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Eric took the day off work on Monday, as he continued to rest and recover from his Big Birthday weekend. And I took the day off, because HE wanted to spend the day with ME. So we dropped Emily off with Betty and Lyle and started the morning at The Original Pancake House. A key to enjoying this place is to go during the week, for a late breakfast. I think we got there around 9:45am and there was no wait, we got a booth by the window, and they served our coffee upon sitting down. We also got to order right away, and our food was delivered within 10 minutes – and was amazing! Eric dubbed it his favorite breakfast place, so I’m sure we’ll be back again in the near future. Fine by me!
After breakfast we wandered through Barnes and Noble, before taking in an early afternoon movie. While I prefer buying my books on Amazon for the super deals, I still enjoy walking aimlessly through book stores. Finding myself in a random section, picking up a book based on the clever title or appealing cover art, and reading the synopsis or sometimes even a chapter or two. I purchased a tri-folding, laminated US History cheat sheet to continue helping me on my way to accomplishing a 2009 resolution of “knowing what I should have learned in Elementary School”. I’ve already learned some interesting facts…do you know who our 17th president was?
After the bookstore we went to see He’s Just Not That Into You, for an afternoon of laughs and all-to-realistic sadness. It was a good movie. I was expecting lots of silliness, but also got an insightful, sentimental look at heartbreak from every perspective.
Believe it or not, we then headed back to the house to rest and enjoy the peace and quiet of home without needing to tend to Emily. That may sound cynical, but I don’t mean for it to. It was just nice to really be completely available to Eric, with no distractions. We took a short nap together, we played some sequence…It was peaceful, and slow, and we got to just focus on each other for a few hours. So good.
Eric turned 30 this week. And while most people dread this particular age, Eric launches into “his thirties” at the top of his game. A perfect example of his youthful spirit and body, is how he chose to spend his birthday – an All Day Sports Extravaganza. 10 sports in a 5-on-5 tournament of events from dawn ’til sun down. It was awesome!
The Blue Team were the Winners of the day, and the Red Team received a Participants’ Award 
Any chance to talk some smack…
I’m working on a video to relay all the fun. Give me a couple weeks.
Happy Birthday Johnson! You are one hot 30-year-old. What a lucky gal I am. Emily thinks you’re pretty awesome too.
Emily can’t figure out how to use her snack holding contraption, which would allow her to reach in and pull out her puffs at her discretion without leaving a mess.
She did, however, learn how to remove the lid…doesn’t this defeat the purpose?
This little girl is on the move. Here are three initial attempts at getting her picture this morning:
Thankfully Eric was still home and was able to help me get a better shot, by entertaining her with karate chop moves.
Emily is crawling, climbing stairs and scaling walls. She leans against anything presumably sturdy and walks the perimeter of our living room. Her favorite toys are a new alphabet puzzle from her Bobo, plastic Easter eggs, and an easy to grab ball which she unintentionally passes quite well.
Her favorite foods are anything that Mom is eating. This week, homemade Mexican turkey chili, chicken enchiladas, life cereal, a tuna sandwich, and she still loves the lemons. However, nothing brings her greater delight than a handful of Gerber Puffs (any flavor will do just fine). She also loves drinking water out of her sippy cup. It makes her look like such a grown up little girl.
It turns out Emily is an animal lover. She’s been spending a good amount of time at Eric’s parents’ house and they have 2 cats, and are often watching one of Emily’s “cousins”, Mac (a golden retriever), or their neighbor’s dog CT (Chew Toy). Emily squeals and grunts, and wiggles and waves, beyond excited to see them. I took her to the pet store in the mall last week and she was in heaven. She also loves walking the central paseo around 4pm when there are lots of people out with their kids and dogs. She loves doggies. We’re pretty sure she’s saying her version of “woof” when she sees them. Our next door neighbors have a cat, Sailor, which sits in their window sill a good part of the day. Emily now points to go to the window and bangs and shouts with delight when Sailor is there to be seen. We are prepared for her first sentence to be “I want a puppy!”
In addition to what we think is “Woof”, Emily is saying Mama and Dada, Papa a couple times and Bobo once. When she points, we’re pretty sure she’s saying “this” – her way of asking “what’s this?” or “can I have this?” I’ve also noticed her trying to imitate sounds that I make repeatedly, such as lines in a book or a song, or “Bye Bye Bath” or “All Done” – the kind of things only a mom would notice
Her personality is bubbling over. She has the greatest facial expressions and sounds that keep us prompting her for more all day long. We played Make Me Laugh with her the other night. Eric and I each took turns, doing any and every ridiculous dance move or facial expression to see who could get the best laugh out of her. What we learned is that she still loves to be startled: loud noises, sudden dramatic movements such as Eric’s high knees dance or my imitation of Ben Stiller’s “Can you handle that”! This brought great laughs from all.
Our video camera broke. But, it had broken before so I figured if I’m just patient it will come back to life…it didn’t. So I lost about 3 weeks under that mentality. Then I lost another 2 weeks while researching new cameras. And then I wanted to get the free shipping, so add another week and a half…and then I couldn’t get it to work with my video application – 3 more days…
All to say, I am back in business and happy to have some new footage of Emily in motion. Please enjoy a little sampling!
We had the Bridgmans over for dinner last weekend. It is so fun to watch the girls interact, now that their motor skills and personalities are more developed. Bailey has always been a bit ahead of Emily in the motor skills department. I thought this picture was a good representation of Emily’s admiration for Bailey. It’s like she’s thinking “she’s so cool”. Bailey recently learned how to climb stairs and spent most of her visit going up and down with all of our praise and encouragement. Emily watched her, pretending to be unimpressed, and continued to play with her toys.
The next two days I would leave Emily to play with her toys and come back to find her gazing longingly at the stairs.
And then I found her doing this:
After she climbed up, I quickly started teaching her how to climb back down. She is now a total pro…climbing from our 2nd floor up to our 3rd floor completely unassisted. Back down is a little rickety, but improving every day.
Thanks for leading the way Bailey!
We spent some time down at Salt Creek this afternoon. It was beautiful out! We wanted to put Emily’s toes in the water, but feared it might be too cold for her little tootsies. Fortunately, she loved it! She laughed every time, and kept leaning over to do it again and again.
We are already looking forward to summer days at the beach. This was a nice sneak peek.
