Brush, Brush, Brush Your Teeth

I just had to document how far Emily has come with brushing her teeth.  A few of you know just how difficult brushing her teeth used to be.  I literally had to wrestle with her to just get her to open her mouth and then I was lucky if I got one good swipe at her teeth.  Every night she would be in tears and I would be very close to tears myself.  I used to tell myself her teeth were going to rot because she refused to let me brush them.  Luckily, that has all changed.  Now she loves to brush her teeth!  She prefers to do them herself, but we have come to an agreement that I get to brush them first, then she can brush them.

Lettuce, Anyone?

So you've heard me say before that Emily is the world's pickiest eater.  She doesn't like trying new things at all!  She won't touch fruit.  Doesn't care for ice cream.  If it was up to her she would eat cheese morning, noon, and night.  I think she dreams about cheese at night because it's usually one of the first things she says to me each morning. 

One night when Shawn was cooking dinner, Emily was up on the counter watching him.  He was making a salad and had put the lettuce in the salad spinner to clean it.  Next thing he knows, Emily is eating lettuce straight out of  bowl.  She loved it!  Plain lettuce!  Of all things she likes, plain lettuce?  Really?  

So tonight when we were eating dinner, Shawn and I were eating a salad and she insisted on having some of our lettuce.  I had to take a picture just to remember this.  Not the best picture, but oh well.  Oh and please excuse how messy she is.  We were eating spaghetti.

Happy 20 Months!

Wow, now that she's 20 months, 24 months seems so close!  Each month continues to get more fun with her.

Here's what's happening with Emily at 20 months:

 - She's wearing mainly 12-18 month clothes, but can fit into some 18-24 month clothes. 

 - She's cutting 4 more teeth right now.  It's the one right before each of her molars.  Once they are in, it will make the count up to 16.

 - She wears a combo of size 4 and size 5 shoes.

 - Size 4 diaper

 - Starting this month, she now cries every morning when I drop her off at daycare.  She's always happy when she gets picked up.  I'm hoping it's just a stage that she's going through and that it ends soon!

 - She loves to swim in the pool, play at the splash park, take a shower at the end of her tub.  Basically, she loves anything in water.  And she has no fear when it comes to it either (which can be a little scary!).

 - She talks and talks and talks.  We can understand about half of it.  It's getting so much better now that she can actually tell us what she wants.

 - She's still an extremely picky eater!  No fruit, ice cream, very few veggies, etc.  She's not good at all with trying new things.

 - She's starting to like juice, so we give it to her occasionally as a treat.

 - She likes drinking out of a straw.

 - She's doing really well with her spoon and fork.  She wants to feed herself from now on.  She still gets frustrated each meal though and ends up using her hands for at least some of the meal.

 - She loves to call for Lily when we're at home.  Poor Lily is so patient with her.  Emily loves to chase her around.

 - She knows several shapes.

 - She loves to say "no."  She says this all day, every day it feels like.  She also loves to say "mine."  I'm afraid we may already be entering the terrible 2's.

 - She still loves Sesame Street (especially Elmo (Mo,Mo) and the Wiggles. 

 - She can jump.  And she jumps everywhere!

Jumpstreet

This afternoon we met Kevin, Julie, Lauren and Nattie over at Jumpstreet.  It's a fun place that Julie had found.  It's basically a huge indoor trampoline park.  They have trampolines that run almost the entire length of building. And there's one section that's only for kids age 7 and under.  It has a smaller trampoline area, 2 big blow up slides, a tea cup ride, and a few other fun crawl through toys.  Emily had a blast.  She was very brave and went right up on the trampolines.  She enjoyed jumping and then falling down on her bottom.  She also liked just sitting down and having the bigger kids jump by her.  It looked like so much fun that I took a turn jumping with her a little too.  It was pretty fun.  :)   Aunt Julie took her down one of the inflatable slides and Daddy took her down the really big one.  She liked the smaller one better.  She also took her turn to ride the tea cups 3 times!  We stayed about an hour and half and then all went and ate some Mexican food for dinner.  I think we'll be making our way back to Jumpstreet soon.  It was a great indoor place and Emily had a blast just running around.

 I caught her mid-jump

Saturday Morning Playdate

This morning Emily and I met a couple of girls I work with and each of their daughters at the splash park.  It was much more crowded than the last time we went, but  Emily still loved it just as much.  She ran right in the water when we got there.  We had to take some breaks though and hit the slides up every so often.  It was fun letting her play with some new kids.  We stayed about and hour and a half and by the time we got home, Em was exhausted.  She's napping now and I hope it's a long one.  :)

And just a few random pictures from last night.  Julie had passed down some more clothes to Emily and I was trying them on to see if some of them fit her now.  Well, once she had this outfit on, she wouldn't let me change her back.  Oh boy. .. I'm not ready for her to have an opinion on what she wears just yet.  But since my aunt and mom were coming over for dinner, I let her stay in the new outfit.  All the boys were at the Rangers Game, so we had a girl's night.

Flashback Friday. . .Shawn's 30th Birthday

A month before our wedding, Shawn turned the big 3-0.  I knew I wanted to do something special for him.  He's not big into celebrating birthdays, so I knew if I asked him what he wanted to do, he would have said nothing.  Well, you can't do nothing for your 30th birthday.  I wanted something low-key, but also fun for him.  So I schemed up an idea with some of his friends.  The weekend before his birthday, they would ask Shawn if he wanted to have a guy's night.   They were going to go to a bar where all of the rest of his friends and family would be waiting.  I sent out an evite telling everyone it was a surprise and got a way better response then I could have expected.  Almost everyone came.  When Shawn walked into the bar, the look on his face was priceless.  He was truly surprised.  I couldn't have asked for things to fall into place any better.  I hope it was a night he would never forget.

Sandbox

Last night while I was taking pictures of the backyard, Emily was playing in her new sandbox that Shawn made her.  He built it underneath the fort of her swingset. I had to laugh because my friend Stephanie just posted on her blog, how she will never have a sandbox because of how messy they are.  I totally learned my lesson last night when after I brought her back inside and was walking around barefoot in the kitchen I was stepping all over sand.  She had tracked it in all over.  Ugh.  At least I know she had fun.  Next time, we'll just be sure to shake out our clothes/shoes a little better before coming back in.

Oh and on a side note, Shawn built this sandbox for Em over a month ago, but up until just recently she hasn't been interested in it at all.  I think she realized now that it's kind of fun to get dirty.  Hopefully it will get her ready for the sand in Tahoe when we go in a couple of months!

Backyard Makeover

After all the windy weather we've been getting, we knew it was time to get a new fence.  Shawn has repaired our current fence several times and we knew it was pretty much on it's last leg.  So we sucked it up and bought a new fence.  We put a deposit down on one over a month ago, but with all the wind, the fence people have been so backed up!  Not to mention all the rain we had certainly didn't help. Normally, I wouldn't be excited about a new fence, but we got one 8 feet tall instead of the 6 foot one we had.  it's also a board on board one, so no one can see in as they are driving down the alley.  I was looking forward to finally having a bit more privacy in our backyard!

Shawn and I have talked about getting a pergola since we moved into the house.  It was just one of those items on our wish list.  Realistically, we thought it would be several more years, if not longer, before we ever got around to getting one.  Well, when the fence guy told us they also do pergolas, we thought we might as well get a quote on one, just so we knew how much they were.  When the guy came back with the quote, we couldn't turn it down.  He was willing to give us a pretty substational discount if we got it done at the same time as our fence.  It was hard for us to decide whether or not to take the plunge (it was still a lot of money), but as Shawn kept telling me it was like we'd be throwing away a really good coupon.  And you all know how much I love coupons.  So once we decided on it, I got really excited and anxious for it to be done. 

They finally came at the end of last week to start installing the new fence and the pergola.  They finished up today.  After installing the fence, they like to wait 6-8 weeks before coming back to stain it.  I guess it has something to do with letting the wood dry out.  So the stain on the fence won't be done until the end of July, but I was so excited about how it all looks now, that I decided not to wait to post pics.  It turned out better than I expected!  The fence gives us soooo much more privacy and the pergola gives us more shade than I thought it would.  I feel like our backyard just looks so much different!  I love it!!

Here are the before pics:

 Our neighbors could see in our backyard from their driveway.

And here are the after pics:

 We can't see the neighbor's in their driveway anymore!

 The fence will be stained the same color as the pergola.