Happy 11 Months!

Here's what's happening with Emily at 11 months:

 - She wears 6-12 month clothes and a size 2-3 diaper.

 - She's loves table food.  She doesn't eat any baby food anymore.  Her favorites are easy mac, spaghettio's, and cheese quesadillas.  She has a palate like her mama.

 - She's starting to sleep in a little more on the weekends.  She'll usually sleeps until 7:00 and some days until 7:30 or 7:45.

 - She NEVER sits still.  She's busy all the time.  They say she "plays hard" at school.  She gets her energy from her daddy.

 - She has started crawling up into my lap when she wants to sit with me.

 - When she wants something, she lets you hear about it.  She's loud. 

 - She's an extremely happy baby.  She's always smiling and she cracks herself up. . all the time.  She has different laughs too.

 - She has 1 tooth. . .finally!

 - She is crawling everywhere and she's fast.  She continues to pull up on everything and will "cruise" around furniture.  She has no fear.  She throws herself over everything.

 - She dances (or bounces to music).

 - She likes to climb up the stairs and loves to sit in her little pink chair.

 - She knows who Lily is.  If you ask her where Lily is, she'll look around until she finds her.

 - She hates having to sit still on her changing table while we change her diaper and get her dressed.

 - She can stand on her own for a few seconds.

I can't believe in 1 month, I will have a 1 year old!  Where has the last year gone????

Martha's Vineyard / Boston

Shawn and I took our first baby-free trip since Emily was born.  We went to Martha's Vineyard to attend my friend Jenny's wedding and then stayed a night in Boston.  We left really early Friday morning (we had a 6:30am flight), so we dropped Emily off at my parent's house Thursday night.  It was sooo hard leaving her!  Since she's been born, I have only been away from her for 1 night at a time.   Now we were about to leave her for 4 nights!  The drop off was about what I expected.  I tried to not get sad around her, but as soon as Shawn and I were back in the car, I broke down.  I felt so guilty for leaving her and so sad that I wouldn't see her for so long. 

First off, let me just tell you, Martha's Vineyard is NOT any easy place to get to.  Like I mentioned earlier, we left at 6:30am and took a 3.5 hour flight into Boston.  Then we had an 1.5 car drive to get to the ferry.  We had to take a 20 min. bus ride from the ferry parking lots just to get to the ferry, then hopped on a ferry for a 45 minute boat ride to Martha's Vineyard.  Once we got to Martha's Vineyard, the town we were staying in, Edgartown, was still another 20-30 minutes away, so we hopped in a cab to finally get to our hotel.  We left our house that morning at 4:45 am and finally arrived to our hotel at 4:00pm.  It was a long travel day and I think we hit just about every mode of transportation possible (except train). 

On the ferry over to Martha's Vineyard.



It was pretty foggy during the ferry ride over, so we didn't get to see much of a view.  It stayed pretty foggy most of the day Friday, but luckily by Saturday it had cleared up and it was beautiful outside.  Our hotel, the Harbor View,  was really nice!  It was right on the ocean and within walking distance to all the shops and restaurants. We got upgraded to an ocean view room and we had a little balcony too.

Our hotel

The view from our room

By the time we arrived at our hotel on Friday we didn't have much time before we had to go to the rehearsal dinner, so we just walked around the hotel a little bit and then showered and headed out to the restaurant.  The rehearsal dinner was at a nice place right on the water.  We had a good time visiting with everyone, but by 10:00 the day finally caught up to us and we were ready to head back to the hotel.

At the rehearsal dinner

Saturday morning we slept in a little bit, enjoyed a nice breakfast and then headed out to check out all the shops.  Edgartown surprisingly had quite a large downtown shopping area with lots of cute stores.  We've been to Chatham on the Cape, so that's kind of what we were expecting Martha's Vineyard to be like, but I think Edgartown had even more to do than Chatham.  After walking around a bit, we stopped in and had lunch at a seafood place, Seafood Shanty, right on the water.  Shawn had to get his fill of seafood on the trip.  And now that I've started liking seafood, I too enjoyed my share of fish and lobster.  After lunch we headed back to the area by our hotel and walked around on the beach and checked out the lighthouse across the street.  Jenny's wedding was at 4:00, so we got dressed and walked over to the church.  The reception was close to our hotel.  It was outside in a tent with lots of lights which made it look really pretty at night. There was a nice dock you could walk on and Jenny did a great job with all the details.  The only downside was that it was a bit chilly outside and I got eaten alive by mosquitoes.  But overall, the wedding and reception were really nice.

The lighthouse across from our hotel

Sunday morning we got up early and took a cab back to the ferry stop.  Knowing how long it would take to get back into Boston, we wanted an early start.   We got on the 9:30 ferry and traveled the 45 minutes back to the Cape.  This time it was sunny outside and much warmer, so we sat outside on the top deck and enjoyed the view.  On our drive back to Boston, we decided to make a pit stop in Plymouth, MA to get some lunch.  Shawn and I went to Boston/ Cape Cod about 4 years ago and we had stopped in Plymouth then to see the Mayflower, but we never ate.  We remembered seeing some seafood restaurants so we thought we should go back.  After a quick bite, we continued on our trek into Boston. 

We stayed in the Back Bay area this time.  This was the one area we never really saw much of last time we went to Boston.  We could see Fenway from our hotel room.  After checking in, we walked around the Back Bay area for a little bit.  We walked up Newbury street (where all the high end shopping is) and also walked around some of the neighborhoods.  It was neat getting to see the kinds of houses people lived in.  Shawn cracked me up saying he was on celebrity watch, thinking we might run into Ben Affleck.  We never did.  We walked up to the Boston Commons, which is a big park in the middle of downtown and sat and people watched for a little bit.  Since we've been before and had seen most of the sites, we just went low-key this time.  We went to an Irish Pub and hung out and watched the Patriots play  (they were my football pick this week in my work pick one game).  When the game was over it had started to drizzle a bit and had gotten pretty chilly.  We headed back to our hotel to bundle up a bit more and catch a cab to Faneuil Hall.  This is the more touristy area and an area where we knew we could find a more casual restaurant.  We started to eat dinner at Cheers (even though we ate there last trip), but after sitting and not getting any service for about 15 minutes, we got up and left.  We went to a brick-oven pizza place instead.  After dinner we knew we wanted to go to the Hotel we stayed in last trip, the Omni Parker House, and get a piece of Boston Creme pie.  This is the place it was invented.  It was soo good.  But I must say, as we looked around while sitting at the bar in this hotel, we were clearly the youngest people here. . .by 30 years!  But the dessert was so worth it!  Most bars were packed (probably for the Red Sox vs. Yankees game), so we decided to call it an early night and just went back to our hotel.

Boston Commons

Faneuil Hall

"Cheers" (although this Cheers doesn't look like the one on TV, that's a different restaurant in Boston)



This morning we had a noon flight, so we pretty much just got up and after breakfast headed to the airport.  I was so excited this morning, knowing that I would get to see Emily.  Shawn and I couldn't stop talking about how Emily would react when we picked her up from school.  And we guessed right.  She seemed confused when we both showed up to pick her up, but she had a huge smile on her face.  I missed her so much and was so happy to see her!

Overall, we had a great trip. It was so nice to get away, just the two of us.  But by the end of it, we were both ready to get back home to our baby.

Early Birthday Present from Mimi and Papa

Emily's big surprise arrived on Tuesday morning.  It was an early first birthday present from Mimi and Papa! Drum roll. . .it is a new swing set.  It took all day for it to be installed.  I was so excited to pick Emily up from school today so we could show her the big surprise.  After showing her, we decided she needed a quick cat nap to re-energize her, but as soon as she woke up we were out enjoying her new present.  She loves her little swing and liked the slide a lot too.  She kept putting her heels down to stop herself from going too fast.  We even tried out the glider.  Mommy and Daddy went up into the fort and slid down the slide too.  It's funny, but as excited as I was all day today, you would think that the swing set was for me.  :)  It's just neat getting to see everything through a child's eyes.

I feel like our backyard is now almost complete.  When we picked out our house one of my requirements was to have a yard that would fit a swing set, well now 2.5 years later, we have the swing set.

And I'm still loving taking pictures with my Dad's camera.  Hope he's not missing it because I love using it!  Thanks again Mimi and Papa for a great birthday surprise!!

Big Surprise

Emily has a big surprise coming on Tuesday.  I'm so excited and can't wait for her to see it.  Check back Tuesday night to see what it is!

And just because I couldn't pass up an opportunity to post a few other pics I took of Emily this week. . .

The Curse of the Cheerleading Outfit

(I borrowed my Dad's fancy camera this week so I could get a good picture of Emily for her birthday invitations.   I spent a lot of the day just playing around with it.  It makes me want a new camera soo badly.  He has a Canon Rebel and I love it.  It's crazy how much clearer the pictures are.)

We dressed Emily up in her Sunday football oufit today.  Apparently though, her cheerleading outfit is the curse against the Cowboys.  The last 2 Sundays Emily has worn it, the Cowboys have lost. 

This is one of the new faces that Daddy taught her. 

She's helping Daddy cheer on his favorite team.

I love this picture.  They are both watching the TV and you can just tell from both of their faces that something didn't go well for the Cowboys.

She LOVES her pink chair in her room.  The first thing she does when she's in her room is crawls up into it.  She loves to just sit in it and also stand and look over the back of it. She's clapping for herself here.

Grapefest

We braved the 90 degree tempatures to go to Grapefest in downtown Grapevine yesterday.  Grapefest is basically a big festival where you can sample a bunch of wines.  However, being that we brought Emily with us we spent very little time wine-tasting and instead spent much of our time in the kid friendly area.  Oh how are lives are so different now.  But it was really fun though.  They had lots of activities that catered to little ones.  We took her on the merry-go-round.

Then we headed over to the petting zoo.  It was so hot and stinky in there with all the animals, but Emily loved it.  She loves animals, so this didn't surprise us at all.  They had goats, ducks, chickens, rabbits, and a few others.

After the petting zoo, we headed over to the main children's area where they had a bunch of picnic tables set up with blocks for the kids to play with.  They also had lots of bikes and ride-on toys for the little kids to play with.



After a little while, we met up with Shawn's parents (KK and Grandpa Joe).  We found a table in some shade and ate some lunch.  Emily was getting a bit fussy at this point and after walking around a little bit more, Emily decided she had enough.  And at this point, Mommy had enough too.  We made it 3 hours in the almost unbearable heat.  It was a fun family outing, but we were all worn out!  Emily took almost a 3.5 hour nap when we got home.