Miss Independent!

We have reached the stage of “I do it.” This girl does not want help unless she really needs it. No more helping her feed herself which is always a treat with anything that is messy.

Emilia in her big girl car seat! Yes she is still rear-facing at 16 months because it is 5x safer than forward facing. The whole 1 and 20 lbs in the bare minimum for turning around but not the safest. Doctors are starting to recommend that you rear face your child until the reach the limits of their car seat. 2 and 30lbs is probably going to become the minimum in the future as Emilia seat will rear face until 40 lbs!

We no longer have a baby :( She is completely done using a bottle. Good for her but a little sad because I miss that she isn’t a baby anymore but a toddler. We still have the pacifier though and no immediate plans to break her of that yet. Breaking this child of the bottle was super easy. She had been down to just the night time bottle since August and hasn’t missed it since we ran out of liners and Daddy said that we couldn’t buy anymore. I think that starting the introduction of the cup early helped her easily transition at to reduce bottles when she turned 1.


She likes to have her own personal space. We cannot put our feet up on the ledge of the bath tub when she is taking a bath. She actually got mad at me the other day because I had to touch the shopping cart in order to push it. Emilia just didn’t understand the concept that the shopping cart doesn’t move unless someone pushes it and she cannot do it while she is in the cart. Silly girl!

Emilia is growing by leaps and bounds. At 16 months old now she is 25 lbs and 30 inches tall. She is starting to run now but only gets a couple of feet before she falls down. But you have to give her credit for trying! Her legs/feet haven’t straightened out yet when she walks so right now she is our little bow-legged girl with her feet that turn in slightly. She has to be walking for 6 months before any specialists will see her and she only has 3 months under her belt so there is still hope that it will correct itself on its own. She is saying more and more words everyday. Emilia is still a Daddy’s girl and Mommy is just her playmate it seems. I am definitely put by the wayside when Daddy gets home from work. Well pretty much everyone is abandon when Daddy is around. Maybe someday she will outgrow that but not counting on it anytime soon.

Emilia loves playing with her big legos. She can play with those things for hours. Which Lego building is a big thing in our family so she fits right in there! She also likes to play tea party and with her babies. She loves musical instruments. We went to the Grand Rapids Children’s Museum this weekend and she loved playing on the piano there. So it is nice to see that my musical love might have carried on in her. She has learned how to climb up her little tikes slide and go down by herself.

We had a busy summer of traveling. We went to Cedar Point several times with one more trip planned for this upcoming weekend. She tagged along on my scrapbooking retreat to Great Wolf Lodge and enjoyed the waterpark there. We made a trip to Chicago a few weekends ago so Daddy could to the baseball game with Brent. Next month we are taking our family vacation. We are going on a cruise and going to Disney World. Yes this makes Emilia’s second trip to Disney! But nothing is like seeing Disney than though the eyes of a child. She may not remember but we have pictures and she knows what is going on when we are there. It will be so much fun!

Emilia went to her very first movie today and did very well. We went to the $4 movies at Celebration Woodland. We figured we would be safe there since the theatre wouldn’t be very crowded. We finally saw the Disney/Pixar film UP. It was a very good movie and Emilia paid attention to most of it. Daddy had to take her out for a few minutes to stretch her legs but she came back to watch the end. She loved eating popcorn and drinking Mema’s pop! Every picture I take it looks like her eyes are closed because she smiles so big and squints her eyes together. Well it is cute but can be annoying when you want to see her eyes!

Wishing everyone an Early Happy Halloween! Emilia is going to be Alice from Alice in Wonderland and her cousins are going to be the Queen of Hearts and the Mad Hatter so that should be a cute picture!

One foot in front of the other!!

Emilia, with the 'final' encouragement of her cousin Erin, has now joined us as an upright animal as of last Saturday at the Taylor Family Picnic. She was also putting the final touches on a few jaunts over at Mema-Jo's house later in the day as well, including her first trek from the TV to the kitchen during a commercial break!! She still will speed crawl if she falls during a walk somewhere and simple enjoys pushing her 'cars' around outside but the walking has come at 13 months and a day. We knew it would come, but after being on her feet from 5 months or so on we did wonder a bit how much longer she would make us wait for this landmark day!! Now she has a reason to wear her shoes as well.

Golfer to Be?

We have taken Emilia to the golf course on both of our golf league nights recently and put her on the putting green. She hasn't really taken to moving around on grass ... basically trying to move around on hands and feet or just sitting still. Once on the putting green though, with the golf ball going in and out of the hole, she had enough 'distraction' to move around without thinking about it. She LOVES to put the ball in and out of the cup and is even trying to roll it towards the cup. We took her out on the Candlestone course last night and she was moving around all over the place ... even in the rough. She even crawled over and took my ball away as I was getting ready to putt it. So we have 'tricked' her into moving around on grass ... which would have happened soon anyway, but we like to take credit for something!!

Happy 1st Birthday Emilia!!!

Emilia celebrated her first birthday on June 10th! I can't believe that it has been a year. Herm asks if birthday party is to celebrate her or the parents for surviving the first year and not messing things up. It is probably both as Emilia will not remember this day but we have pictures to prove it. She picked at her cake for quite a bit before she finally dug into it. She really loves the blocks that she got for her birthday and her new cars. It was a fun day for us and her.

She is becoming such a busy bee. She is climbing up and down stairs. She is starting to venture on her own. She has started taking steps without holding onto anything. She is up to 4 at a time before she falls but most of the time it is only about 2 steps. She does like to walk on her knees which is the weirdest thing I have ever seen a baby do. Herm thinks it comes from playing on the trampoline because she bounces on her knees. She is saying Hi and bye bye now really clearly. Emilia is enjoying going down her slides on her Little Tikes climber in her new playground in our backyard.

We have gotten rid of 2 bottles now that she is a big girl and drinking whole milk. Only the morning bottle and evening to work on next. She is really working hard on feeding herself. Which is always a messy task! She had her first happy meal the other day which she really liked the Chocolate Milk! She is growing like a weed. She measured to be 29 inches tall (50 percentile) and 23 lbs 10 oz (90 percentile) at her one year check up. She followed the guidelines and tripled her weight in a year like she was suppose to. She started out at 7 lb 14 oz. I can't imagine why she is so short though :) I am still hoping that she will get a little bit of Herm's height. Well that is enough for now!

Time flies when you have a little one...

Emilia is becoming such a big girl. She is a little climber! She loves climbing up the stairs and is always trying to climb into and on things. We are approaching the 1 year mark. I cannot believe how fast this past year went and how much Emilia has changed/learned during the year.

She is getting closer to walking but not yet. This is the one milestone that she is taking her sweet time on espcially since she has been cruising along furniture since February, but that is okay with us. Emilia does enjoy walking behind her push toy. She is most definately a busy busy girl!

We are starting to enjoy this nice weather. Emilia loves taking a ride in her swing. We went on the trampoline and she likes pushing me to roll over all the way across the trampoline. I haven't seen her laugh this hard before in her short little life. We went to Michigan Adventure this past weekend and she is a big girl. She rode her first ride ALL BY HERSELF! She rode the little cars that just go round and round. That was the moment when I realized she is not going to a baby much longer.

She is finally starting to warm up to people and had a successful babysitter experience! YAY!!!! I love that she is a momma and Daddy's girl but it is nice to get out finally without her screaming the whole time we are gone!

Pictures of Emilia in her Easter Dress that Granny bought her!

More Disney Photos!!!!

Here are a few more pictures from our trip to Disney World in January!! We hope that everyone enjoys them!

Emilia and I are off to Florida in a week without Herm. Hopefully she is a good girl and doesn't miss her daddy too much. We will be gone for about eight days so we shall see.

She hasn't done anything new since my last post. She is getting a lot faster at cruising up and down the couch. She is not showing any interest in holding our hands and walking yet.

Disney and More!

It has been a busy couple of months since my last post!!!!

Emilia is 9 months old now. She weighs 20 lbs and is 27 1/4 inches tall.

January was a very busy month for her as she figured out how to crawl forward instead of just pushing herself backwards. She then cut her first tooth without too much difficulty. She figured out how to sit herself up and about four days later she learned how to pull herself up to a standing position!!!

We had our first family vacation to Disney World at the end of January/first of February. Emilia did very well down there and enjoyed all of the characters. She liked Mickey and Minnie Mouse the best!!! While we were in Florida her second tooth came in and she did fairly well with that.

Overall, we had a great time at Disney espcially since there was hardly any crowds. The longest wait we had was about 20 minutes. The weather could have been a little nicer as that particular week was below average for Orlando. But still 60 degree weather was a lot better than single digits back home! Just the mornings were a little cool but I will take that over the crowds at spring break time any day!!!

February was a pretty slow month for us. We went to Disney on Ice and that is where Emilia learned that she can climb stairs. She is definately getting harder to keep up with and we have to keep a much closer eye on her! She is cruising along the furniture and has took a couple of small leaps of faith of transfering to a different piece of furniture. She will probably be walking soon but hopefully not too soon. She can definately hold off on that until she is 1 but she probably won't do that! She will probably figure out how to walk when we go to Cocoa Beach in April without Herm.

Well that is all for now! I definately need to update this more often but its hard to put pictures up when you are stuck with dial up. That is what I get for living in the country :)