12.27.2010

A North Carolina Christmas

Whew!  I guess Christmas is in the books for another year!  We had so much fun celebrating with our families and watching what a magical time it is for Emmy Cate.  I know it will get better and better each year as she understands the holiday and her excitement level grows for Santa to visit. 

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In the few days leading up to the holiday, we spent much of our time playing with Macy and Makayla.  The girls had their first sleepover at their Aunt Mandy’s and Uncle Gary’s house and I think they thought that was pretty cool (at least their parents did!)  It worked out pretty well for them to all bunk up together, but there certainly was a lot of talking and not as much sleeping!  They did great though and woke up in giggles the next morning.  The parents were lucky enough to enjoy a night on the town thanks to their grandparents for keeping the three little monkeys.  The thoughts of waking up to three little tornados in the morning definitely cuts down on the nighttime shenanigans!!

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We celebrated Christmas on the eve of Christmas Eve since we would be leaving out on Christmas Eve night.  The girls got dressed up, we ate a big fried chicken dinner (courtesy of Mamaw), and opened WAY too many gifts!  Emmy Cate got a playhouse for the backyard, plenty of Elmo toys, a Jojo hide and seek game, tons of clothes, her very own “kapooter”, a Mickey Mouse guitar, and even a bible as she astutely pointed out to me before I had half of the paper torn off!!

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The girls had a blast running around with all of their new toys, playing in a pop-up tent with tunnels and balls, and horsing on the ground with Papaw! 

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The next night, we headed to the annual Christmas Eve get together with the Smith Family at Eunice’s house.  I think Emmy Cate must have made the loop of the house at a full speed run 100 times!!  Jumping up and down over the step out to the sunroom was also a favorite activity.  Seems like just yesterday that we had her in the walker zooming around the floor! 

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We attempted a picture of the girls on the same spot on the couch as last year, but as one would imagine, it was impossible to get them all to sit still in one spot.  This was the best we ended up getting:

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…. compared to these little tykes from last year …. what a difference a year makes!!

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12.25.2010

Discovery Place Kids

We headed up to North Carolina to visit Nathan’s family this past week.  We were all excited to get the cousins together and let them play now that they are a great age for interacting.  The first morning we were there we took them to Discovery Place Kids, a new children’s museum and learning center that is brand new.  It was such a great place!  They had so much for the kids to see and do so we barely made it to half of the stuff!  There was a play cafe, grocery store, doctor’s office with an ambulance, a firetruck, airplane, nascar car, a huge climbing structure, a puppet stage, craft area, sports area, a water play area, and much, much more!!

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The girls had a blast, but I think their favorite part was holding hands on the way out!  They are such sweethearts together!!!

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Some other girl tried to edge EC out of driving the ambulance and she wasn’t very pleased!  She looks like such a big girl in this picture!!

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The girls also had their first sleepover together and they had SO MUCH FUN!!  More on that later …

12.22.2010

Mt. Pisgah Donuts with Santa

We visited Emmy Cate’s school a couple of weeks ago to have donuts with santa.  After her first performance with the famous Santa at Phipps, we figured we’d try another shot at getting a good picture.  Take 1 with Santa at Phipps:

santa cropped Unfortunately, the second try went over about as well as the first.  She just didn’t like the fat guy in red!

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So I even tried joining her on Santa’s lap and she STILL was not having any of it!!

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So we gave up on getting a good shot and moved on to the other fun crafts and activities!  A nice clown made us her favorite {balloon} animal – a puppy! 

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We had a good time, but her Papaw would have had an even better time – all they served were Krispy Kreme donuts and chocolate milk!  For 3 people without a sweet tooth, it was a lot of sugar!!

12.10.2010

The Pink Pig

Let me just say that I think we are all in agreement that I am overwhelmingly behind in posting!!  Work has been unbelievably busy but has resulted in great things, so I can’t complain too much.  So weeks ago ….

We ventured out to a famous Atlanta tradition, the Pink Pig at Macy’s at Lenox.  Emmy Cate had a great time, loved every minute of the ride, and SCREAMED when it was time to leave and she realized she wasn’t going to ride again!

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She was in a major saying “hello” phase at the time, so it was “Hello Pink Pig” over and over again! 

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11.27.2010

Gobble, Gobble

We have had a great Turkey Day celebrating with family in Germantown.  We flew over on Wednesday morning and we had a GREAT trip.  Traffic wasn’t bad, lines weren’t long, and Emmy Cate did so well during the flight.  She loved looking at all of the “airpanes” and watching the ground recede as we took off.  It definitely didn’t hurt that we were in first class and had plenty of room and a row to ourselves.  Her ears bothered her as we descended but we convinced her that drinking a little water would help and it did! 

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When we got to DeDe and Pro’s house, Emmy Cate had an entire basket of toys waiting for her to play with!  She loved the shape sorter and the little fishing poles and “fishies”!!

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Pro is in charge of the turkey every year so here he is carving up the bird!  We had a great meal thanks to DeDe, Pro and Mamaw.  Great Aunt Sally came in from DC, Uncle Ben came in from Texas, and Great Uncle Glen came over as well.

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Happy Thanksgiving!!

 

11.18.2010

18 Months

Emmy Cate had her 18 month check up yesterday and of course everything went splendidly!  She got 3 shots, cried for a sec then sat up and promptly told the nurse “bye bye”!  She wanted the bad lady with the needles to disappear!!  A quick rundown on her stats:

Height – 34.5” (>97%)

Weight – 25 lbs, 10 oz (50-75%)

Head circumference – 50-75% there too, don’t remember the exact number

What she is up to:

She wears 24 mos/2T clothes, size 6 shoes, size 5 diapers.  Her favorite foods are: cheese, eggs, hot dogs, rice cakes, ketchup (not really a food but in her mind it is!), chicken, cereal and yogurt.  Let it be documented that the only vegetable she will even touch is a potato and that’s not even very often!

Words: Wow, I mean can the girl talk!  It’s amazing how many words she has learned over the last 3 months.  She can probably say close to 100, which the doc said was well advanced and closer to a 2 year old vocabulary.  She can say many, many animals, all normal colors, all of her playmates names, plenty of body parts, most all articles of clothing, and plenty of forms of transportation.  She has starting putting words together like “all done” , “no more”, “bye bye ______ (insert every word under the sun)” etc.

Concepts: She understands hot/cold, on/off, up/down, and she knows the possessive of things like “mine” or “daddy’s shoes”, “mommy’s wa – wa” {and yes, that red grape juice is wa-wa, thank you very much}, etc. 

There’s really too much to even put down on in a single post.  Over the last couple of months, she has just been a complete ham and we have had the best time just soaking up every minute with her.

EC school pic {Her latest school pic … cheesy fake background and “proof” stamp and all!!!}

11.14.2010

Birthday Party Circuit

Lately, we’ve hit birthday party after birthday party.  And in between, we have filled in with fun birthday-like activities such as indoor bouncehouses and playgrounds.  Here are random pics from what we’ve been up to:

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Birthday party for a cute 4 year old friend of ours!  They had plenty of friends join them for a Halloween-themed party.  Emmy Cate loved the Dora the Explorer bouncehouse and slide and was not happy when all of the “big kids” got in and she had to leave to avoid the eventual constant head bumping that ensues when you get about 15 4-and-under little kids in a bouncehouse!!

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The next weekend, we went to a party for a 1 year old little friend who also had a bouncehouse!  It was a chilly weekend and we quickly headed inside to warm up after a few minutes bouncing.DSC_0924Since our previous day’s bouncing was cut short by the weather, we went to a new indoor playground that opened up called Catch Air and it was really fun!  Emmy Cate was not intimidated by anything and was not about to be contained to the 4 and under area.  Instead, she insisted on climbing on the main play structure with the big kids, which meant a lot of climbing and chasing by us!!  Whew, were we worn out at the end!!  She really loves slides and they did not disappoint!!  They had 4 different bouncehouses with slides, and the play structure had a long 20’ slide. 

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EC ball pit

11.06.2010

Trick or Treat …. a week later

Since Halloween was a week ago I thought I should combine the rest of my Halloween related posts together, otherwise it will be Thanksgiving before I get them all done!!

The weekend before the big day, we took advantage of a beautiful Sunday afternoon and carved EC’s very first pumpkin!  We had pumpkins last year but never really got around to carving them.  It didn’t exactly seem like something a 5 month old would enjoy!  This time around, EC was really into it, mainly the “guts”!!

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EC Mommy carving  {Don’t mind the dead plant or the fountain that needs to get hung on the wall ….}

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Finished product!!

 

All Hallow’s Eve …..

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The neighborhood thing to do is trick-r-treating in golf carts.  We loaded up and cruised around a few streets and let EC visited some of our neighbors’ houses.

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Our neighbors a couple of houses down had a very cool Haunted House  that drew quite the crowd from the neighborhood.  These kids spent over a month setting up and planning this thing out!  It was actually really very neat and impressive that a couple of 14 year olds organized the whole thing!!  The theme was “No Mercy Emergency Hospital”!  We can’t wait to see how they can top it next year!

Nathan had also purchased a costume for Halloween … the scariest costume of all!!  My dad wore it around most of the night!

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Here is what it looked like on our street …. a constant parade of golf carts loading and unloading kids!  Emmy Cate was in awe of all of the crazy costumes and the total chaos!!  We had a blast and can’t wait until next year when EC will understand what is going on a little better! 

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