Great Wolf Lodge

There is this really awesome new hotel that opened up in Grapevine. They have an indoor water park that just rocks! Our friends drove up from Tyler to stay a few nights and visit. We also spent one night. It was so much fun and the girls just loved it.


Ok, here is a really gross story. If your a mom you will totally get this. On the second day of swimming Emma was wearing a one piece swimsuit when she said she needed to go to the potty. So off we went. We went into the family restroom that had two stalls and luckily no one was in the restroom during this incident. Anyways. Emma had a life jacket and a one piece swimsuit on so I just did the slide the swimsuit over to the side while she was on the potty. If your a women you know what I'm talking about. Plus if you have ever pealed off a wet swim suit and tried to pull it back up it is near impossible. Well, back to the story. Emma didn't happen to mention that she needed to poop. Although to be honest, I'm not sure she knew she needed to poop because it was kind of like diarrhea and came out rather quickly. Hey, I warned you it was a gross story. So her swim suit filled up with poop. Oh, gross! So I had to take of the life jacket and strip off the swim suit all the while she was freaking out because she had pooped in her swim suit and I was smearing poop all down her legs while I stripped off the suit. Meanwhile I'm laughing while trying to clean it up. What else was I to do? I couldn't really be mad at her, it was my fault for assuming she just needed to pee. So here I am trying to strip off this wet suit filled with poop and try to contain as much of the mess as possible, which of course means the poop plops out of the suit onto the ground. I clean up Emma's legs and bottom so she will stop freaking out and then clean up the poop off the floor. Hmmm, what to do with her swim suit now? I don't really want to rinse it off in the sink b/c the drain had these little itty bitty holes and the suit still had quite a bit of poop still in it. So I took it to the other stall and rinsed and flushed, rinsed and flush, rinsed and flush. The place has only been open a month, how dirty could the toilet be? After it looked clean to the naked eye I took it to the sink and washed out the suit with soap and rinsed it really well. I then redressed Emma and we both scrubbed our hands well, although to be honest I'm sure the chlorine in the pool water killed everything else. I of course had to tell one of the life guards about the incident so that someone could go in and give the bathroom a thorough cleaning. To be honest, I'm surprised I handled it so well. Just one of those mom things that we have to do I guess. =)

Silly Emma

I was playing with Emma's hair today to keep it out of her face. It turned out so cute. She was being so silly today, so I just had to crack out the camera and take some pictures and video. I just love being her mommy. I am so unbelievably fortunate. I love her so much.

Emma Nicknames

Emma has so many nicknames. It's funny too because if you ask her what I call her or what Kevin or even my mother calls her she knows the nick name that we each call her. My mom calls Emma doodlebug or princess. Kevin calls her silly monkey. And I call her SueSue, Silly Goose, GooseGoose, Goose, or Baby Girl. Funny how she gets her nicknames.

Dance

Here are a few pictures for my aunt DeAnna, she is a dance teacher and loves to see Emma in her dance class. I'm not sure what this position is that she is doing, putting her heels together and toes pointing out, but Emma has been learning it lately.

Arizona trip

Emma and I flew out to Arizona to visit my family. I am so fortunate to only work weekends so that I can travel Mon-Fri. Although after being out of town all week and traveling all day Friday it makes going to work on Sat hard.

My dad and his wife bought some toys for Emma to play with while we were there visiting. She loved the dinosaurs and the blocks. And of course she loved dressing up in her dress up outfit I brought.

Snuggling with grandpa. Emma got the pillow and blanket all set up and snuggled up to grandpa. It was so sweet. Reading books with grandma.

Feeding the horses. We actually got Emma up on a horse for a few steps but then she wanted down.


Family pictures. Here is Emma with her greatgrandpa and greatgrandma. One with us and grandpa and grandma. Also a four generation picture with my dad being goofy.

Video's from Arizona

I see all those dance lessons are paying off! Why she just goes in circles I have no idea. Sometimes when she does this I think she looks autistic! Guess it's just being two!

Emma was sharing ice cream with Grandpa. She was so engrossed in the TV that she wasn't paying attention to the ice cream. Although she would automatically open her mouth when my dad would offer her some. It was pretty funny. Sorry the lighting is low.

Emma likes to see herself on the video's. Here she wanted to see herself but I made her do a song first. My dad and Kim got this Baby Bop for Emma while she was there. I think I heard this song about 124, 592 times. Needless to say we left the Baby Bop at their house.

Emma enjoyed seeing the horses at my grandfathers house. She was a bit leery of them, but was quite interested. I'm sure my husband would like to get her into riding horses since he did as a child. Here she is feeding the pony a carrot.

After some convincing Karen was able to get Emma up on a big horse and ride her for about 5 steps. I was pretty proud of Emma. She is getting to be such a big girl.

What is it with Emma and red wagons? Is it all children that love red wagons or just mine? Even with the excitement of riding the horse she just wanted to go ride the wagon. Now how she convinced both my dad and Karen to pull her I'm not sure! Maybe it's just because she is so cute.

Potty Training Mishaps

Emma has been potty trained since July. She even potty trained herself at night. I wasn't expecting that and to be honest it was kindof annoying that she would wake up ever 4-6 hours and need to go to the potty even when she had a pullup on. Being that she won't get out of her bed at all after nap or in the morning she will call for us to come and get her. Usually she says "I need to potty" in this pitiful sounding voice. Lately she has gotten much better, she gets up around 2-3am to go and she has even made it a few nights without needing to get up at all. Anyways, I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging. I am very proud that Emma is all potty trained but we have definitely had some bumps in the road.

A few months ago Emma went for about two weeks where if she was playing with friends and she didn't want to stop to go pee she would just pee in her pants. That of course would make me so mad because most of the time I would have asked her if she needed to go and she would say no and then shortly after that she would pee in her pants. After a few weeks of her doing that I started giving her a swat on the butt or sat her in the corner when she would pee in her panties and that fixed that problem.

We also created another problem. One night we forgot to turn the audio monitor on and Emma had woken up calling for us to go potty and we didn't hear her. I must have heard her calling out after a while and woke up. Poor baby, she had wet her bed and had been crying for who knows how long. I tried to explain to her that if we don't come to get her she can come out of her bedroom and go to the potty herself. I have yet to see that. Anyways, after that incident she got really weird about going to bed. We would have her go to the potty right before bed and when she got into the bed she would say she needed to go again immediately. We would try to convince her that she just went but she would get really upset. So we would let her get up again, but most of the time she wouldn't go again. One night after she had gotten up for the 3rd time we had enough. We tried sitting her in the corner if she didn't go again but she just thought that was fun that she didn't have to go to bed. So we finally told her she could get up again to go, but if she didn't go then she would get a spanking. We had to do that for about a week and she finally stopped. Wheeew, who thought potty training would be so hard?

Happy Birthday to Me

For my 29th birthday my mom made a cake and cooked my favorite meal, goop! Emma helped my mom make the cake and she was so proud of herself! My mom didn't have a 2 candle so we used the 5 upside down! Hehehe. Also notice the small "A" candle by the letter C in my name. Emma wanted to put that candle in just for me.

Happy Birthday Mama!

Antibiotics

Took Emma to the Dr. today. He said that she had the beginnings of an ear infection and prescribed her antibiotics. I don't think he would have given her antibiotics if she wasn't going on a flight. I read an article that said most ear infections clear up on their own and doctors like to wait at least 48 hours to see if they clear up. I am glad that he went ahead and gave her antibiotics so it will be cleared up before our trip.

Ear Ache

Emma complained of her ear aching when we picked her up from the child care after our bible study tonight. When we got home tonight I checked her and she had a temp. So we gave her some Ibuprofen and I held her on the chair while she laid her ear on a heating pad. She was so pitiful.


Interesting enough I already had a doctor appt scheduled for her tomorrow morning. On Monday (today is Wed) I was being neurotic, which is unusual for me, believe it or not. Emma and I are planing on flying to AZ next week and I was worried that Emma might get sick while we were in AZ, so I wanted her to get a check up to look in all her orifices, well the ones above her neck, to make sure she didn't have an ear infection or sore throat. Well, it works out perfectly, I can take her in tomorrow and they can look at her ear. That way we can get the ear infection under control prior to getting on a plane!

Play Date

Emma's friend Katie came over to play in our park today. They both dressed up in princess outfits, I'm glad I have more than one! I have play dates for Emma as much for me as for her. It's great to get together with friends, it is such a boost to have adult conversations regularly!

Emma Sayings

Along the same line as the previous post I have been jotting down some cute things that Emma has said over the last few months. Here they are...

October, 07: Emma definitely has been watching to much TV. Lately when she is hungry she has been saying "my tummy is rumbling". Of course it is never rumbling for chicken or green beans, it's always rumbling for gummy snacks or candy.

November, 07: In November Emma had no concept of what the word "why" means. So when she wanted something and I would say "why". She then would say "I did". Of course it sounded more like "die did" and what she really meant to say was "I do". Meaning, "I do want it". Of course now she says why to everything. I never thought I would say "because I said", but sometimes that is just the answer.

December, 07: Lately Emma has been saying "a little bit" to everything. For example she'll say, "read books a little bit".

January, 08: I'm not really sure where she got this one, but she has been saying it when she is really excited about something. "Goody Goody, me so happy."

And I am sure every mother remembers this phrase: "Me do it all myself". I hear this one all the time now!

Various stories

So most of you know I have been behind on my blog for the last 6 months or so. I had been doing good at getting caught up but now I'm a little behind. So once again I have been working to get the blog caught up. Well, over the last 6 months or so I have been keeping a pile of little sticky notes with cute stories that I wanted to write in Emma's blog. So after much consideration I am going to write all the cute little stories in one blog instead of going back and putting them in the month where it happened. That way, if you check my blog frequently then you can read the stories in one post instead of scrolling back several months. You'll have to forgive me I have forgotten some of the details that goes along with the stories so I may improvise. So hear goes...

June 15th, 07: When we were on the plane coming back from NC visiting my new nephew I asked Emma to do something and she responded "No tell me to do". I got really close to her face in a stern sounding voice I said, "Emma, I'm the momma and I tell you what to do, you don't tell me what to do." She has never tried that again.

August 25th, 07: Teaching Emma about manners has been interesting. One day I was reminding Emma to say please when she asked for something so I said "what's the magic word?". And in all seriousness she said "Misca Musca Mickey Mouse" from Mickey's club house. It was classic.

August 26th, 07: Ok, so maybe I'm letting Emma watch to much TV lately. Today Emma was trying to take off her shift and she got stuck. She came up to me and said "Help me, help me, ayuda me". Which if any of you have seen Go Diego Go then you know that "ayuda me" is Spanish for help me. Wow, my two year old is speaking Spanish.

December 6, 07: My mother babysat Emma tonight so that we could go to Kevin's Christmas party. My mom was feeding Emma dinner at our house and Emma requested some grapes for dinner. Without checking if we had any my mom said she could have some after she ate some dinner, including her chicken. Emma was cooperative and she ate her dinner and so my mom got up to get her some grapes, at that point my mom realized we didn't have any grapes and so she told Emma that she was sorry there weren't any grapes. Emma then said, "but I ate chicken!".

After dinner my mom took Emma up to do a bath. While Emma was in the bathtub my mom left the bathroom to get her pj's and stuff. Well, my mom wanted to know that Emma was alright in the tub so she taught Emma how to say polo after my mom said marco. So after a few minutes my mom said "marco" and Emma said "what" and my mom repeated her self. Emma then said "marker" and so my mom said "polo".

December 14th, 07: She keeps me laughing all the time. Last night Emma was playing with a piece of ribbon and pretending it was a snake. So I took it and started tickling her with it. Emma just sat there looking at me so I said "Doesn't the snakes tongue tickle you?" With a straight face Emma looked at me and said, "That's the snake's bobo end Momma." Hilarious!

January 6th, 08: Ever since Emma got her piggy bank she likes to put money in it at any chance she can get. I started to teach her what the coins were and how much they were worth, although she has no concept of worth. But anyways, after putting in several pennies and telling her each time that it was a penny and it was worth 1 cent, she picked up another penny and asked what it was. I asked her what she thought it was and she guessed it was a penny. Then I asked her how much a penny was worth and she said "3 dollars". Hehehe, I guess we have a ways to go.

Birthday Party

Emma went to Chuck E. Cheese today for a birthday party for her friend Colton. Chuck E. Cheese is still a little to old for her. She really liked the rides, but she didn't get most of the games. She did have a great time! And it was nice to see my friends at the party.

Imaginary Pets

Emma is just so imaginative. The a few months ago Emma had her hand all balled up. I thought maybe she had a button or coin in her hand and I pried her hand open because she wasn't being very cooperative. When I realized that nothing was in her hand I asked her what she was holding. She said, "a bear." "Oh, a bear", I said. Ever since then I've noticed that she carries around an animal in one of her hands. It changes regularly, it's been a kitten, bear, giraffe, pony, ect. I am starting to wonder if she picks an animal based on her emotions. Mostly I have noticed when she is in a new environment where she might be scared it is usually a big animal like the bear. One day I asked her what animal she was holding and she said "a kitten". What color is your kitten I asked. "Pink" she replied. Well, what is the kitty's name? "Hmmm, thinking", she said as she tapped her chin. Then she said "tickle". She carried around a pink kitty named tickle for a while. It is interesting to watch her carry it too. It is very real to her. When we are out and I want her to hold my hand and that happens to be the hand she is carrying her animal, well, then she switches it to the other hand. When she washes her hands after using the bathroom she puts her animal on the counter and then picks it up after she is done. Keep in mind this is all imaginary, she really isn't holding anything. It is just amazing to me. It probably comforts her somehow. I just can't believe a 2 1/2 year old could be so clever.