Announcement!

I have started a new blog! It is called Thrifty Living and is about living thrifty! This has been something that Martin and I have been talking about me doing for a while, and last week was my "trial run" meaning I posted like a normally would, except I didn't tell anyone about it. So now you have a whole week's worth of reading to catch up on! Actually, the first post on Thrifty Living is an introduction and purpose statement of sorts, so I'd love to hear what you think about it!

We will still be using this blog and keeping everyone up to date on all that we are doing here in Delaware.

Enjoy...Thrifty Living

Standing

Emma loves to stand (which we've known from very early on). Now she can stand on her own by holding on to something. Who knows, she could be cruising before long!

"I do my by self"

The above quote is courtesy of Becca, circa 1991 :-)

Emma can hold her own bottle now! She is quite content to lay by herself and drink the whole thing, even pulling it out of her mouth for a break now and then.

What a big girl!

Carrots (and other food)

The past month Emma has started eating a bunch of different foods. I have pureed them all for her, including squash, sweet potato, carrots, and avocado. She loves real food!

We've also given her a carrot to gum on a few times. Since everything she gets her hands on goes in her mouth, she figured it out pretty quickly.

Sheer delight! Emma loves her veggies!

Christmas stocking

Martin and I both have Christmas stockings with our names on them, so I've been planning to do one for Emma. I looked at TONS of different options online and it was nearly impossible to decide. Then, one day when I was at Joann's, I spotted this stocking:

For this price:

Perfect! -- for several reasons. Obviously, it was a great price. But also, I really wanted something that wasn't Santa (not that I have a problem with Santa, but thats not the point of Christmas). Now, snowmen aren't the point of Christmas either, but they don't pretend to be! And I hope that this is something that Emma will be able to enjoy once she's grow the way I have enjoyed mine.

So we'll see how this goes. I've never done a cross-stitch before, but I have a lot of motivation! (and hopefully enough time)

Munchkin on the move

Yesterday Emma started crawling! Its modified from the hands and knees version, but she is so determined that she makes it work!

Baking with Mommy

One of my great memories from growing up was cooking and baking with my mom and my sisters. Now I've got a little cooking buddy of my own!

Emma's ready to help!

Trip to the Beach

3 weeks ago (time has flown!) we went to the beach together. It was Saturday afternoon and we had been busy around the house. We planned to leave a few hours earlier, but did other things instead, and so it looked like we'd just go to the nearby state park since it was so close. Around 4pm Martin said we should just go...so we jumped in the car and went!

Its a little over an hour drive to Cape Henlopen State Park in Lewes, DE. As we drove into the park, we passed by the lines of cars full of people leaving. Apparently no one was staying at the beach over dinner! We grabbed subs at Wawa on the way in to the park, so we ended up having dinner on the beach with very minimal distractions, aside from more people leaving!

We've been doing so much this summer with so many extended family members and friends, that it was one of the first times we'd gone and done something, just the three of us! It felt like a vacation, even though it was only a few hours.

Emma enjoyed being at the beach, as in, she liked that we were outside. She wasn't quite sure what to make of the beachy things like sand and surf.

Example number one: her feet in the wet sand:

That is not a happy face.

Example number two: wave comes in and Emma lifts her feet and swings from our hands.

She only managed to get one foot up for this picture!

Overall, however, she did have fun...and so did we!

Sippy cup

We got a sippy cup for Emma because she tries to help with her bottle but her hands aren't really big enough to hold it yet. She was excited when we first gave it to her:



Even though at times she didn't quite figure out where her mouth was supposed to go:

Eventually she did begin to get her mouth in the right spot, but mostly liked to chew or hold it in her mouth instead of sucking.

Lately though, she's starting to figure out how to drink from it. The biggest adjustment is probably that it comes out faster than her bottle and so much liquid rolls down her chin. I can always tell when she's been getting water out of her cup though -- because the front of her shirt is soaked!

7 months old!

Emma is getting SO big!

She's been able to sit in a high chair when we've gone out now:

She still loves the camera:

She really likes animals, no matter how big or small. Our friends have two dogs that Emma loves to play with. Nikki is the big girl that Emma has no fear around:

And Emma loves that Lucy licks her all over! The other day Emma was holding out her hands to try and pet Lucy, who promptly began licking her hands and Emma thought it was the funniest thing - she laughed and laughed!

Emma is pulling up now too. She loves standing. If we hold out our hands, she reaches for them and pulls herself up into a stand. She has pulled up on her own too!

Some of her favorite things to do are read books (translation: eat books), play with balls (translation: eat balls), and play with paper (translation: eat paper). Anyone seeing a theme here?

Privoznik wedding!

On Saturday my sister got married! It was such a wonderful wedding, so much fun and so beautiful. I didn't have a camera with me all day, so these pictures are stolen from facebook (thanks Traci! lol)


Sisters before the wedding:


The kiss:

Emma was soooo good! And she looked adorable in her flower girl dress!

This is my brother-in-law. Yep, he's a goofball:

Toasting Mr. & Mrs. Privoznik:

Yummy cake:

And they're off:

No longer MIA

Well it has been a busy few weeks for us, especially this past weekend. There's a lot of things to catch up on with the blog, so be prepared for a bunch of posts in a short time!

Emma is looking so much older!

And if you looked closely at some of our pictures after Vermont, you may have noticed Martin sporting a new look. If you missed it before, you cant miss it here:

I really liked it, but it was probably the wrong time to grow insulation seeing as its been 90 degrees so much lately. So now he's back to this:

(And much thanks to Martin for letting me take some very close up pictures of his face!)

Summer Storms

We've had some crazy rainstorms the past week or so here in Delaware. They come up really fast and are intense!

The other day one such rainstorm swept through the neighborhood, and we decided to take full advantage. (check out the tree in our front yard!)

Pizza Johns

You may remember when Martin received Pizza Johns pizzas for Christmas last year. Well those were not the real Pizza Johns, that we only visit about once a year (because it is located in Essex, MD).

The last weekend in July we were going to be close to Essex to go to a wedding, so Martin saw the perfect opportunity to introduce Emma to Martin's favorite food EVER.

We took the obligatory picture with the Pizza Johns pizza man:

And ordered (do you see the delight on Martin's face?):

Pizza Johns:

Martin grew up eating the crust at Pizza Johns before he had teeth, so our plan was to give Emma some crust as well. She was anxious to get her hands on it:

So much so that even the menu looks tasty!

Finally! The moment she had been waiting for:

Well she loved it! (not that we were surprised at all!) And can't wait to go back: