog front.  Here are the belated pictures I promised.  We love our new home :)

And I have to say that a wood burning fireplace was literally the top thing on my list of what I wanted in a house.  We have already had 3 fires our first week of living here!  And I love the brick and built in shelves.  The fireplace has an insert so we decided we would try it out for the first year and if we didn't like it, we could sell it and just use our fireplace the regular way, but Caleb has actually fallen in love with our wood burning stove, so I imagine it's not going anywhere anytime soon.  This wall is one of my favorite things about our house. 

Dining area:

And I'm so sorry I don't have a picture of the kitchen yet.  I literally just walked in there to take one and there was clutter lining the entire counter space, so I walked out and decided it wasn't worth de-cluttering for a blog pic.  Just being honest :)  But it has dark-ish wood cabinets, black granite countertops, black appliances, and a tile backsplash.  Cabinet painting may or may not be in our future, due to the darkness of the kitchen compared to the rest of the home.  

Master bedroom.  I don't think these pictures really capture the peacefulness and freshness of this room.  My mom got us new bedding, so it's really bright and happy.  I love it.  Also, this is the first time we have been able to fit our furniture in our bedroom with a little room to spare.  It's the little things :)

E's room across the hall (There is also a boring guest room across the hall, not pictured):

Brody posing in the hallway for me:

The home is technically 3 bedroom, but we plan to use this as a fourth bedroom if needed.  It has two entrances (with doors) that open to the kitchen and the entryway.  Right now, it is used as an office, housing our desk and bookshelf.

And finally, my other favorite part about our house, the backyard (these pics were taken in September.. now all the leaves are off the trees and on the ground).

To the left.

To the right.

Back of house.

I'm sorry for the bajillion pictures.  Maybe some of you care to see the entire tour?  Ha.  We feel very blessed to have this home and feel it will be a great place to grow our family.  Oh yeah!  We LOVE the neighbors too!  Various neighbors have welcomed us with muffins, wine, stonemill, and an airplane for Emerson :)  The SWEETEST people.  They all want to exchange numbers in case of emergency.  There are 3 young families and the rest of the folks on the cul-de-sac are empty nesters or retired.  Such a great community.  I can't wait to get to know them better.  Thanks for letting me share my home with you :)  Come see it in person and maybe I'll make you a batch of cookies!

Sweet Baby Girl

We got to see little blessing on our 20 week ultrasound on Tuesday.  If you are friends with me on facebook, you already know it's a GIRL!  We were totally convinced it was going to be another boy, so we are getting used to the idea of it being a girl :)  We are ecstatic.  Here she is:

 I think the last picture of her is just precious.  It's an above shot and she has her hand resting on her forehead pointing her finger.  She also gave us a big yawn during the ultrasound.  She seemed so sweet.  She looks perfectly healthy and based on her size, she was 3 days further than my original due date.  Of course, they are keeping March 24th as the due date though.  We are thankful for this blessing. 

And my mother had to take me to target and get a few girly things for her, of course!  This was the picture I posted on facebook announcing that the baby in my belly was a girl!

In case you are wondering, we have no idea of girl names!  We had a small list of boy names, but those probably won't work!  ha!  Emerson will point to my belly and call her "baby sissy."  He went with us to the ultrasound and ever since then, he keeps wanting to pull up my shirt and look for the baby.  The fun thing about having a girl, is that she will have 3 other girl cousins in the same grade!  Can you believe it?  Let's hope they are besties and not big on drama!

Baby girl at 20 weeks:

Goodbye October

Hello November!  I feel like I have so much to update on, so instead of writing an extremely long post, I will try to write a few posts in the next few days updating you on our lives.  Our life has been a little crazy, because we are planning on moving into our new house next weekend!  I will try to post pictures this week of our new abode.  Not to mention Halloween took up a bit of our time here lately. 

Emerson had his first trip to Silver Dollar City a few weeks ago.  He had a blast.  The most memorable part for him was riding the "choo choo train" and how the "bad guys" took "money"from us.  He talked about it for the next week. 

Please notice Emerson's new "smile for the picture" face

He even got to ride a few rides, though he was pretty serious during them

As far as Halloween festivities go, Emerson got to really participate in pumpkin carving this year.  He did pretty well.  He didn't want to touch the guts at first, but eventually warmed up to it and was digging his hands in helping Daddy.  

Halloween night...

It's so hard to get 5 toddlers to sit still at the same time!

There's that smile again.

He plopped down on the ground and decided he was DONE.

I think Emerson had a great Halloween.  He was so so excited to dress up like a monkey and practiced saying "trick or treat" but he wouldn't ever say it for the people.  But mommy has really been enjoying the Halloween candy that Emerson worked so hard for :)