Happy 22 Months Emily!

Here's what's happening with Emily at 22 months:

- She wears a combo of 12-18 month and 18-24 month clothes, size 5 shoes, and size 4 diaper.

- Bedtime has been moved back to closer to 8:00.

- She has started to ask for hugs.  And at night she'll ask for "one more hug" and "one more kiss" before bedtime.  I totally know she's just stalling, but it's hard to not give in to that request.

- She's totally self-sufficient with feeding herself from a spoon.

- She loves to sing and dance!  She sings and dances all day! She loves to sing "EIEIO and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."  She knows most of the words to Twinkle Twinkle. 

- She constantly is making me and Shawn laugh.  She's so funny.

- She never stops talking!  She talks in full sentences now.

- She still loves to rock and read stories before bedtime.

- At night, she wants her baby, dog ("girl"), blanky ("this"), and a "momo (elmo) book" in her crib.

- I'm pretty sure the terrible 2's are upon us.  She says "no" to almost everything and makes everything a struggle.  Lately, she's been fighting naps - big time!

- She's starting to say "mommy and daddy" instead of "mama and dada."

- She's always wanting us to follow her.  She'll say come "this way" or "that way."  When this girl is on a mission you better follow her or else.

 - She can be a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to certain things.  She loves to spread her blanky out on her legs, but it has to be perfectly straight or she's not happy.

30th Birthday

Or should I say my 5th annual 25th birthday.  :)  I hate to admit it, but I'm getting old!  I turned 30 years old today!  It's still hard for me to say it.  Why does 30 feel so much older than 29?

I've been fortunate to be able to celebrate with several people over the last few weekends.  2 weeks ago, I met up with Courtney and Kara to have a girl's day out and celebrate my b-day.  We started the day with brunch at The Cheesecake Factory.  I love their brunch, it's so yummy.  After brunch, we headed to the movies to see The Change-Up.  It was a cute movie. . . a little predictable, but still really funny.

Last Saturday morning, I met up with my mom at the Coach outlet. She let me pick out whatever purse I wanted for my birthday gift.  I knew I wanted a new black leather purse and found just what I was looking for.  After I headed home, Shawn had a surprise waiting for me.  A while back he had asked me what I wanted to do for my b-day. . .a night out with friends or a date night with him.  I told him, I wanted a date day with him.  Rarely, do we ever get to hang out all day without Emily.  So he gave me a heads up and said he had a babysitter all lined up for Saturday.  That was all he said up until Saturday morning.  Once Saturday arrived he told me that we were going to drop Em off at his parent's house in Burleson and then we would be spending the day and night in Fort Worth.  He originally had lunch and dinner reservations, but after feeling a little bit rushed in the morning we decided to cancel the lunch reservations and instead just have a relaxed afternoon to do whatever we wanted.  After dropping Em off around noon, we headed to do a little shopping in Fort Worth.  Shawn had given me my birthday present from Em that morning thinking I would be able to enjoy them this weekend. . .a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses.  The ones he got for me were a little big on me, so I decided to try on some other ones to see if they fit better.  We found a Sunglass Hut in a nice shopping center and we went in to exchange them.  I ended up getting some of the aviator sunglasses.  This was definitely something I never thought I would get, but Shawn talked me into them.  It's nice getting things for gifts that you would never normally buy yourself.  I think they make me look pretty cool.  :)  Definitely, not 30 when I wear them.  Anyways, after we exchanged them, we had some lunch at Blue Mesa.  It was so nice to be able to sit and enjoy some food and drinks and just talk.  We stayed for a couple of hours just hanging out.  After a little bit more shopping (it was tax-free weekend), we made our way to our hotel.  We stayed at the Omni hotel in downtown Fort Worth.  It was really nice.  It was right across from the water gardens so we ventured over there to walk around.  It was sooo hot though, so we decided pretty quickly to just go up to the hotel pool bar and hang out.  We stayed there for several hours before going back up to the room to shower before dinner.  We had 8:00 reservations at Mercury Chophouse.  When we arrived they said it would be about a 10 minute wait. . .35 minutes later, we finally sat down.  It was restaurant week, so we were able to get a 3 course meal for $30/each.  The food was good, but overall we were disappointed in the service.  We left dinner around 10:30 and knowing we needed to get up early to go pick up Em, we decided to just head back to the hotel.  We both fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow.  The next morning we got up and headed back to Burleson to pick Em up.  We found out that for the most part she didn't sleep the entire time we were gone, but that's a whole other post.

Finally, for my actual birthday weekend we started by going to my parent's house on Saturday night.  My mom made my favorite for dinner - steak, twice baked potatoes and salad and of course chocolate cream pie.   We enjoyed an afternoon of swimming and sun! 

The Cousins watching a movie

Sunday morning, I woke up to Shawn making one of my favorite breakfasts - French Toast. Then at lunch he surprised me with cupcakes. He even taught Emily to say Happy Birthday Mommy. Overall, I had a great 30th birthday month. And the celebrating will continue on as we head to CA on Monday.

Sea Life - Playdate With The Arnolds

This morning we met up with Kara, Hudson and Luke at Grapevine Mills to go to the new Sea Life Aquarium.  I've been wanting to go for a while, but knew it would be packed since it just opened.  I had to take off today because Em's school was closed for teacher in-service (the school year starts on Monday), so I thought today would be the perfect day to go.  We bought tickets online ahead of time and picked the earliest time slot - 10:00 am.  Me and Em go there around 9:30 and walked around the mall a bit before Kara and the boys arrived around 9:45.  We got in line at Sea Life (yes, there was already a line), but luckily didn't have to wait too long.  Em was excited as soon as we got in.  She noticed all the fish immediately and kept pointing at them.  She loved watching the sting rays, but didn't like getting too close to the glass.  I'm not sure if she thought they could get her or what.  She and Hudson had fun walking around together.  The only part Em wasn't a fan of was the area where the floor was glass and you could see into the water.  She wanted me to pick her up to walk over that portion.  We went through the shark walk area too, although we only saw a few small sharks.  At the end there was a small area where the kids could touch some starfish.  Em really liked this part.  We finished at the play area.  Overall, it was neat, but I was a little disappointed at the size of it.  I felt like it was a little small.  We had walked through the whole thing in about 30 min.

The few pics I took didn't turn out great.  They didn't allow flash photos, so this was the best I could get.

After the aquarium, we all headed to The Rainforest Cafe for some lunch.  It was a fun morning.  Every so often, it's nice to get to experience what stay at home mom's do.

1 Little Monkey Jumping On The Bed

One of Em's favorite things to do is jump. . .especially on the bed.  Shawn started flipping her too and she couldn't get enough of it!

TGIF

I don't know about ya'll, but it's been a long week for me!  I was so glad today was Friday.  I'm ready for the weekend!  I thought I would share pics from our day.

Em had wacky hair day at school today.  This is about as wacky as I can get in the 2 min. Em will sit still for me.  As soon as I took out the camera, she was ready to say "cheese."

Is it just me or does she look so big in this picture?  Where did my baby go?

Em was sent home from school last week for a fever.  We're almost done with the antibiotics.

Em's new favorite coaster - Lily's scratching post.

After work, I came home and checked Em's daily sheet.  Today she was Energetic, Happy, and Friendly.  I'd say this is the norm for Em.  Lately, she's been getting Chatty checked too.

I found Shawn and Em outside when I got home.  This has been the first day in a while, it's been bearable outside.  And can I first say, how sad is it that we missed the record of most consecutive days ever over 100 degrees by 2 days?  Really?   So we just suffered through 40 days of 100+ degree temperatures and all we have to show for it is 2nd place by 2 days??

Apparently, Em's hair wasn't wacky enough this morning. Her teachers had to add another pigtail. :)

Shawn gave her a snack in her gyro bowl.  Yet, she still figured out a way to make a mess.  We can't win.

Lily watching us play.

Em can climb up the ladder all by herself now.  She's been able to do this for a long time, but only now am I comfortable to let her do it without always standing behind her.

Who's up for a game of peek-a-boo

Finally, the heat was starting to catch up to us and we headed inside.  Em loves to play this game where she makes me and Shawn go "night night."  She covers you up her with her blanky and brings you her baby, dog, etc. 

 

Now it's Em's turn to go Night Night

But actually, it's more fun to go Night Night on Daddy. 

Happy Friday!

My New Favorite Thing

The Gyro Bowl

How did we ever live without this?

Emily's Favorite Songs

Here's Emily singing and dancing along to her 2 favorite songs. 



Are You Kidding Me?

I just have to say I'm sooo over this heat wave.  I mean 90 degrees at 7:00 am and 110 degrees by 3:00 pm?  Only a few more days and we'll have had the most consecutive days over 100 ever.  That's a record I hope we don't break! 

By now, we've had each our house a/c's go out at some point during the summer.  And just my luck, on my way home from work last night, my car a/c decided it had enough and went out.  Really??  So off to the shop it went this morning.  I'm just waiting to see what this will cost us.  Oh, and let's not mention what our electric bill will be this month.  I know it will be our highest ever and I'm not looking forward to that!

So, I know I should just be lucky that I even have a/c, but really?  Is it October yet???

Flashback Friday . . . Our Wedding Rehearsal

We had such a great time the Friday before our wedding.  It was my first full day off work and by now all of our friends and family had arrived in town.  The boys all went to play golf Friday, while us girls headed to the nail salon for mani's and pedi's.  We followed that up with a bridal luncheon at Mi Cocina.

That night, we headed to Perkin's Chapel for the actual rehearsal followed by the rehearsal dinner at Bice (it's an Italian restaurant in uptown, that has since closed).   This was the first time, it really hit me that I was getting married the next day.  Practicing walking down the aisle with my dad made it seem so real.  Everything went smoothly at the rehearsal though which helped put me at ease for the next day.

Shawn's parents planned the rehearsal dinner and everything turned out great.  We had a cocktail hour in the bar area where everyone could visit.  My parent's friend, Mr. Jenkins, had made a slideshow for Shawn and I with pictures of each of us growing up.  The slideshow was playing on the bar area TV's during the cocktail hour.  We headed into the dining room for dinner and to be honest, it felt like it took forever for dinner to be served.  The restaurant went very heavy on the wine serving and I'm pretty sure we all sat around for an hour or so and they just poured and poured and poured the wine.  Needless to say, everyone enjoyed themselves.  So much so that I ended up having to drive my brother, sister-in-law and 2 cousins home that night.  I wanted to make sure everyone got home safely.  I stayed the night in our apartment with my friend Jessica, Stephanie, and Steph's husband, Luke.  Shawn stayed downtown at a hotel.