Eleven Months!

Wow, it's hard to believe that this is the last month before Emma turns one year old! We can't wait to celebrate her first birthday with our family and friends!

A couple of weeks this month were pretty tough for our family.  My Uncle David passed away unexpectedly, and we flew to Texas to attend his memorial service.  It was wonderful to see so many of our relatives there, although the circumstances were sad.  We will miss him terribly, yet we are joyful to know that he trusted in Jesus for his salvation and is rejoicing in heaven!  After that exhausting weekend of travel, we were looking forward to relaxing the following weekend.  Unfortunately, Emma caught Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease and was miserable the next weekend with a fever and painful sores in her mouth.  I had never heard of HF&M before she caught it - it's not serious, but it's a highly contagious virus that there is no medical treatment for, kind of like the common cold.  We gave her Infant Tylenol for her fever and the pain, and then quarantined ourselves from other kids and waited for it to run its course.  She felt pretty bad for two days then seemed to improve steadily.  We got up with her at night when she woke up crying to give her Tylenol and soothe her back to sleep - then had to go back to sleep training boot camp to help her adjust to sleeping through the night again.  All in all, it was a tiring and emotional two weeks for all of us.

Of course we've had good times this month, too.  We loved getting to spend some unexpected time with my family in Texas! Since Emma was the only small baby at the funeral, she made quite a hit and was spoiled with lots of attention.  Right after she got over HF&M, we attended Emma's best friend, Ellie's, first birthday party.  They are only 5 weeks apart in age, so Ellie gives us a good preview of what's around the corner for Emma.  Sue and her daughters Jackie and Stacy (Ellie's mom) took the girls to the zoo for the first time this month.  And Dan, Emma, and I attended the Christian Youth Theater's production of "Shrek, The Musical" which some of Dan's students performed in.  It was really well-done!

Emma has gotten more spunky in the past couple of months! Here are a few facts about her at 11 months old:

• She has FIVE teeth now! Two on top and three on the bottom, and she has learned how to use them. She tries to take a bite out of almost everything she can get her hands on.  We've had to stop giving her things to play with in her car seat that are even remotely edible. 
• It feels sort of like having a puppy, since she follows us from room to room, stopping to eat small objects off the floor along the way. She also carries toys in her mouth while she crawls, which is really funny.
• She is suddenly averse to having her diaper changed, which makes the event more exciting than we'd like it to be. It starts out playful, but almost always ends up with sweat (us) and tears (her) when we resort to pinning her down so we can change her. I'm pretty sure this is a prime example of us not setting appropriate boundaries, but it just started a couple of weeks ago, so we haven't come up with a game plan yet. 
• Her diapers have been leaking recently. It could be that she's outgrown them. It's more likely that they are always askew and can't offer full protection since we have exactly six seconds to change her one-handed while she angrily performs a scissors hold on our forearm.
• She's close to shaking off her second nap of the day.  She'll still take a long (1.5 - 2 hour) nap in the late morning, and then she'll often catch an afternoon cat nap in the car while we're running errands. But if we try to put her down for an afternoon nap in her crib, it usually doesn't happen.
• She is having a blast with crawling! Her very favorite thing is exploring the entire house. She never, ever crawls into her own room, though, because that's where naps and diaper changes happen. She doesn't want to give us any ideas. 
• Some of the fun things she's discovered are the pots and pans in the kitchen, the legs of the kitchen table and chairs, and our bookshelves, which clearly need to be emptied on a regular basis. She hasn't gotten into too much danger yet, although we occasionally have to pull an appliance cord out of her mouth and watch her carefully when we let her play on the bed since she has no appreciation for the morale of the "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" story. Dan's barely caught her a couple of times by one foot after she dove headfirst off the side!
• Sleep has been hit-or-miss since she got sick.  She usually still sleeps through the night, but we have had rough nights/early mornings. That's when our video monitor is priceless, because I can see what she's doing and reassure myself that she's okay if we decide to wait it out and let her get back to sleep on her own.
• When she was sick and wanted us to get her out of bed in the middle of the night, she'd scream at the top of her lungs. She hasn't been a screamer, well, ever. So the first night we went racing into her room, ready to slay a ferocious beast.  That worked well for her, and she expected her screams to result in prompt service every night going forward.  But we put our foot (feet) down on that behavior quickly and it hasn't become the norm so far. 
• She understands and responds appropriately to several phrases: "Hi" and "Bye Bye" (she'll wave and sometimes say "bah bah"), "Outside" (points to the door), "Yay!" and "Pat-a-Cake" (claps her hands), "Brush" (we use this for both her toothbrush and her hair brush, so she sometimes brushes her hair with her toothbrush), "More" (it looks like clapping instead of the sign for "more," but we get it), "You do it!" (when we want her to hold her own bottle/spoon/book), "Up?" (she flaps her arms like a bird when she wants us to pick her up)
• She loves books and photographs. She could look at the photos around our house all day long.
• Since she and Dan get home earlier from work than I do, they've started taking walks around the neighborhood. They've met more neighbors (and their dogs) in the past few weeks than Dan and I have in the last 8 years we've been living here!

Here are some pictures from this month.

My Uncle David, whose life we celebrated at his memorial service

The Campbell Family - my dad's side of the family. 

Emma and my mom, looking pretty. I see a lot of my mom's features in Emma.

She is checking out Uncle Paul's teeth. She went through a phase where she wanted to put her hands in peoples' mouths and touch their teeth. Now she has her own teeth to play with.

It was great to spend time with my family that weekend!

One of the main symptoms of Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease is that babies develop blisters around their mouth, hands, and feet. You can see the faint red marks from the blister under her mouth and on her nostril.

My parents had a couple of mirrors sitting on the floor at their house, and Emma LOVED playing in front of them! So when we got home, Dan took a full-length mirror and hung it at her level in our dining room.  Such a fun and inexpensive source of entertainment!

She loves pointing out everyone on the canvas portrait my parents bought us for Christmas (and the other pictures around the house).

We went to Anaheim one afternoon and stopped by Hockey Giant, which is like Dan's candy shop.  Emma got a kick out of all the hockey gear, too.

Emma and I shopped at Downtown Disney while Dan went to a competition to support his students at the Anaheim Convention Center.

She isn't pulling up or walking yet, but she can stand steadily when she's propped!

She doesn't quite get the concept of Ellie's walker, though. 

Emma helped test out Ellie's new toys at her birthday party. That's what friends are for!

We all jumped around Ellie's birthday bounce house

Emma picks Ellie as her very best friend. Heh!

The girls got to visit the San Diego Zoo for the first time

Back at home, there were more adventures to be had under the kitchen table

"How do you feel?" Oscar asks. "Hungry," replies Emma.

She will eat books, paper, leaves, and unidentified objects on the floor, but she is still a solid food Nazi most of the time.

The only way to see all five of those pearly whites is to tickle her. It's a tough job, but Dan was up for the challenge!

Dan and Emma are enjoying the extra hour of daylight so they can make friends around the neighborhood after work

This little 11 month old brings so much fun and joy to our lives!

Ten Months!

Our month has been highlighted with special time with good friends. Our friends from Colorado, Molly and Jeremy, visited San Diego with their youngest son, Luke, for a conference.  They stayed at a hotel just a few miles from our house so we had them over for dinner one night and Emma and I met Molly and Luke for a walk on the beach the next morning.  It was a quick visit, but wonderful to see them so soon after we visited them in Colorado for Thanksgiving! 

Dan plays roller hockey every Wednesday night and when his game time is in the early evening, Emma and I will go cheer him on.  A friend from church, Filipe, plays on Dan’s team, so we get to watch the game with his wife, Jerrica, and their sons, Trevor and Zack.  Once a month, our church has a mom + kids get-together, and Emma and I got to attend for the first time on Valentine's Day.  We had a blast!

On a sadder note, one of Dan’s former students passed away after being in a serious car accident. He was 21 years old and training to join the Navy Seals, but Dan knew him best when he taught his 8th grade class eight years ago. We attended the funeral, where Dan reconnected with many from his 8th grade class from that year, as well as former co-workers, students, and families he hadn’t seen in years.

We spent our gift cards and money from Christmas and my birthday to buy a video baby monitor, and it was the best possible gift!  Emma used to fall asleep in our arms during her last bottle feeding and would stay asleep when we put her in the crib. But lately she wakes up when we lay her down and we have to let her cry for a bit and soothe herself to sleep.  She's fine, but it’s nice to be able to keep an eye on her for my own peace of mind.  If we hear her in the early hours of the morning, I can tell at a glance if she’s really awake or just resettling, so I don’t go in her room if there’s a chance she’ll go back to sleep.  If this monitor lasts a while, it’ll be priceless when she’s a toddler and gets out of bed when she’s not supposed to!

This month, Emma made giant leaps in development! Within a few week's time, she had mastered several new skills.  Here are some fun facts about her at 10 months old:

• The biggest news is that she’s crawling!  Last month, she would lunge for objects and get stuck on her belly, which she didn’t like at all. But once she discovered how to push herself from her stomach back into a sitting position, she felt much more comfortable about attempting to crawl.  She watched her best friend, Ellie, crawl and pull up every day she was at Sue’s house. Once she had the general idea, it only took a few days for her to take off! She is having so much fun exploring the house and drawing our attention to all the baby hazards and dirty spots. :)
• A couple of days before she got the hang of crawling, she learned how to scoot around on her bottom.  She still does it sometimes when crawling seems like too much effort, and it's really funny.  She'll either bounce on her bottom, inching her way toward the thing she wants, or she'll extend her legs, get a grip on the floor with her feet, and bend her knees to drag her body along while sitting upright.
• This month, she's been sleeping through the night every night from about 8 pm to 6 am!  Hallelujah!  There was only one night when she was awake with teething pain for two hours, and after trying unsuccessfully to soothe her, we gave her some Infant Tylenol which put her right to sleep again. 
• Sure enough, the next morning we noticed a brand new bottom tooth! It was her third tooth on the bottom. About a week later, I was changing her diaper and was stunned to get a glimpse of her first top tooth that snuck up on us! We're thankful that teething isn't always painful for her.
• She's slowly becoming more receptive to eating solid food.  I think her appetite has increased since she started crawling. We bought some baby food "pouches" that have a straw-like opening that she can eat directly out of. I've sampled each flavor we've given her, and they are all really tasty! They're supposed to have 1-2 servings per pouch, but it still takes her 3-4 days to finish one off. We'll alternate between feeding her directly from the pouch and with a spoon to keep her interested long enough to take a few extra bites.  
• She learned to clap a couple of weeks ago, too. Since we say "Yaaaay!" when we clap for her, she almost always says "Ahhhh!" while she's clapping. It's super cute. :) 
• We went ahead and lowered her crib as a precaution since she's determined to pull up.  She's hardly ever successful at this point, but she makes several attempts each day.  

Here are some pictures from the past month:

Our friends from Colorado, Jeremy, Molly, and their baby boy, Luke.

The girls

We babysat our good friends' daughter, Olivia, one evening and took the girls to play at our neighborhood park.

Dan and Olivia read books while Emma chewed on hers

Dan's former CCA students reunited at his former student's funeral

Emma playing with some of the girls at our church's mom & kid get-together. There were about a dozen kids there, so she had a blast and was ready for nap time afterwards!

Me and my little sweetheart on Valentine's Day

Emma and Dan exchanged Valentines. 

Her first Valentine's Day card :)

This is my view on our new monitor first thing in the morning. If she's sitting up, it's time to get her out of the crib.

Dan's school assistant, Marianna, went to lunch with us one day and I got a picture of her feeding Emma from a baby food pouch.

Mmmm! Delicious! 

I helped her pull up to look out the window, but as often as she's practicing, it won't be long before she's doing it on her own.

Her babysitter, Sue, bought her a walker. So far she can only go backwards in it, but she enjoys playing in it.

One of her new "tricks" - clapping and saying "ahhhhh!"

She still loves reading all her books

She gets really excited every time we go in the kitchen because she gets to say hi to the kids on our friends' Christmas cards. They might stay on the fridge all year because she gets such a kick out of seeing them.

A little preview of Emma and her best friend, Ellie, in their teenage years!

 Sue has two dogs, and Emma LOVES them! When we take her on walks, the highlight is seeing dogs out for a walk in the neighborhood.

She's been riding normally in the stroller more often (instead of in her car seat on top of the stroller). It's much lighter to push when I'm running and she can see the neighborhood dogs better this way. It's a win-win.

We both love picking Dan up for lunch at least once a week

Since she's learned to crawl, she's discovered that our house is full of fascinating treasures. Like tennis shoes.

 And piles of magazines that clearly need to be organized, Emma-style.

She's also learning some of the hazards, like banging her head on table edges and getting stuck between the couches because her diaper butt is too big to fit through.

She still doesn't have much hair, but it's thickening fast enough that we may not get to see that pretty swirl on the back of her head for too much longer.

She's officially outgrown her diaper changing pad, since she was consistently trying to roll off it during diaper changes. We decided it's flirting with disaster to have one hand holding a dirty diaper, leaving one free hand to save the naked baby from plummeting to the floor. So now we change her on a broader surface like the bed or floor, just in case she rolls. This picture was the last time Dan changed her on the pad, only because she was fascinated enough with her balloon that she laid still. 

Our little girl is growing up way too fast! We're in awe of how quickly she changes in one month's time, but we're enjoying each stage as it comes.

Nine Months!

My, my, my. Someone did a lot of growing this month!  Darn those Christmas cookies!! Ha ha, actually Dan and I managed to keep the holiday weight gain to a minimum, but somehow Emma blew past an entire clothing size before we noticed how much she was stretching out her 6 month clothes.  I figured it was time to bump up to 9-month sizes and bought a few items just to get us through Christmas, although I noticed she didn't have much wiggle room in them. Then she received new and used 12-month clothes as gifts, and they fit her perfectly at 8 1/2 months old! It'll be interesting to see where she is on the growth chart at her next doctor's appointment.

She's so strong, too! I tell people that it feels like wrestling a little bear when you're trying to keep her still for a diaper change or nap time and she wants to wiggle away.  And when she's really flailing, she can cause some serious injuries!  She was excitedly pumping her arms while Dan was holding her about a week ago, and managed to jab him in the eye hard enough to really hurt him!  He had to keep the injured eye closed most of the day for it to recover, and it took 3 days for his vision to return to normal.  Poor guy!

Emma caught a cold during Christmastime and it lingered for a solid two weeks.  Half the Jester family in Virginia seemed to have colds, too, so she learned how to "fake cough" since everyone was coughing constantly and she thought it sounded funny. One of her favorite games is reaching in peoples' mouths and touching their teeth, so one of us was bound to catch her cold (the lucky winner was Dan). Many, many boogie wipes and Kleenex later, everyone is healthy and feeling good again.

Dan's school was on break an extra week after we got home from our holiday travels so he and Emma hung out every day and picked me up for lunch on the days I worked. Thankfully, I'm back to working three days a week, so I had a couple of days off, too. One was dedicated to celebrating my birthday! Dan and I dropped Emma off at Sue's house on Friday and spent the day seeing two awesome movies ("Saving Mr. Banks" and "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire").  We met our friends Paul and Ann for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, too. My actual birthday was on a Saturday, and Dan and Emma bought me flowers and cards and we just enjoyed the day together - talking to our families, running errands, getting our cars washed, and eating ice cream as we walked on the beach. The whole weekend was perfect. I am one blessed girl!

It's getting more and more fun to share experiences with Emma now that she's really noticing her surroundings and other people.  Some fun facts about her at 9 months old are:

• Two of her new favorite past times are pointing at everything and waving at everyone! It's a really cute stage, especially as she discovers the effect she has on others. When we're able to, Dan and I will walk her over to the object she's pointing at so we can explain what it is while she touches it (and tries to put it in her mouth). And she made friends literally all over the country as she waved her way through the airports at Christmastime.  
• She's suddenly very interested in feeling her two bottom teeth all the time. If her hand isn't in her mouth, her tongue is poking around her mouth to make sure they're still there.
• She is still really friendly and doesn't mind letting a perfect stranger hold her. She gets the most excited about meeting kids and dogs, though.
• She is rolling and scooting a little more but still hasn't mastered crawling, so she uses those strong hands and arms to try to pull herself toward her goal. That's fine until she uses my hair or face or the front of my shirt to claw her way towards something.
• For one week she said "Mama" non-stop, and I'm glad I caught it on video since she hasn't said it since!
• She's still not showing much interest in eating solid foods. She likes oh-shaped cereal and will eat at least a couple of those when I offer them.  I'm learning that food consistency is a big deal to her. When I blend foods at home, they are still rather gritty or chunky, and she's not interested after a bite or two. We've had more success with smooth foods like mashed bananas, yogurt, and baby food from the store. When I'm eating a piece of fruit, I'll let her taste it and she seems to enjoy the flavors.   
• She is sleeping through the night 90% of the time now!  Sometime during Christmas, she began rolling onto her belly to sleep, and I think it's made a big difference.  She generally sleeps from 8:00 p.m. - 6:00 a.m., and it's wonderful! I don't know how restful her sleep is, since every time I check on her, she has scooted to a different corner of the bed. But she stays asleep or soothes herself back to sleep without assistance almost all the time now.
• She's weaning herself off her third nap most days.  As long as she's had two decent naps, she can get through the evening with just a short cat nap in the car or none at all.
• Another milestone we're noticing is that her play is slowly evolving from putting everything in her mouth to actually manipulating objects with her hands.  She is really interested in books, and loves to point at the pictures and turn the pages. The book usually does end up in her mouth, too, but she spends much more time looking at it than gnawing on it.

Emma and her best friend Ellie in their pretty Christmas dresses.  They didn't see each other for two weeks while we were out of town, and acted very excited to be reunited again!

Our strong girl balancing on cousin Brad's hand at Christmastime. His arm was moving all over the place while he kept her balanced, but she chewed on a toy and acted like it was no big deal.

"When in Texas..." Trying on a cowgirl hat for size. She didn't like it (to Dan's great relief!) :)

That tongue has been out of her mouth and feeling her teeth constantly this month. So 75% of her photos look like this.

It's so much fun to point at everything! Her friend Ellie points at everything/one with her middle finger, so it could be worse...

Pumping those arms in excitement!

The two pictures of Emma above contributed to a pretty gnarly injury when her excited hand collided with Dan's eye! We fashioned this lovely patch to help him keep it closed all day since it was painful to open it. It was a Sunday, so he laid on the couch and watched football with his good eye to pass the time. His vision was blurry for a couple more days, but he's back to normal now.

We've tried giving her various fruits and vegetables as finger foods, hoping that she would chew on them and discover she liked them. No luck so far! She dissects them on the table (like this poor broccoli sprout), but spits them out if they get in her mouth. Oh well, at least she's entertained! 

But she loves tasting new foods. Dan was grossed out that she kept going back to taste this pickle again. That's my girl! :)

The magical sleep position: Belly down, hands tucked underneath, booty in the air

Turning the pages of a book and pointing at all the pictures

Emma experienced "real" weather in Virginia during Christmas week. She was fascinated by the rain!

Bundled up for a walk in the cold outdoors

She had lots of kitchen sink baths while we were visiting family

Sporting her new ladybug bath towel from Uncle Tim and Aunt Dawn!

We went to one of Dan's Wednesday night roller hockey games.

She's seen him play before, but this was the first time she stayed awake and recognized him in his gear!

We attended a baby shower for our friends, Kat and Burton, who are expecting twins! New playmates for Emma coming soon!

My Honda CR-V gave me a birthday gift by making it to 250,000 miles! We need to get new tires for it soon, so now we're shooting for 300,000! :)

Enjoying the Southern California sunshine on my birthday with a family walk on the beach

This girl has had so many new experiences recently! She is growing up before our eyes and stealing our hearts a little more each month!