Snow Day! (updated)

While there have been a few flurries this year, today is the first real snow that Emma has seen. Her mom is a big chicken this morning and, rather than going outside, preferred to enjoy the pretty scenery from the comfort of home.

There's a hill right next to our house and all of the kids are out there sledding right now. I can already tell that there won't be too many more winters where I can get away with staying inside on days like these. Emma will have me out there pulling her and her sled back up that hill I'm sure.

That's why today... it's couches and cocoa!

Update:

Originally, the plan was to stay nice and toasty inside on this snowy day. As the day progressed and the snow accumulated, I eventually changed my tune. Emma and I bundled up and joined Robby outside for a little fun in the fluffy stuff before it all turns to ice tonight.

7 Months Old

What an awesome weekend we had. Emma hosted her second QC meeting at the house. Aunties Roshni and Lisa showed up with lots of presents for lavish spoiling of the sweet and adorable Emma G.

Auntie Roshni assisted in juice box duty. You can tell she's a pro, with plenty of practice from her three nephews. Just look at that form.

Aunt Lisa told lots of interesting stories about the recent inauguration. Emma predicts that Lisa's sister, who is due any day now, is going to have a girl.

And then Emma posed for her 7 month Bernie photo. Please take notice of the adorable footed sleeper she's sporting in the photo. This is one of the many awesome outfits she received on QC day. So cute!

BS and other things

A friend of mine noticed that the Boon Spoon was conspicuously missing in the last blog entry concerning Emma and feeding and she wondered if perhaps we had changed our endorsement of it.
The answer is "no".
The Boon is still great. We still use it quite a bit. Especially on the more liquidy stuff like peaches and cereal. It actually ends up being more like a straw at those times because she can eat those peaches faster than we can get them to her mouth. But, since Emma seemed convinced that she wanted to try and feed herself, we thought we would give her something her little hands could handle. While the BS is wonderful for parents, it's just too big and bulky and difficult for tiny hands to hold or squeeze.
My friend also asked about Emma's bib in the photo. It's great too. It ties in the back and covers her arms really well. It's also water resistant so you can just wipe/rinse it off when you're done. I will have to say that it still doesn't entirely protect her clothes around the neck area because it's still a little big for her. I think the only way to avoid the food stains there is to feed her when she's shirtless. It's still a little too cold now for me to do that but, believe me, if it were summertime, I would have to censor her feeding photos.
We got the bib at Babies R Us. It's kind of hard to tell what it looks like from the packaging because it's folded into a square. Just look for the pink and purple flowerdy print. It's made by Koala Baby.
I also have to mention one more bit of solid feeding info that I've discovered. I call it "baby crack". Emma can't get enough of this stuff and I actually have to hide the container because she becomes transfixed and begins drooling at the mere sight of it. The brand name of this product is Gerber Graduates Finger Foods. It's the cherry puffs kind. These are star shaped puffy things that kind of melt in the baby's mouth, so no teeth are required. Technically, Emma doesn't qualify as a "graduate" according to their standards because she's not crawling yet, but, as long as I'm supervising her I feel pretty confident she's able to handle the puffs ok without choking. My neighbor is actually the one who told me about this one. I probably wouldn't have been brave enough to give them to Emma so soon but her daughter, who is only 2 days older than Emma, loves the puffs in the same babynip kind of way. She's tried the strawberry-apple and banana variety and loves them both. I might let Emma tries those as well -- that is, if I don't decide to cut her off now for her own good.

Congratulations Emma!

Today you are 7 mos. old!
And to celebrate this grand occasion, we (and by "we", I mean "you") are going to have......

Yummy Green Beans!!!! And to show us all what a big girl she is, Emma decided that she was no longer content to have Mom hold the spoon. Instead, Emma decided that she would do the work herself. What a smart girl. She even dipped the spoon into the bowl to "re-load".

Can you tell she's proud of her latest accomplishment?

I'm pretty sure she's got green beans so far up her nose we won't see them again until she learns how to blow it

-- years from now.

But she got them there, and got a pretty good amount of food into her mouth, all by herself!

That's my girl!

That's the sweet smell of success, Sweetheart. Savor it. :D

Product

Robby's hair was lifeless, limp, and he was altogether having a bad hair day. So, I pulled a few of my old "Texas hair" tricks out of my bag to help him out.

I tried all the old school favorites. Hot rollers, hair spray, gel. Nothing worked.

I thought that I had lost my touch.

Then, I decided to pull out some super special hair product and give it one last shot.

Now his hair has life, volume and energy.

And all because of a little moose.

At the risk of speaking too soon, I'm going to say that I think we are finally getting back to "normal" around here after our "holiday" trip. Yes, it has taken almost two full weeks to get here, but we were gone for 16 days so it might even take a bit longer for us to recover.
Why so long? I have a few theories:
Theory number 1:
Sleep deprivation.
While on the road, Emma decided that she did not want to sleep in the pack-n-play we bought specifically for such. So, we ultimately just purchased a pack-n-pack. It's a good thing we brought the trailer with us.
What is a VERY tired couple to do after a long day of driving when every fiber within and without is aching for sleep? The answer: whatever it takes. For us, this meant letting Emma sleep in the bed with us. This is something WE don't like to do but that Emma LOVES. I inevitably wake dozens of times in the night just to make sure I'm not smushing her. She, on the other hand, usually sleeps like... well, a baby.
But...
Emma, who had been sleeping very well through the nights before we left, reverted to waking up 4 to 5 times each night while we were gone even though she was in the "big" bed. I put the quotes around "big" because, in our travels, we were almost always sleeping in full to queen sized beds in cold and drafty rooms. We have definitely become rotten from having such an awesome king-sized bed at home this past year. I say all of this so you will get the idea that we were getting even less sleep than our already sleep deprived selves were used to.

Theory number 2:
Germs.
Robby and I both had a pretty bad bout with Mr. Cold's bug around the end of October/ first of November time frame. It had us both on the ropes for weeks. Emma was just fine. Bless her. So, we were excited to have finally gotten back on the road to health and knew we were going to need every ounce of energy we could muster to make this drive. Well, imagine our excitement when we made it all the way to South Carolina, Birmingham, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Dublin (TX), Decatur (TX) and then back to Mineral Wells(TX) without a sniffle or cough! Yippee! The first half of the trip was a success. :D I guess my feeble mind was thinking that if we made it to Christmas that we would be in the clear.
Nope.
Despite all of our efforts to repeatedly wash our hands and feverishly clean with Clorox wipes, we still managed to pick up my little nephew's cold. And, like a multiplying white elephant gift, we managed to pass it along to Robby's mom on our way back through South Carolina. I apologize to anyone else along the way who may also have been the recipient of this lovely case. We tried to cut down our visits with folks after we realized we were sick but some people were unfortunately exposed.
Theory number three:
4,490 miles and NO RADIO. Yes, you read that right. No radio. Or CD. Or DVD.
Just....
the bouncy and delightful sounds of Emma's pull toys for TWO FULL WEEKS AND 4,490 MILES!

Take a close look at the stuffed toys behind Emma's head in this picture. When they are positioned in front of her she is able to pull on the little doohicky and it will play a song. There are only four different tunes and, after so many repetitions, each one will

HAUNT.

YOUR.

DREAMS.

......hmmmmmm. Perhaps I did speak a little too soon in saying things were getting back to normal. I think I will take those extra few days please.

The answer is....

...Because she can!

Now that's what I call multi-tasking. Toes in the nose AND the mouth! Talk about talent. This girl has it in spades.

And here are the six month Bernie photos:

At her six month appointment, Emma weighed 17 and a half pounds and was 27 and a half inches. She's back on the charts now. She's in the 95% for height, 80% for weight, and 75% for head circumference. The doctor says she's healthy and that makes me happy.

No Place Like Home

Emma's first Christmas was as much a blur to us as it was, I'm sure, to her. This holiday season, our little family put in over 4490 miles in just 16 days. There were only three days- including Christmas Day- that we weren't on the road. Ridiculous. I know.
Why would anyone do such a thing, you ask? Good question. The answer is...we're crazy!

Obviously.

Actually, we needed to pick up the piano my Grandmother left to me and Grandpa's rocking chair. We pulled a trailer all the way to Texas for those two things and ended up coming back to Virginia with the thing filled to the roof with stuff!

What in the world? Where did all of this junk come from? What am I going to do with it?
I have no idea. But I'm sure I'll be glad I have it once the shock wears off. I don't even know what is in half of these old boxes. I'm sure there are lots of really bad pictures of me with some really bad hair. Probably lots of doodles and old love notes and other things that occupied my teenaged brain once upon a time. I'm seriously frightened to go digging into all of that dusty stuff.
And it's not all from my mom's place either. We picked up quite a bit of stuff in South Carolina as well. Robby had boxes and added a grandmother's rocking chair of his own to the collection... and a keyboard too.

So......2009 is sure to be a "rocking" year for us all. (I'm sorry. I knew that last line was lame before I even typed it. and I typed it anyway. I blame television... and road weariness. Fatigue is a major contributing factor in this accident.).

Here are a few photos from our journey. Maybe a few adorable pics of Emma will cleanse your palate after that bad pun:

This last picture cracks me up. There they were, the men lined up, each with their own little clone sitting in their laps. Too cute.

Overall, I'm glad we made the trip. It was long and arduous. I'm tired. Sooooo tired. We're all still worn out and feeling sickly (We all got matching colds for Christmas). It will take a while for us to recover. But, we've got a lot of memories now that we've brought back that, like the extra weight I've put on over the holidays, will stay with us for a very long time.