Happy 2nd Birthday Emilia!!!

The day has come...Our baby is no longer a baby. She turned 2 on June 10th and is now a little girl. She had a Minne Mouse Pizza Party. She celebrated the day with family but was not the best party host. She wanted to play in the back yard or stick with Daddy. She isn't use to structure activities or that many people since it is just me and her most of the time. So with a few tears...(its her party and she can cry if she wants too) we managed to sit her down to open some presents sitting on Daddy's lap.

She recieved lots of goodies such as a trike, play doh, little people school bus, Mr. Potato Head, art sets and her favorite some new balls. She also recieved some money to go clothes shopping the fall so that will come in handy. She likes all of her new things a lot. I had to put the art sets up in the closet until she gets older as I am not ready for her to have markers and glitter glue yet. Espcially since she likes to draw on herself and anything else around her. She was not happy that I did that as she really wanted to play with the markers. Oh well she can stick with the special markers that only color on certain paper for now :)

After presents we moved onto cake. This really got her attention as she loves to eat Cake! Her awesome Minnie Mouse Cake came from a bakery in downtown Rockford. Delicious cake and would highly recommend them. She has over 200 different character cake pans in addition to all of the normal cake stuff. We didn't sing Happy Birthday to Emilia as it makes her cry. We found this out earlier in the week when we sang Happy Birthday to her cousin Bo.

Emilia actually wore her Minnie Mouse ears from Disney World for her party. I was really surprised as she normally does not like hats. I love this picture of her from behind and I am learning to play with my photo editing software. To conclude the day we went downtown Rockford to watch Fireworks as her birthday fell on their Start of Summer Celebration!

For her 2 year doctor check up she is roughly 34 inches tall and weighs around 30 lbs. She has moved up to the 55th percentile for height instead of the 50th but still is at the 90th for weight!

Emilia Scrapbook Pages

I have decided to start sharing my scrapbooks over the web through the use of Photobucket. If you click on View All it will take to the site to view the layouts of Emilia a little more throughly than watching the slideshow on the blog. These layouts are what I have worked on the past couple of months. As you can see I am behind on her book as I just scrapped Halloween. I hope to have it back up to date by her 2nd birthday!

It's No Joke...

Here it is April 1st 2010 and Emilia is swimming in her kiddie pool and laying out on our Deck IN MICHIGAN! We reached 80 degrees on this fine April Fools Day which is definitely out of the ordinary. We enjoyed the nice warm day outside in the sun playing in the back yard. She worked very hard to get that corner of her Tinker Bell towel laying properly.

I took Emilia to see the Easter Bunny at the Woodland Mall on April 1st. She did not like this bunny at all. In her defense though he was not a very good bunny. Just sat there with his hands in his lap unlike the Florida Bunny we saw last year. So I had to sit with her in order to get her picture taken. I should have just said forget it but we got the picture anyway.

We hosted our first Easter lunch at our house this year. We had invited Herm's Parents and Roberta which Grandpa Siegel decided not to come, Granny and Grandpa, My brother Brad and his wife Margaret along with my nephew Xavier. The rest of my family was in Florida for Easter. We broke out and used our "Fancy" China for the first time. Nothing like drinking Mt. Dew out of a crystal goblet. We have had this stuff for almost three years so it felt good to finally use the dishes as I like them a lot but not for everyday. In hindsight I really don't need the stuff and should have used the money for something different. I probably wouldn't have bought it if we didn't receive the one place setting at our wedding that I couldn't return as I didn't have the receipt so off we went to buy the other 11 place settings but we got them at a good deal as they were closing the Michigan Mikasa Stores. Oh Well...can't take them back now so I might as well use them.

Emilia had a good Easter. She found her Easter basket right away filled with 2 new movies and a bag of M&M's. Overall we had a great Easter and hope that everyone else did too!

Emilia is beginning to think that she is a “big girl” now. She refuses to sit in high chair now 98% of the time. She feels that she needs to sit at the table with us. While she may think that she is a big girl, she still has her baby ways to fall back on. She has become more dependent on her pacifier. She use to only use it at bed and riding in the car, but ever since Herm and I left her at Mema’s for the weekend when we went to Vegas that plug is needed most of the day.

She is starting to not watch her Baby Einstein movies as much and choosing full length feature films. Her favorite movies include: Finding Nemo, Monster’s Inc., Cars, and now Princess and the Frog. She seems to be a Pixar animation fan. This girl loves her movies. If I would let her she would watch movies all day long. She likes to watch movies in Daddy’s car and keeps hoping that eventually we will get a DVD player in mommy’s car. We need to invest in another dual screen set because she doesn’t know how to hold onto a single DVD player and likes to push buttons. Since she is still rear-facing and will be for awhile the dual screen players work best. Maybe someday we will find another good deal like we did for Herm’s car.

We had our first big girl potty moment. I wish I would have gotten a picture but my camera was downstairs. After her bath the other night we asked her if she needed to go potty and she actually sat on her potty long enough and did her business. She even asked for toilet paper. Herm and I clapped our hands and told her good job. Emilia then proceeds to put her face in her hands and started crying. It took her a few minutes to realize that she did a good thing. I don’t think that she fully understood what she did as we are not at a point to try potty training yet. She does not tell us when she has to go or when her diaper needs changing. She likes to tell me No when I ask her if she went poopy. So I think that it will be awhile but we are done with diapers.

In the past month we took Emilia to Playhouse Disney Live! On Tour. She did not behave the best but made it through the show. She probably would have been a little better had she received her full nap and if Mickey would have been more at the beginning instead of the end. She did have her first snow cone at the show. She mainly sucked the syrup through the straw and Daddy at most of the ice. We took her to Disney on Ice Finding Nemo last weekend and she had a great time.

Well that is what is happening in our little lives this month. I'll leave you with a picture of Emilia climbing into her baby doll buggy!

Emilia is growing by leaps and bounds and this girl is always on the move! I am still waiting for her to slow down in the weight gain department as the doctor said she would when she turned 1. She is up 27+ lbs now according to the Wii Fit scale. She was 26 lbs 2 oz at her 18 month check up. Hopefully when the snow goes away we can get her outside more to run around and she will level out.

We took a Family Vacation in November because I had a Southwest Airline credit that I needed to use from when I changed my spring break flight. We took a 4 day Carnival Cruise and went back to Disney World. It was nice to see most of the Christmas decorations up. Emilia had a good time but she was a lot easier to handle when we went in January as she didn’t have an opinion then. Normally she is such a ham for the camera but this trip she pretty much refused to smile so all the pictures look like she is having the worst time ever which is far from the truth. Emilia liked the ride the rides by herself. Here she is on the opposite side of the TTA car as us. She enjoyed the cruise ship very much especially our room steward Anton. She kept flirting with him. We are in for some trouble when she gets older! This is our last vacation for awhile as we traveled a lot this year.

Here is Emilia in her snowsuit in the first big snowfall of the year. She loves playing in her sled and was mad when we made her come in. However since it was only 15 degrees out she didn’t get to play as long as she would have liked. Daddy took her out sledding a couple of days later when it was snowing and actually pushed he down a hill. He tells me that she just looked back at him laughing all the way :).

Christmas went well at our house and Emilia was a very good girl this year! She walked right past the Christmas tree when she got up and went straight into the kitchen for some juice. I guess she needs her juice to get her going! She was a little hesitant opening presents at first but once she got going we couldn’t stop her. She even wanted to open everyone else’s presents. Unlike last year where she wanted to play with each thing after she opened it this year she just tossed it aside and went onto the next.

Emilia (and us) survived our very first weekend apart. Herm and I went to Las Vegas for a weekend and left Emilia with Mema Jo. This is the first time that she has been without either of us for more than overnight and the last overnight was a year ago. We were a little nervous on how she would do but she managed to make it through the 3 days and even spent a whole day with Uncle Brad! Never mind the fact that she had her plug in her mouth 99% of the time and on Monday she thought she needed to carry around her pillow all day. She was excited when she got home though and saw all of her stuff. She couldn't decide with what to play with first!

I am hoping to update this more this year but I am not going to make any promises. Happy 2010 to everyone and we hope that it is a great year!

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.