21 Months

Emily is 21 months old! Here are a few of our favorite memories from this month:

*Emily has been learning more about taking turns. She gets this mostly from her gymnastics class (pictured above) where she has to wait until it is "Emmy's turn" (which she loudly announces to the class).

*Emily has found a new animal to enjoy this month. She loves to feed the birds and watch them in the trees when we play outside. We got her a small bird feeder that sits in a tree in our backyard, and she is constantly wanting to fill it to feed her little friends.

*She always wants to walk, which makes grocery shopping especially fun. She really only likes to sit in the shopping carts that look like cars. Otherwise, we sometimes have to result to bribery with cookies (shhh! don't tell anyone!) Emily also likes to announce what she is doing like WALKING!!! or RUNNING!!! It's very cute!

*We're in between a booster seat and high chair when we go to a restaurant. We prefer she sit in a high chair, but Emily loves the big girl booster seat. I'm thinking she will win this battle soon.

*Emily's favorite foods this month would definitely be grapes or bananas, which she asks for at every meal, and she now prefers cookies over ice cream. She doesn't get that from me!

*She has become very good at puzzles and does sometimes plays a cute game where she puts the piece in the wrong place and asks us, "Does that go there? Noooooooo!"

*Emily has also become very independent with most of the tasks we have to do during the day. We constantly hear EMMY DO IT!

*Emily has definitely learned how to stall us before bedtime. Every night before bed she will stop at the top of the stairs and say "bye bye" to all of her friends, toys, and anything she can think of. She has also started saying "kiss you?" and "hug you?" before she heads upstairs for bath/bedtime. It melts my heart!

*Emily started watching Elmo's Potty Time this month and it has really sparked an interest in all things potty for Emily. She even wants to see the potty in restaurants multiple times when we go out to eat. We're thinking potty training may be sooner than we thought.

*She has started to realize that Fouad and I have names other than Mommy & Daddy. She sometimes calls Fouad "Honey" which she got from me, and every once and awhile she calls me Amanda.

*Emily is starting to talk a lot about her friends from school and from Moms Club. She really enjoys trying to tell us about her day!

Santa Sighting!

We ate dinner at Cracker Barrel tonight. Emily loves their macaroni and cheese and carrots, but tonight she was obsessed with their broccoli and cheese casserole. Note to self...I need to find a decent recipe for this so she will eat more broccoli.

Anyway, when we were seated, I noticed an older man in a red shirt with white hair and a white beard. He obviously looked like Santa Claus, and he wasn't trying to hide it. I saw that Emily noticed him, and just as I was about to say something to Fouad about it she yells across the dining room, "SANTA! SANTA!!!!" We didn't know whether to laugh or be completely embarrassed! "Santa" waved to Emily several times, but that seemed to make it worse. She tried desperately to get his attention until he finally finished and left. We talked about Santa and the North Pole for the rest of dinner. She is going to be so fun during the holidays!

Bedtime

I'm on a roll lately with blog posts! As Em gets better with her speaking, the floodgates have opened with all of the funny things she says and does, and I really don't want to forget anything.

Recently, when we're taking her to bed after she bathes and brushes her teeth, she wants to say goodbye to everyone. Sometimes it is her classmates from daycare, sometimes it will be family members, or sometimes it will be inanimate objects, but she will stand at the top of the stairs beside her bedroom door and say her goodbyes before she heads in for the night. Too cute :-)

Waking up

I love to listen to Emily on the monitor in the mornings. For the past few months, she has had all kinds of conversations with herself while she's in her crib.We have a basket of her favorite books on the floor next to her crib where she can reach them and read in the morning. I will usually hear her talking about Mickey, Minnie, and the gang or Elmo and his friends.

This week I started to hear her sing when she woke up! It's so sweet :-) Of course, she only knows a few words of each of the songs that she sings, but for the past few mornings it has been either Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star or The Bumblebee Song. She asks for us to sing the Bumblebee song ALL OF THE TIME, so I'm very excited that she will be able to sing along now! Her favorite part is definitley the "Ouch! It stung me!" line.

This quiet play/sing/read time can last anywhere from 5 - 30 minutes, and I usually let her stay as long as she wants if we don't have anywhere we need to be. When she's done, I definitely know. She usually says, "Mommy! Get Emmy!"

Conversations with Emily

We went to visit my parents yesterday and Emily knew where we were as soon as we pulled into their neighborhood. She excitedly yelled, "I see Papa! Emmy here! Yay! We did it!" Needless to say, I was dying of laughter as we pulled in their driveway :-)

Chestatee Wildlife Preserve

Emily and I were invited to join some friends this week at the Chestatee Wildlife Preserve. This "zoo" is located about 45 minutes north of us, and it was a really fun day. Emily really enjoyed seeing all of the animals, but the bear and the ponies were her favorite. Here's a few pictures and a video:

Fun with Grandparents

Here's some pictures of Emily having fun at my parents' house a few weeks ago. She loves their back yard and the "geese" that live there...

Making Pizza

Fouad suprised me when he said he and EMILY would be cooking dinner one evening recently. They made pizza, and it was so cute!

20 Months!

Emily is 20 months old! The picture above was taken at Emily's favorite park - Sims Lake Park. We go there often with our MOMS Club and also on play dates with Emily's little friend Olivia and her mom Jenn. Em loves to feed the ducks and geese that are on the lake. Well, we take bread to feed them, Emily usually ends up eating most of it!

This month our little girl has really started to expanding her language skills. She has been saying sentences and speaking much clearer. Strangers usually guess that she is around 2 1/2 years old. Not sure if that means she's really as advanced as we like to think she is, or if people have a tough time guessing ages. I'm going to just say we have a baby genius!

Emily also surprised us by counting to 13 one day without any prompting! We were floored! Em also got a huge surprise in our back yard one afternoon - she got her very own play house! She loves it! We decided to get her a space of her own after a few bad thunderstorms came through and we had to take cover in one of our closets. Emily loved her little "club" with Mommy, Daddy, Callie, and Charlie. The poor girl needed a proper place to play! Here's a picture of Emily enjoying her house:

Another very fun activity that started this month was gymnastics! Emily has really enjoyed her gymnastics classes and we are really loving that she is learning to take her turn, be patient, and follow directions. Here's a photo from her first class:

Along the same lines, Emily has started to really understand her boundaries and definitely knows right from wrong. When she gets frustrated, we usually present her with two options (that we choose of course...) and she is very happy to pick one. This has really eliminated a lot of drama around our house.

We are really having the time of our life right now with our little one! She makes our days so much fun :-)