I'm So Glad...

Every night we have a bedtime routine.  Potty, bath, brushing teeth, Daddy checking for sugar bugs, pj's, a good night song with Daddy (he has been singing "Good Night Sweetheart" to Emily at night since she was around 6 months old), potty again, one last kiss for Daddy, read 3 books, prayers, and finally GOOD NIGHT!!!!

After we say our prayers I usually say to Emily "I'm so glad that God chose me to be your mommy".  Then she says, "I'm so glad that God chose me to be your little bit and you to be my mommy and Daddy to be my daddy".  Melt my heart!

The Artist

Emily began doing Kindermusik when she was five months old.  She has loved it each year.   Every class up to age three is a parent/child class.  This year is her first year going into the class by herself.  The children go in for the first 30 minutes and the grown-ups come in for the last 15 minutes.  She has a little Kindermusik backpack and has to bring things to class.  She has "home work" to do each week and she has had two projects to do at home and bring to class to share. 

The first was a sculpture.  They had to make a base and then build a sculpture to go on it.  It could be any kind of base and sculpture.  Emily and her daddy built a base out of wood and Emily painted it.  Then Emily chose to make her sculpture out of play doh.  So much fun. 

Next she had to be a photographer.  She took pictures and made a photo book.  She love this so much!  Here are some of the pages from her book.

I wrote exactly what she told me on these pages.

Emily also loves to paint.  I set up her easel in the kitchen one day to paint.  She stood up for awhile and then decided she was tired and need to paint sitting down.

Emily loves art and she loves projects!

Happy Birthday To ?

Yesterday, March 27th, was my dad's birthday.  Emily loves to help people celebrate their birthdays.  Actually, everyday at our house is someones birthday.  Emily announces who's birthday it is every morning.  Jeff, Barney, Callie and I have had so many birthdays recently I just can't count.  Emily puts together a party with cake and ice cream from her kitchen along with gifts.  Here is a picture from one of Callie's (our cat) birthdays.  If you are wondering, we put have a table for Callie where we keep her bed and food and water so Barney (our dog) won't eat her food.  He loves cat food:)

So Happy Birthday to everyone including my dad!!!

One, Two, Three

Emily says and does so many funny things.  I want to record them somewhere because they change quickly and I don't want to forget.  Here are some examples:

We have a table with circles on it in our hallway and every time Emily goes past it she has to touch three circles and count 1, 2, 3!  A little OCD but cute:)

                                         

                                          Deal?
Sometimes Emily likes to agree upon something and she says "deal?" to make sure we are in agreement.  For example, Let's finish our lunch and then go outside...deal?  Very cute!

                                        


                                          FINE!!!
Now that Emily is a challenging three year old (sometimes it seems like she is 13) she has developed this new habit.  I'll tell her no about something and she'll say "FINE...".  The word that follow "fine"  change but they usually go something like this. 

M: Emily, no more cookies today, you've had enough.
E: Fine, I'll eat them ALL tomorrow.

M: No, you can't take the blanket from you bed outside,  it will get dirty.   
E: Fine, I'll take my other blanket outside.

You get the idea.  She says it with so much attitude.  What am I going to do when she is a teenager?


                                    Let's Talk About This...

Sometimes we hear our words coming back to us.  Emily will say, "Let's talk about this, okay..." or "We need to talk about something...".   Do you think we say that to her sometimes?



Emily, it is so fun to get to know you and your personality.  You are so expressive and so fun to be with!  We love you very much!

                          

Good Manners

I have always wanted Emily to have good manners.  I feel like good manners are more than just "please and thank you".  Yes, those words are important but to me manners are about learning how your actions effect other people and learning personal responsibility. We want her to learn that her actions have consequeses for her and other people.

Lately, Emily's behavior has been quite challenging.  She is three and I have to remind myself that she is three and this behavior is a part of being three.  I had someone ask me why she was all of the sudden behaving like this and I said I think the problem is that she is three:)  She gets angry and yells when she doesn't get her way.  She has a bad attitude sometimes and hasn't been listening very well.  She is sometimes rough with her friends, not trying to be mean, but just not thinking about what she is doing and how it makes her friends feel.  She is three and this behavior is typical but that doesn't mean we tell her it's okay.  Jeff and I are doing our best to use this three year old behavior to teach and guide her. 


 I felt like we had really been "on her " lately always correcting her and putting her in "time out" and taking things away from her.  I wanted to try to use positive reinforcement as well so we started a Good Manners Sticker Chart.

I put divided into three areas for her to work on.  Kind words and actions, good attitude and waiting your turn to talk.  Many things can fall under these areas.  For instance, listening to Mommy and Daddy and obeying is a part of being kind and having a good attitude.  We are trying to make her think about how her actions effect other people and we are trying to teach her to treat others the way she wants to be treated and to think about how her actions make other people feel.

We went to the dollar store and she picked out some "prizes" for a treasure box she decorated.  When she fills up the sticker chart she gets to get a prize from her box.  We've been working on this chart for 11 days.  Some days she gets a sticker for all three areas and there have been a few days where she has no stickers at the end of the day but we start fresh every day. 

Some days are better than others but our goals are not just short term but very long term so we keep going!

 

Allie Alligator To Zeke Zebra

We finished our last Zoo- Phonics letter on Monday.  Emily has loved it!  We have much more still to do with Zoo-Phonics and that makes Emily very happy.

Here is Emily with all her letter papers.  She is so proud! 

I think her most favorite activity we did with the letters was for Xavier Fox day.  I put X's (with painters tape) around the house with a treasure on each.  Emily drew a treasure map and went on a search for "X marks the spots" all around the house collecting treasures.

Pirates ready to search for treasure.

Emily's treasure map. See her x's.

After we found them all we counted see how many treasures we had and then Emily used the tape to make her own X's and we had to find them.  Such a fun activity!

 

Don't Poke The Bear

  During our Disney trip there were many times when Emily was quiet doing her own thing and Jeff would try to tickle her or "mess with her" in some way.  I kept asking him to leave her alone because I didn't want her to get mad or grumpy or start being really silly at the wrong time.  I kept telling him not to "poke the bear".  Emily caught on to this and when Jeff is "messing with her" she still says, "Daddy, don't poke the bear".  Today she said with a smile on her face, "Mommy, Daddy is poking the bear".   

Family Fun

We headed to City Lake Park today after lunch.  It was such a great day to play at the park.

  Then we decided to head over to Celebration Station.  Emily had never been before and every time we ride past it she asks about it.  She was very excited.  She got to ride the go karts with her Daddy. She loved this and was not afraid to go fast at all.  Isn't she adorable?

Love the fist bump...let's go racing!

Then we played a game of mini golf.

Emily loved this little house on the putt putt course. 

Our Celebration Station day ended with a ride in the boats. 

I was not in a boat but still got wet.  Can you see why?   Jeff is spraying me with the water in this picture:)

We came home and spent some more time outside and cooked out for dinner.  It was a great day!

Water Play In March?

Yesterday was so warm.  Emily started the day out in a sweater and ended up in a sleeveless dress.  It was so warm we decided to clean out the water table and splash.  What a beautiful day!  Today we are headed to the park.  Tomorrow, the first official day of spring is going to be in the 50's.  That's okay, the warm weather will be back next week:)

St. Patrick's Day

This is Emily's St.Patrick's Day hat we made today.  She wore it for about 4 hours without taking it off.  That means she really liked it!

Today I tried to talk with her about the holiday and traditions.  I also told her that when I was a teacher we had two silly leprechauns named Lucky and Lucy came to our school each St.Patrick's day and made a mess of everything.  She liked hearing about them but I still think she thought I was crazy.  Then we had to go by the preschool where she will be going two days a week next year, to drop off our forms and a leprechaun had come to the school and left green foot prints everywhere and this leprechaun had done silly things and had left quite a mess as well. One of the teachers "found" a gold coin behind her ear that a leprechaun put there.  She was so excited and full of leprechaun questions.  I have realized that my leprechaun knowledge is very limited.

Then we went to lunch and stopped by the church to see Daddy.  Then we went to pick out two St. Patrick's Day cupcakes, one for Emily an one for Daddy.  She was very excited. 

Here is a picture of Emily making her hat.

Feeling Blue

We have needed to paint our kitchen for a long time.  Jeff did some work in the kitchen and put in a new tile floor when I was 8 months pregnant with Emily. The kitchen really needed to painted after he was done but we never got to it and then Emily was born and we just kept putting it off.  The color was gray and we really needed some color on the walls!  Jeff decided that Saturday was the day!

Emily had fun being Daddy's helper.  Notice that Jeff let her paint...behind the stove.  Emily painted for awhile and then we had a birthday party to go to.  When we got back from the party Jeff was finished and we helped him clean up and put everything back together.  Here is the kitchen all painted. 

Disco Pooh

When I was a baby my room had a lot of Winnie the Pooh stuff.  I still have my Pooh blanket.  I brought it out when Emily was a year old and now we keep it in her closet.  From time to time she asks for the Pooh blanket.  It's fun to look at because the characters look so different now.  Tigger and Eeyore are completely different colors.  The blanket itself is a blast from the past.  Can you tell I was a baby in the 70's? I love my Disco Pooh blanket and so does Emily.

Another Birthday?

I'm not really sure how it's already my birthday again but it is!  I've had a great day with my wonderful family.  Jeff and Emily went to the Dollar Store last night to get some bubbles for her bubble toy.  While they were there, she found some special surprises for Mommy's birthday!

She picked out a sword, a pretend lemon (because mommy loves lemons), flowers and a birthday banner.  This picture cracks me up!!!!   Seriously, a sword and a lemon!  I love it!  She's asked me a lot today if she could play with my sword.  We are sharing:) 

Today, I had to work at church and I started off the day with a birthday cake made by a friend at work.  It was yummy chocolate!  Tonight Jeff, Emily and I went out to eat with some friends.  Jeff got me a gift certificate for a day spa.  I'm very excited.  This is great timing since Emily, in all her 3 year old glory, has been a bit challenging ever since we returned from Disney! Jeff also gave me some roses.  Here is a picture of the flowers Jeff and Emily gave me.

Here is Emily's card she decorated for me.  See how she wrote Mommy on the envelope:)

I had a great birthday with my family and friends.  I received so many birthday wishes through email, facebook and snail mail.  I will continue to celebrate this weekend with my dad and his wife.  I am very blessed!

"Snacks"

Emily watched a Franklin episode on Nick Jr. where the characters gave each other nicknames.  They named Bear "Snacks" because he liked to eat snacks.  Bear didn't like the nickname but Emily sure did.  She decided that her nickname should be "Snacks".  She walked around for days telling anyone she saw, "Hi, I'm Snacks" or "My name is Emily but you can call me "Snacks".  She said it with the cutest little grin on her face.  It was so funny.  My nickname was "Cupcakes" and Jeff's was "Eaty" or "Drinky".  What a funny girl!

Happy Birthday, Gran!

Today is my mother's birthday.  Her birthday is always a sad day for me but I try to celebrate it with Emily and remember her on her special day with something fun.  Today after church, we went to the bakery and Emily picked out cupcakes for Gran's birthday.  After lunch, we sang Happy Birthday to her and  Emily got to blow out the candles.  Happy Birthday, Mother!  I love you and miss you very much!

We Have a Situation...

It started awhile back, we went to visit Jeff's dad and he had bought Oreos for Emily.  The next time we came to visit she remembered the cookies and asked Grandpa if he had any.  Well, he didn't have any cookies but he quickly went to buy some and made a promise that from then on he would always have Oreos for Emily. 

One day Emily received a package of Oreos.  Many boxes of individual packs of Oreos (12 cookies to a pack).  This was perfect.  We would open a pack and give her a few and put the rest in a ziplock bag and save until later.  They lasted much longer this way.  For some reason, when we have a big bag open we eat them much quicker.  Anyway, she didn't ask for one every day but when she did, we always had them available.  This supply lasted us for about 7 months but one day, the supply of Oreos was GONE!  Emily said she had to talk to Grandpa about the" Oreo situation".

Jeff skyped Grandpa and Emily said, "Grandpa, we have a situation".  It was so funny!!!  So Grandpa quickly got to work to remedy the "situation".

We got home on Wednesday and Emily had a package.

Thanks, Grandpa!

 

A Long Way Down

The little burst of color in this bed is Emily sleeping in the hotel at Disney.  She rolls a lot and has a rail on her bed at home so I was afraid she would roll out of the bed.  We tried a pack'n play but it was very uncomfortable for her so we moved her to one of the beds.  The bed was high so I put pillows all around her and put a comforter on each side of the bed in case she fell off. 

The first two nights she did fine.  The third night was different.  I woke up at around 3am to go to the bathroom.  I looked over to check on her.  It was really dark so I couldn't see much but I noticed that a pillow was missing from  the bed.  I thought maybe she kicked it off.  I put my feet on the floor and instantly felt something weird on the floor.  It felt different than the comforter.  Within a few seconds I realized, it was my child!  She had fallen off the bed and had her head under our bed sound asleep.  I can't believe she didn't cry or anything.  It was a long drop. I picked her up and put her back on the bed.  I asked if she was okay.  She said,

" Yes, this is much better."  Needless to say, the rest of the night and the next, I slept in her bed.