Belly shot

A few weeks ago we threw a baby shower for our friend (expecting a little girl!) and got this cute picture. At the time of the picture we were about 35 weeks and 22 weeks along (if I got my math right).

More Emma and Kellen

These two have some really cute moments! The other day Kellen found that he liked to hold on to Emma's ponytail...


Too cute!

She didn't know quite what to think, but it didn't really bother her. She is going to be so ready to have a little brother!

And Kellen has even started giving kisses back!!

Three Years Ago...

Our first day as Mr. & Mrs.!

Tot School

Emma is 17 months old. Read more about Tot School at 1+1+1=1.

One of the goals of many of our Tot School activities over the past few weeks has been to get Emma better prepared to feed herself using a fork and spoon. She is still struggling with the scooping concept, but stabbing is coming along nicely! She fed herself several different things this week with a fork, including scrambled eggs twice!

Both Martin and I are not big fans of long-term sippy cup use. We first started having Emma try to drink a sip from our cups when she was just a year or so. Lately, she has been able to drink from a cup by herself (with a lot of supervision though!). She only gets a little bit of water in her cup, and we found that the taller cup works better than something shorter because she does not always remember to get the cup in her mouth before she starts tipping it!

We are still working on animal noises using her Melissa & Doug puzzles. Cow and sheep are the focuses still. This week Emma enjoyed pointing at the animals and waiting for me to tell her the sound they make - I think this is progress! I also worked on her asking for help to get a piece in all the way instead of getting upset, and she did much better.

She also enjoyed playing puzzles with her feet!

Books are always a favorite for Emma, but I have a few new goals for her. One is working on her reading independantly while sitting next to me. I actually read in my own book while she read hers!

In the same vein of trying to help her lengthen her attention span, we've been introducing books on tape/cd. I get these from the library, and most of them are way more advanced because they have so many words. I think this will become a favorite before too long, though!

Our big activity for the week was fingerpainting! I made homemade finger paints (see Thrifty Living for the recipe and instructions). Emma usually gets very upset when her fingers are messy, so I knew it would be an uphill battle. I made her stick her hand in the paint initially and she was not happy!

But she did warm up and made some paintings for Daddy for Fathers Day.

We did it a second day, this time painting on the sidewalk instead of paper. Again, she was hesitant at first...

But eventually warmed up to the idea!

Moms Favorite:

Fathers Day 2010

What a week, what a week

This was probably one of the crazier weeks we've ever had...and most of the craziness managed to pack itself into the weekend and Monday...

Saturday morning I was hosting a surprised baby shower at 11. It was around 9:30 when Martin and I were cleaning up breakfast and I decided to wipe down the counters in the kitchen. I thought I could smell natural gas, which was a little odd because we had not cooked anything on the stove that morning. But I've had a more acute sense of smell being pregnant, so I was not too worried. Martin came over and sniffed and thought I might be smelling the (recently cleaned) cast iron skillet that cooked out fish tacos the night before. We determined that was it and moved on.

Martin went outside for something, and when he came back in the house told me that it smelled like gas as soon as he came in. I tested it too and agreed. Crap. And so the whirlwind began...

We ended up calling the gas emergency number, and they were able to have someone at our house within half an hour. Meanwhile, Martin had me and Emma stay in the front yard and out of the house, while I tried to figure out what I was going to do about the shower. We ended up moving it to our friends' house just a few houses down, which was huge. Martin called the husband of the new mommy to tell him to head to their house because of our gas leak, which covered the surprise part well. And my other neighbor offered me her oven to bake my cinnamon rolls for the shower.

The guy from the gas company said it seemed like our stove was leaking even when it was off, which would mean contacting the appliance company directly, but that we needed to have a high pressure test done first to rule out a pipe leak. Our friend's father is a heating and air conditioning guy, and he told us he could come and look at it Monday morning. That just meant no cooking on the stove or hot water for the rest of the weekend, which really was not too terrible. I planned 'no oven meals' for the whole week, and we took a shower at a neighbor's house.

Monday morning we had the pressure test done and got the bad news...the pressure was not holding, which meant there was a leak somewhere. Meanwhile....Martin stayed worked from home Monday and the guy he was carpooling with drove our car. We got a call when he was halfway to Wilmington that the car would not shift to 4th, which probably meant a transmission issue. Martin had noticed it driving a little funny Sunday on the way home from church too. We were able to drop the car off in town on Monday, hoping they could just verify if it was transmission (which they did; it shifted from 1st to 3rd for them, totally skipping 2nd). But when Martin drove it home from the shop it seemed completely normal again. Tricky, nasty hobbitses car.

So that brings us to Tuesday morning. They found the leak in less than 30 minutes. A pipe in our maintenance room was not screwed on tightly, and had probably been like that since we moved in! We are so thankful that it has never been something more serious! The pressure test held this time, so our gas was turned back on Tuesday afternoon.

Our plan for the weekend is to sell Martin's car. We've been talking about it for months now, so it makes the decision a little easier. Martin will carpool (I guess its more carmooch if you don't have a car to share) somedays, and take the bus somedays. Its a little bit of a walk for the bus, but since its summer, that is not really a problem. Now we just need to hope that we'll actually get something for a 1993 car that probably needs a new transmission...at least its a Honda!

And to top all of that off, Emma came down with a bit of a cold. Really, that isn't hardly worth mentioning, except that she had no voice on Monday, which made her sound completely pitiful. Actually her cold has been a bit of a blessing, because she's been sleeping a lot more, including sleeping in until 9 some mornings!

We're hoping for a much more relaxing weekend over the next few days!

Tot School

Emma is 17 months old. We had a really fun week with our different "tot school" activities. It seems like new skills often come all at once! Check out Tot School at 1+1+1=1.

Emma enjoyed playing with her new poof balls in different containers throughout the week. I give her various scoops and little bowls to move the balls back and forth between. She has to keep the balls on the blanket (much like our bead activity). This makes clean up easier and helps me see when she's getting bored (because the balls start to end up way off the blanket). I think the structure of having to play in a specific place has really helped her, and she knows when I put out a blanket on the floor to come and sit down for something fun to play with!

We've been doing a lot with fine motor skills, especially trying to teach her some more practical things. After she got bored of the balls, she was still interested in playing with the Ziplock container. She learned how to get the lid on by herself, and with only a little bit of instruction, how to get the lid off by looking for the corner with the large tab!

She concentrated very hard on this!

We also did several things with pipe cleaners. She enjoyed putting them in different vases, which required her to put them in vertically. She also put them in the small cubbies in our table, which required her to place them horizontally.

Emma loves to help with the garden outside. Usually I give her the watering can, but this day she was all about the hose. I locked the water on and she watered for me!

This girl loves to paint the sidewalk! I mix up paint with equal parts cornstarch and water, and add a little food coloring. We use a foam paintbrush for her to paint with (thanks to Tisha for the great idea!) and she goes to town.

She is also totally obsessed with shoes. Lately, she's been asking to put on shoes when we're just hanging out around the house. Gotta love this outfit.

She also loves to play with my Crocs, and since they are slip-ons, she can get mine on her feet by herself. She has learned to walk in them also! Yesterday she walked through the whole downstairs in them, even doing a 180 degree turn. She lost her balance and fell several times, but her determination was so great that she never even got frustrated by falling.

Her love for shoes has also helped her to learn matching it seems. She was playing with one of my shoes and I told her to go find the other one that matched it. She was able to find the matching shoe in just seconds, out of a pile of many other shoes!

Mom's Favorite: Hard to choose between my sweet little girl looking so grow up or her loving on her little buddy!

NEXT

Over Memorial Day weekend, Martin and I volunteered (as ushers) at NEXT, a conference for college-age, 20- and 30-somethings, and really anyone else. The conference was at the Baltimore Conventional Center, which made it really easy for us, since we were able to stay just 15 minutes away at my parents' house!

Our responsibilities were pretty easy, and we ended up having a blast. There were around 20 ushers, and we were mainly in charge of checking to make sure everyone coming into the sessions had a wrist band or some other type of access pass. People were generally very cooperative, though I'm sure a few got annoyed when we made them go back and get their wrist band so they could use the bathroom!

We also had to monitor saving seats, which was by far the hardest part. Technically, people were only allowed to save 2 seats -- one for themselves, and one for a friend. Unfortunately, I don't think this rule was ever told to anyone, except by a friendly usher letting a solitary conference-goer know they could not save an entire row. Again, people worked pretty well with this, which can be chalked up to the high number of Christians I suppose. Our fearless leader did a great job reminding us that just because it was a Christian conference did not mean that everyone was a Christian...and even those who were Christians were still sinners just like us! He encouraged us to correct and instruct in a grace-filled way, and I believe this really helped how people responded as well.

We had to take shifts during the session checking wrist bands, but we were still able to participate in the singing and listen to all of the messages. All of the messages are available online for FREE on the NEXT site. Speakers included Josh Harris, Mark Dever, Kevin DeYoung (twice), C.J. Mahaney, D.A. Carson, and Jeff Purswell. We also got personally thanked by Josh Harris at our first ushers meeting (and he really is really, really short...in fact, they had a podium for him to preach from that was a good 4-6 inches shorter than everyone else!).

It was a really great weekend for the 2 of us to spend together; it was really like a mini-vacation! Emma had fun with Omi and Pap Pap and we saw her for a few minutes every morning before we headed out. I really wanted to get a video of the mad rush of people sprinting to save seats when we opened the doors, but alas, I was too busy trying not to get trampled (and telling people about the 2 seat rule!). Perhaps next year!

Little Buddies

These two were so cute the other day. Both of them had just woken up from great naps and were in really good moods. I had a hard time picking a favorite, so there are a bunch!

Check out that cute, chubby guy!

So sweet! Emma loves Kellen.

I guess if I had to pick a favorite, it would be this one! Double trouble!

Baby Dunphy Update: Its a ....

BOY!

Wow! We were a little surprised because we do have so many girls on both sides of our families, but this pregnancy has been so different that we were thinking it might be a boy.



He is healthy, everything looks great and is working, which is most important. He weighs about 15oz and is measuring about a week ahead, but my due date is not being changed at this point.

In this picture he's doing the Star Trek 'live long and prosper' thing with his hand...we're going to have to introduce Star Wars early it looks like!



And we got a nice surprise of having some 3D pictures! Its still early for them to look great, but it is very cool.

This is a great side shot of his shoulder, left arm, and side of face.

And this was probably the best face picture, as far as seeing features. You can see his hand up in front of his mouth.

We are very excited to meet this little one in October!