Let the summer begin!

All the cabinets in the house have become pretty much free-for-all play areas. Sigh! But when I have to get dinner done, anything works to keep the kids happy and entertained. Emerson also loves taking all of the silverware out of the dishwasher and putting it either on the dishwasher's top rack or bottom area, where the drain is. Then he closes all the silverware compartment's lids and shuts the dishwasher door. I guess that's what order in the dishwasher seems to be like to a 15-month old!

Bath time giggles with Papa:

Our newest Craigslist purchase. This will be perfect for summertime adventures in the backyard. Emerson has not mastered the climb up the stairs to get to the top, and it's a good thing. His head has enough bruises as it is without this.

We made it out to the splash pad and officially opened the outside water-play season!

This is all new and exciting to Emerson. He was so excited the whole time!

Here are his squeals of excitement:

Ophelia got too cold towards the end:

Mother's Day is the best, most wonderful, relaxing, awesome holidays of the whole year! PJ let me have the whole day off my full-time mothering job! So I went to workout at the rec center in the morning, did a little shopping, (then we had to interrupt my day because of a new car purchase, which is a pretty sweet Mother's day present), then I got to go out with a friend and have a pedicure followed by an ice cream cone. It was heavenly! A much needed break. I came home to find one very tired Papa:

Thank you, love, for letting me relax and taking on the tough job for the day! This was the best present ever! I love you!

Another sunny day in Oatmeal. Hanging out with the cuzz:

Here is our sweet little girl and her colorful artwork. She loves to incorporate as much different colors as possible whenever she is drawing or coloring or painting. I love it!

It was Ophelia's bestie's birthday and we got to go to the splash pad again, this time to celebrate Lois's 5th Birthday.

Mmmm, cake time!

The summer in Texas has officially begun! Woo-hoo!

Get Your Sparkle On!

We've been getting ready for Ophelia's second big performance since January and here is our little star. LOTS of improvements since the last time: no nose picking, skirt raising, or even running off stage. She did so amazingly well! I don't know if every Mom goes through that, but I start crying at the beginning of each of her performances...is it anxiety or excitement to see your child on stage? Or just pure joy because they're so stinkin' cute or sadness because my little girl is growing up way too fast?



Pictures from the gig:

Counting the flags above the audience

The star

Aryan race

Kisses for the fans

It's super fun to see Ophelia perform, but we're thinking of trying something different next year. When I told her the choice is between singer's company, music classes, or gymnastics, she said she wants to do gymnastics. We'll miss Ms. Janell and Singer's Company, but it will be good for us to move on!

A Day in the Life of Ophelia!

Two years ago all of my posts were pretty much only about Ophelia, now she does not even remember what life was like when we did not have Emerson... and neither do I! Here are some snapshots of what a typical day for Ophelia may be like.

The Butterfly Garden definitely deserves a post of their own, because there are just so many good things to tell about them. Ophelia loves going to that preschool! She loves her teachers and her friends. She is learning so much about the environment around us, nature, animals, insects, plants, gardening, and a whole bunch of other things. Here is a picture of her arriving at school in the morning:

Here is one of our trips to the library. All of the librarians know Ophelia by name. She loves story time, puppet shows, game days, or simply going to the children's area and chatting with the librarians while we get books. She loves books. One of her favorite daily activities is reading books with one of us right before bedtime. She is so keen on story lines and pictures, often asking why this or that happened in the store. This is a statue right in front of the library. We call it "The Family Home Evening Statue". Ophelia likes to sit in on their FHE :)

One day a week Ophelia goes to her friend's Carlie's house and on another day she comes over to our home. The girls love hanging out together. We usually do a craft and have a snack. When they don't bicker or interrupt each other, they have some pretty cute conversations about their favorite things and activities.

The other day I was unhappy with her because she woke her brother up from his nap. It was Sunday after church, and we all usually take naps then. She woke up first, and got me and PJ up, then, while PJ and I were hanging out in the kitchen, she disappeared. When I went to her room to check on her, it turned out she was actually in Emerson's room, in his crib. They both the giggling and having a great time! I told her that she needs to always first check with me before she goes into his room when he was sleeping...which she does normally anyways. I guess she just missed her little buddy too much!

They seem so cute to me when they quietly sit like this, watching Signing Time:

I love how cuddly Ophelia is with her little brother. She always has a hug and a kiss for him. After bathtime, when Ophelia lays down on the floor wrapped in her towel, Emerson always comes and lays his head on her chest to snuggle for a while. Her is Ophelia tickling Em:

Every Monday is usually a very busy day for Ophelia. She goes to school in the morning and then in the afternoon, she has her Singer's Company class. She always looks forward to her class. Her teacher, Ms. Janell, is so amazing with these girls, so patient, energetic, loving, and kind. Ophelia loves her!

Ophelia's imagination is amazing! It probably is the same with every child, but I only have daily exposure to my children, so that makes my view pretty limited. But she comes up with some funny things sometimes. Here she made PJ and Emerson sit on top of blankets right behind her, because they were all riding in a car and she was the driver:

We love our sweet little girl! She is to dainty and petite. Compared to her peers, she is definitely the smallest. She eats like a bird, apart from an occasional day when I am amazed that she ate all of her food on her plate. I try to let her listen to her body and when she says she is done and full, I let her leave the table. But then her body is always ready to have dessert no matter how full she is! She is not a tiny bit shy and has no issues talking to people she's never met before (which I realize may not be so good in certain situations). She loves to help me in whatever housework I am doing, especially when it involved cooking.

Here are some hilarious Ophelia-isms of late...we bathe the kids together these days. They love it, it saves on water and is just faster. Of course, Emerson's "privates" are very interesting to Ophelia...
*The other day at bath, after looking at Emerson's boy parts for a while, she blurts out: "I like his privates!"
*On another bath time occasion, she said this about Emerson's boyhood: "I think he is going to have a butterfly come out his privates!" .... Haven't you ever noticed that boy parts look like cocoons?... Neither did I!

To finish this O-post, here is the teapot song from Ophelia:

A Day in the Life of Emerson

I have been trying to take snapshots of Emerson's daily activities, so I could make this blog post. At this point in my life the stuff that he does seems routine, but I image looking back at this in five or ten years and remembering all these cute things with tears of love and joy in my eyes! So, here we go...

Emerson's To Do List

Go through Emerson's and Ophelia's shoes.

At least once a day, Emerson goes up to the shoe bench and checks out the shoes. Mine and PJ's are not nearly as exciting as his and his sister's. As he finds his shoes, he says in a high-pitched voice "choe!" at least half a dozen times. Then tries to put them on. Sometimes brings them to me.

"Read" books.
This little bookshelf that we got with our Craigslist couch is one of his favorite spots to be by. The books on that shelf come off of it every time he happens to pass by, which is every ten minutes or so. This leaves me cleaning these books up about 100 times a day, or so it seems! The books scattered on the floor tend to be a hazard to this newly-walking man and he slips and falls on them regularly. Good thing he has lots of padding on his back end! He has a few of his favorite books that he brings to me, wherever I may be in the house, so that we can read it together. Sometimes he just sits there and flips through book pages all on his own. Other times he pushes books down between the book shelf and the wall behind it.

Watch "Singing Time".
He loves Singing Time! And I love watching it with him, because he usually sits still on my lap, so I can cuddle/hug him, play with his hair, smell him (is that weird? I love the way he smells! He still has that "baby smell" to him), and massage his little feet.

Do naughty things (when Mama is not looking).
Now that he walks so well and toddles all over the house, things go missing pretty regularly. Dry-erase markers from his big sister's room end up everywhere and pretty easy to spot on the floor. But it gets trickier to find things when he tosses them in the trash! The time when he threw away the remote control, it took me a good 20 minute to find where he put it... I have not been able to find a couple of markers and one of his slippers, and I'm afraid it's gone in the trash and now is gone forever!

He also figured out how to open the dishwasher, so utensils go missing unless I remember to shut the dishwasher door tightly.

Play outside.
He is growing to be such an outdoorsee little guy. He loves to go to the backyard. The minute he hears that backdoor creek, he is right there, ready to go out. We have a dirt pit for him to dig and play in. He also loves to find various rocks, pebbles, and balls, and puts them in his mouth. He is so used to me making him spit the stuff out that he carries an second helping in his hand, so as soon as I ask him to spit the first rock out, he put the one from his hand into his mouth!

And, yes, he can stuff the whole golf ball into his mouth. Ophelia tried it and turns out she has a tiny mouth and can't open it nearly as big as Emerson can.

Eat snack grapes.
Grapes have become a staple food item in our home. Emerson signs "grapes" and says "bow", which means grapes, as soon as he sees them. He can pack down a ton of them. And then ten minutes later come back and get more!

Besides grapes, he will eat any other fruit. I have yet to see a fruit that he doesn't like. He also often enjoys his snack time entertainment - Ophelia. It totally cracks him up when Ophelia sticks out her tongue at him and closes her eyes:

Being the sweet boy he is, he always shares with his sister whenever she comes up with an open mouth:

Throw a tantrum when Mama does not let Emerson out.
There are not many things that upset him, but not being able to go outside is one of them. Another one is when this mean Mama does not let him bang on the laptop keyboard!

Playtime!
At this age he is all about playing with toys, exploring them, and learning with them. This wooden tower is still one of his favorite toys, ever since he mastered doing that at the age of 9 months.

Go to the library for baby story time!
What a blessing it is to live so close to the library! We have been going there every week for story time when Ophelia is at preschool. It is such a special one-on-one time for me and Emerson. He enjoys all the little nursery rhymes and songs so much! His favorite are "itsy-bitsy" spider and "twinkle, twinkle". During toy time, he loves to find various balls or crawl through the tunnel.

Run errands with Mama.
I guess that's the destiny of all younger siblings: to get tagged along wherever their older siblings need to go. About a month ago, I switched Emerson into a forward-facing seat. He has been loving it so much! He loves to see and point and me and PJ in the front seats, he looks and checks out things outside, he makes faces and silly noises with his sister, and I can easily now give him things to keep him happy and content.

Play with sister.
He loves to do whatever Ophelia is doing. If she is having snack at this little table, he tries to flip another chair over, so that he can sit and have snack with her too. When she was coloring, he wanted to color too. Lasted for about 20 seconds:

Play at the park.
He loves going to parks. He has been mastering climbing the stairs on all playgrounds. Going down...not so much yet. So I feel like going to play at the park means a lot of work for me: chasing Emerson around making sure he has nothing in his mouth and is not about to fall off the playscape or get trampled over by a bigger kid. Swings are pretty nice and safe though:

Get a haircut.
Emerson's first ever haircut was more of a head buzz. But this time I actually took him to a real kid-salon and  got him his first "real" haircut. He did so well too! The lollipop was definitely a winner! Kept him completely preoccupied and calm the whole time:

Bath time.
If we just mention the word "bath", Emerson walks as fast as his little legs carry him to the bathroom. I have been even censoring the word "bath" in his books when I read them to him, because it makes him run to the bathroom. He LOVES baths!

Sleep time.
Most of the time, Emerson is really good at going to sleep when he is feeling tired. His favorite sleeping position is on his tummy, knees tucked under himself, thumb in mouth. It is so funny to me that this same position was likely his favorite from his very birth. I swaddled him and put him to sleep on his back for four months, and he was a terrible sleeper, until one day I didn't swaddle him and he turned onto his stomach to sleep, and he slept for 6 hours straight!

This is one of my favorite times because sleep time means mama time!