A Quickie

Just wanted to pop in and say I hope everyone is having a good week. My week has been jam-packed, so far. I had a meeting last night with some gals from my work about Relay for Life (yay!) and tonight I went to visit a friend and their new baby. Tomorrow I'm meeting a friend from school for coffee after Emma goes to bed. Although, I've realized that meeting for coffee at 8:30 isn't the best idea when I go to bed around 10...

Kevin is in class tonight. I can't believe the semester is about half over! Kevin will be done in no time.

Hope all is well with you. TTFN (as Tigger would say)

Sweet, sweet weekends

Ahh, it's been a great day. It's 5pm and I am STILL in my jammies. Kevin had to work today so he left early this morning and got home around 3:30. I have been cleaning, doing laundry and playing with the girl all day. I love doing the mom/wife/domestic thing on the weekends. The only thing I suck at is cooking. If food were my responsibility we would have lots of frozen pizza and fish sticks. Thankfully, Kevin loves to cook (and is good at it) so we eat lots of yummy things. Right now, he's in the kitchen cooking up some chicken breast that he's going to shred and cover with some sort of sauce and mont jack cheese. Yum!

Emma has had a great day. She's getting so good at standing. We can stand her up next to the couch and she'll just chill there until you move her. She's not quite rolling yet but we're working on it.

Tomorrow, our bishop is coming to deliver the sermon at church. I've never heard him speak but I am excited. I hope all my friends out there in cyber-world are in their jammies with a good cup of coffee and someone they love. I am!

TGIF! (Well, almost)

We had some more sleet/ice today. Ugh. Not as bad as last week but just enough to make you wear tennis shoes to work with your dress pants. My work let us go a little early today, so we could get home before the roads got worse. That worked out great because it meant I got to go visit 2 friends. First, I went to St. John's hospital to visit our friends Ryan and Lindsay and meet their brand new baby boy Braxton. He is a doll and looks just like his big sister, Avery. Everything went great and they should get to go home tomorrow.

I then went to Cox South and visited my friend Misty, who is having a few complications with her pregnancy. It looks like she might be hanging out there for a couple weeks until Isabel is ready. Hang in there, Misty!

Tomorrow is Friday which means it's time for the weekend and time at home with my hubby and my baby. I don't plan on leaving the house unless I have to. I don't even know if I'll put on real clothes Saturday. I plan on brewing some Joe and eating some oatmeal and spending the day snuggled up with Boo. Hope you have someone to cuddle with this weekend!

Purple Nurple

Emma has had something interesting come up...literally. Not trying to get too graphic, but she has a knot under her right baby boobie. We've noticed it off and on for a couple of weeks now and have just been watching to see if anything changes. We finally decided to have the doctor look at it. Basically, her right nipple is inverted and purple in color. It feels almost like she has a marble under her skin. It isn't tender and doesn't seem to bother her at all. The doc thinks it might be a benign cyst but we're going to take her for an ultrasound, just to be sure. Poor baby.

She continues to be an eating champ. We introduced her to sweet peas tonight (see pic) and she loves them. She tries to grab the spoon with each bite so I let her have it tonight. She actually just kept putting it in her mouth and chewing on it. Who knows, maybe this is an early sign that she'll be good with utensils.

She's had trouble sleeping the last few nights. She just seems a little irritable and restless. You can tell that she is so sleepy and wants to give it up but just can't seem to relax. We ended up bringing her to bed with us last night, just so we could all have a good night. It's a catch-22 with the whole "family bed" idea. The down-sides are that it's not the safest, it's hard to break the habit when they are older, and (let's be honest) you've got a munchkin between you and your spouse. On the positive, though, it's convenient, baby's love to snuggle up to you, and there's nothing more awesome than waking up in the morning face-to-face with an angel.

Last night was very sweet. But, sorry sugar, it's back to the crib tonight.

Emma is getting SO close to rolling from her back to her belly. We expect her to make the first tumble over any day now. She's also learned how to pull her shirt/dress/blanket/bib up over her face now. This allows her to chew and slobber on it. It's pretty cute, actually.

I'm pooped tonight and tomorrow is going to be a doozey at work. So, it's time to retire for the evening. G'night!

"Please pass the squash"

So, it turns out that Emma doesn't like baby cereal. As I mentioned in a previous post, Kevin and I tasted it and concluded it tasted like butt, so we're not surprised she's not on board. What she does like, however, is squash. Mmmmm, butternut squash. After my friend Misty told me her son didn't like the cereal either and they just "skipped" it, I thought we'd introduce a veggie to Emma. She loves it. She smacks her lips and kicks her feet and flaps her arms with delight. She even tries to grab the spoon while it's in her mouth. It's pretty fun.

She's also started showing her first signs of stranger anxiety. There's been a few times that someone she doesn't know very well has held her and she starts crying. I've been dreading this because I don't want her to be miserable when I leave her in the church nursery or with a sitter. I must admit, though: it is nice to know that she loves Mommy and Daddy best!

Springfield has been hit with a small winter storm and has been covered with ice the last two days. It is nothing in comparison to the ice we had last January. Nonetheless, school's been out and a few places have had intermittent power. It is supposed to be in the 40's tomorrow, though, so the ice should disappear.

On this past Saturday, I went to a baby shower for my good friend Misty. She's having a baby girl sometime in the weeks ahead. The shower was so much fun and she got so many cute things. Miss Isabel is going to be quite stylish. We had planned on going over to Misty's on Monday night to take them dinner and hang out but the weather was crummy so we couldn't. We are going to reschedule our dinner date very soon though!! (Let me know when, Misty)

On Sunday we had our Bible study with Dave and Cort. We didn't make it to the "love chapter" but we will next week. I am really enjoying our discussions. In a sense, it's nicer that we're not following a book or study. We just talk about whatever comes to mind or how the scripture has stirred our heart. Very awesome.

New Ventures

This past Sunday, after church, Emma had her first bite of food: rice cereal. She was less than enthused. She did pretty good about keeping it in her mouth and swallowing, which is a good sign that she's ready for foods. Kevin and I decided to taste it and concluded it tastes like butt. It's pretty gnarly, primarily because it's reconstituted with formula. We tried her with a little more tonight and she did a little better. She'll be a chow-down champ in no time!

We have started having a Bible study on Sunday nights with Kevin's brother Dave and his wife Cortney. Yesterday was our second week to meet and it's going really great. We thought we would go through Paul's letters and are working on I Corinthians. It has been really great to meditate on a few chapters throughout the week and then come together to discuss them and learn about them. We spent a lot of time last night talking about Chapter 8 and how we must strive to be good examples for "younger" Christians and be careful to not do anything that would turn a believer away. We talked about areas we need to improve in and how we could do so. Next week we'll be talking about the love chapter, so that should be really awesome. I'll keep you all informed :)

This week is the start of Lent. We're going to an Ash Wed service at our church. We are going to give up TV for Lent, because it's become a pretty big distraction in our lives. We've decided this means no movies, no shows, no sports, and no Guitar Hero. Who knows, maybe we'll find something to talk about!

I thought I would post this sweet video of Emma. You can hear how vocal she's become and see some of her hand-mouth coordination. She works so hard at getting that binky in her mouth.