Overheard in the nursery...

Today at church, I had the joy of volunteering in the nursery. So after Sunday School, Kev took Emma to service and I hung out with a bunch of 3-4 year olds. It was a blast! It's been awhile since I've been around kids that age and I had forgotten how funny they are. But, today I remember. Here are some things I overheard today:

"Jesus should have shot a web at the mean men!"

"I have to go potty!!!!........Nevermind."

"I got a tattoo on my chest, like Daddy."

I'm sure there were more mention-worthy conversations but I was too busy chasing after them to remember.

Face-Lift

Do you like the new look? I was getting sick of the pink and this seemed a little more like Spring. We've had a great weekend so far. Kevin's family is Irish so we had an early St. Pat's celebration yesterday with Dave and Cort. Cort got us all some silly hats from Wal-Mart and we played dice all night. We don't get together and hang out much anymore (with the exception of our Sunday night Bible study) so it was great to have some fun. Dave and Cort are both in grad school so that keeps them pretty busy.

We've started using a doorway jumperoo type thing for Emma and she absolutely loves it. I have a cute video of her in it that I will try to post later. She's getting so big! She will be 6 months old this week! Time has flown by and I have loved every second of it. I thought I'd post some of my favorite pics that we've taken recently. Have a great Sunday!

Kevin passed the HESI!

What is the HESI? Basically, MSU's nursing program requires all seniors to pass a comprehensive HESI in order to graduate and be eligible to sit for their boards. It is a huge, standardized test that covers everything they've learned from the start of the program. It's rumored that the HESI is designed to be more difficult than their acutal boards. Why? Simple. In order to remain in good standing for their accreditation status, MSU needs a high pass rate on state boards. They don't need a high graduation rate. So, they administer a test harder than state boards as a graduation requirement with the idea that everyone who takes the boards has already passed a harder exam. Whew, that was kind of exhausting!

Anyway, it's a huge test that they anticipate for 2 years and they finally got to get it over with today. I am happy to report that Kevin passed with a 96%!!! Yay!!! It's easy sailing from here until graduation.

I've had a good week, too. I'm getting settled into my new job as the Pediatric Clinic manager. It has been really awesome (and a little nerve-wracking) stepping into this new role. Everyone has been really supportive and encouraging.

Emma's first two teeth came through last week. She really didn't have too hard of a time with it. I'm hoping the rest come in as smoothly. She's getting better and better at rolling over and is getting close to sitting up on her own. Also, she has fallen in love with her feet! She loves to hike her legs up in the air and grab on to both of her feet and stick them in her mouth.

Our Bible study with Dave and Cort has been going really well. We're in II Corinthians now. I really feel like I have grown and developed alot during our studies. We've also decided to become accountability partners for each other.

We hope all of you are having a great week and are ready for a fabulous weekend!

Here's a sweet pic of Emma. She looks like she's doing a hula dance! I love her blue eyes...

Thanks!

My meeting today was an evaluation at work. I've been waiting for a while for this to come through and it finally did. I can't divulge all the details yet, but I have been given a promotion and a raise and am very excited about it. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers today!

A favor to ask

I wanted to make a quick note to ask for prayers tomorrow. I can't go into too much detail yet but tomorrow is a big day for me (Mandy). I have a meeting tomorrow morning around 9:30 during which I will find out some significant information. I will post more on what the meeting is and what the outcome is tomorrow, but if you could just keep me in your thoughts and pray that everything goes well, I would really appreciate it!

In other great news, I can finally post that my friend Misty had her baby girl!!! Isabel Grace was born last Monday and is thriving and doing fabulous. I've been able to see a few pictures of her and she is absolutely beautiful. Congratulations Misty, Joel and G-Man!

The above pic is from last Saturday at the park when we were having some fabulous weather. Emma and Daddy had their shades on to keep the sun out of their eyes.

I'll be back with a report tomorrow. Much love, good night!

Heat Wave!

Missouri weather: you never know what you're going to get. The past 3 days have been absolutely gorgeous! We're talking temps near 70. And what's the forecast for tomorrow? Snow. Go figure.

We didn't let one second of this great weather be wasted. Yesterday, we took Emma to the park for about 2 hours. We walked along a trail, played on the swings and then stretched out on a blanket in the grass. The girl had so much fun and really enjoyed this new adventure.

We went to the same park today after church and walked the trail again. Emma smiled and played the whole time. She loves it when a breeze blows across her face. When we got home, she and Kevin stretched out on the couch under an open window and took a nap. Paradise.

We're just gonna hang out the rest of the afternoon. Dave and Cort are coming over tonight for our Bible study. I hope you've all had a blessed day in the Lord's presence and feel refreshed for Monday!

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.

We're still alive...

Grrr! I haven't been able to find time to blog lately, so forgive me for being long-winded.

Things are going great with Emma. She is doing so awesome at daycare. Kim, the lady who watches her, says she hardly ever fusses and plays all day. There is another baby named Violet that is 2 weeks older than Emma. It's kinda freaky because they look SO much alike. So much so, Violet's dad tried to take Emma home with him by mistake!

Emma is now a total champ at grabbing toys and chewing on them now. She loves to grab on to anything she can get her hands on and then proceeds to slobber (sp?) all over it. A bib is part of her every day attire do to the constant stream of spit running down her chin. She doesn't seem to mind, though.

Kevin is having a really busy semester. We had kinda hoped that this last semester was going to be easy in comparison to the others but it's not looking like that will be the case. He has been at the hospital for last 9 days straight working/doing clinicals. I think he's going to need a vacation when May rolls around.

Work is going pretty well for me. I am hanging in the wait right now for an evaluation and potential raise/promotion. I'm hoping to find out more about that any day now. I'm still working on getting some sort of routine down.

We finally got to meet with Parents as Teachers tonight. It was fabulous and I'm so glad we signed up. Our parent educator will be coming back to see Emma in May. She's also going to bring me a bunch of brochures to hand out at Jordan Valley about P as T so that we can give it to our patients, so that will be awesome.

In other news, please keep our friends Joel and Misty in your prayers. Misty is pregnant with a baby girl due in April but has recently been put on bed-rest. This is going to be a long wait for them.

I hope all is well with everyone. I will try to get on here a little more often. Cheers!!!

I need a maid

Before I went back to work I was feeling pretty awesome because I was super woman. I kept our house clean, ran most the errands, played with the baby all day, caught up on some reading, and even made dinner most nights. I had developed a great routine that allowed me to get everything done and life was grand.
My home now currently looks and feels like a pig pen. I don't know how people do it; how some people do the career thing, the Mom thing, and the domestic Goddess thing. Maybe I'll get a new routine down...

Emma is starting to master the art of grabbing and chewing on toys. She has been sucking on her fists a lot too. It's so amazing to watch. When we put a toy in front of her she locks her eyes on it. You can tell she's really concentrating and getting excited. Her arms will sort of twitch at her sides for a minute, as if she's trying to remember how to reach. Then, it clicks, and both arms come forward and together and she experiences victory. You can really see the satisfaction in her face. What a blessing to witness.

Back to Work

Today was my 2nd day back to work. Things have went smoother than I anticipated, for the most part. All of my co-workers missed me and were happy to welcome me back. All the patients I work with seem happy to see me again, too. It's nice to know you were missed.

It has been hard leaving Emma. I'm not even going to go into the details, but it sucks. I miss her and think about her all day. Luckily, I have been able to visit her on my lunch breaks.

I need to work on time management and get a set routine down. I'm used to having all day to do things and now I'm having to fit work and Emma/Kevin time in. I'm very tired. As I'm writing this I'm thinking, "You really should be in bed right now." Hopefully my blogging won't fall behind because I really enjoy it.

Happy Friday to everyone!

Here's one of my favorite pictures of Emma; it's such a funny face.