Morning Coffee

Every morning while I drink my coffee, this little beggar eyes up my cup o' joe:

She waits (sometimes more patiently than other times) for my cup to have about this much left:

At which point I give the mug to her:

And that's the end of that!

Tot School: Week of July 19-23

Tot School

Emma is 18.5 months old

Emma has always loved books, so one of the ways I've been working to increase her attention span and ability to sit still is by having her read a book next to me while I'm reading my own book. She is doing great at this! But having a longer attention span has also meant that she would sit for an hour straight and have me read TO her! WHEW! I have to cut her off most days. She's also moved on to picture books that have many more words. We recently enjoyed The Big Honey Hunt (my favorite growing up), One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, and Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb. I had to take Railroad Toad back to the library because Martin and I were quoting it to each other while falling asleep the other night!

This is a great Melissa and Doug piggy bank that Emma never seemed to care about much. I spent some time with her this week showing her how the coins come out and stuff back in, and she had a great time!

This week I also pulled out some Mr. Potato Heads that Emma had never gotten to use. She is fascinated by the little pieces and does a great job getting them in the holes on the Potato Head. She's done a great job playing with this on her own.

Since her fine motor skills seem to be growing by leaps and bounds lately, I pulled out her beads (that we normally just scoop) and gave her pipe cleaner. At first I held the pipe cleaner and her hand to get the bead on, but after she saw what we were doing, she took off with it - no help needed!

Originally I had been turning the bead so that the hole was easier for her to find, but she ended up getting her own beads out of the bag and doing the whole thing by herself. I was really impressed!

After a solid 30 minutes of threading beads, she ended up enjoying the texture more than anything else, and proceeded to bury her hands in the bag of beads and wiggly them around.

We also had fun with textures outside using shaving cream. I'd done this before with Emma and she always cried and tried to just get that stuff off! But this time she really enjoyed playing with it (even though she looks a bit apprehensive).

Well, its looking like Emma prefers the girly side of being a girl! One of her favorite things to do now is to carry her purses around full of stuff! She walks around the room putting little objects in her bag, and then carries the bag off somewhere to examine her treasures. She doesn't have a strong preference for her purse....a bucket will do!

Emma also took a trip to Mommy's nail salon! Such great life skills she's learning!



Big sister training continues with Emma's friend, Kellen. This particular day she wanted to hold him, so they sat on the couch with me and snuggled mostly with each other. Emma loves to give him kisses and hugs and Kellen is enjoying pulling at her hair and sometimes giving kisses back! They are really beginning to play well together!



Mom's Favorite:

Emma is my little tomato loving kid! She would just eat tomatoes if we let her! She has really enjoyed taking a look at our garden every day, helping to water it, and especially checking to see if the tomatoes are ready to be picked. Every time we look at the tomatoes she says "Done!" meaning, they're ready to be picked and I want to eat them!

Jake's

Friday afternoon we traveled north of Wilmington to get our double stroller (check out the full story on Thrifty Living). We planned to go out to Jake's for burgers afterwards and were really looking forward to seeing what Emma would do with her own burger! (Kids get a free meal when you buy an adult meal!)

She ended up eating about half of her burger, which is a pretty good feat, considering how many fries she ate too! She did a great job feeding herself, with only a little help. Things got much more distracting when she realized there was a tomato on her burger...this kid LOVES tomatoes!

Babies!

Over the weekend, I got to meet this adorable little lady for the first time:

She is the daughter of our good friends from college, and was just one week old. The great thing is that she is only a year and a half younger than Emma and will be just 3 months older than our little boy!

I think they will be great friends!

Indiana Jones

While the BSO was warming up before the concert, I immediately recognized this classic Williams and knew Sarah would be sad to have missed it.

Unfortunately, I was unable to get the whole thing because Emma decided she was ready to finish eating and sat on my lap!

Star Wars Subway car ride

This is amazing!

This is a bit much...

Now I'm a big fan of Pride and Prejudice (the book first and foremost, but also the long-enough-to-be-mostly-true-to-the-book mini-series/movie), and I've even asked Martin what he thought about the middle name of Darcy for our yet to be born son, but I would not wear a shirt with Darcy's proposal, no matter how eloquent it is...


But if that's your thing, I won't judge (actually I will, but I'll try to keep it a secret! lol).



(via 22words)

Tot School

Tot School
Emma is 18 months

This is a bit of a catch-up Tot School post, encompassing the last 2 weeks.

Painting is a huge favorite still. In this picture, Emma is twisting the brush on the page. I dip the brush in the paint for her and often twist it to get it fully coated with paint. She's picked up the technique!



Emma is really enjoying stacking bristle blocks (as well as lego style blocks). She has gotten really good at sitting and building for longer periods of time.


The School Bus is also a current favorite. She puts all manner of toys inside and then pushes it around the room making car noises. She's also great at opening and closing the doors of the school bus, and trying to get her chosen items out through the doors. This doesn't work so great with many of the things that often end up in the bus!


Emma is still our little music lover. I'd really like to take some of the credit, since I played the drums at church until I was 8 months+ pregnant with her....We went to see the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra play for the 4th of July and Emma was beside herself with joy the entire concert. She clapped (often in time/rhythm) to the music and danced and squealed.


When she couldn't hold it in any longer those hands just went up in the air!


Being pregnant during this crazy hot summer has made many of our tot school activities center around staying cool

in the pool...

finding new books... (Railroad Toad, Bob and Otto, The Eye Book)

and puzzles at the library...

Emma has come out with several new words lately, the most exciting of which are more (which she has signed since about 8 months) and MAMA!! :-)

Emma has gotten to have some sweet Daddy time lately too...

Reading books together on the floor,

and a lesson from Daddy on how to make pizza (with a theology lesson about common grace mixed in!)

My sister, the scientist

My sister, Sarah, works for NOAA and is currently in the Gulf of Mexico on a research cruise to study the effects of the oil spill. They will be taking samples that she will likely be studying over the next several months. She is actually leading the plankton sampling! Here is a video from the Miami Herald about the cruise. Sarah is in the purple shirt around 35 seconds in to the clip!

Music lover

I'm working on sorting through and editing the many, many pictures from the weekend -- we had such a wonderful time that I'll try to detail this week. For now, I'll leave you with this video of Emma at Oregon Ridge enjoying the BSO...

Book List: June

I read some really interesting books this past month, so I thought I would share them, along with a few of my thoughts. You can also "look inside" each book by following the links to Amazon. Sometimes its nice to get to read a few pages, even with someone's recommendation.


I enjoy a great deal of C. S. Lewis's books. Till We Have Faces probably does not make my top 5 Lewis books, at least after the first reading. I think a lot of it just went over my head, but that I would get a lot more out of it on a second reading. I'm going to wait a year or so and then dive back in, I think.










I really enjoyed reading this book! Its the story of a man whose father was one of the 7 founders of Hamas, but converted to Christianity. His life changed so drastically, and the book is basically the history of growing up in a devout Muslim family, being imprisoned as a terrorist, working undercover in Hamas as a spy for Israel (thus thwarting many terrorist activities), and then converting to Christianity. He has so much insight on what has been happening in the Middle East over the last 50 years or so, and the book is well worth a read. Just yesterday the United States government dropped a deportation hearing against Mosab and has granted him asylum in the US (read more in this article).





I've enjoyed a number of John Grisham books over the last year and half, and while this was not my favorite, it was very good. I usually get them on audio book from the library, which is how I read The Last Juror. This one is set in Ford County, Mississippi during the 1970s and has some interesting commentary on small town life, Vietnam, and especially the penal system. I also enjoyed that it was hard to tell exactly where the book was going, as the "main" story (the trial) ended around a third of the way through the book.







And finally, I just finished The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society yesterday. This is one of my new favorite books! It is entirely fictional letters written in the aftermath of World War II, and really reminded me of a Jane Austin novel, just set in the more modern era. Because it is made up of letters, many of which are just a few sentences long, it was easy to pick up and read just a few pages...but also easy to keep reading long after a few pages had passed! This is another one that I will plan to read again. It would make a great beach book for the summer too!