It's Fall, Ya'll!

Oh we have been so busy that I haven't even had time to write. Once I got home from SF, Emmy has kept me on my toes. We went to the pumpkin patch and she and Lucas had a fabulous times. They had a petting zoo and pig races and corn mazes but also a little hay maze for the kiddos. All kinds of fun.

This was as close as we got to the pony ride. She almost lost her mind when I put her on that pony!! She was all about it until we got there and then, well, things didn't go so well. We even called Dadoo in for reinforcement but no luck.It is hard to get a good measurement on how tall they are with the hugging and all, but it's safe to say that they are edging up on 3 feet tall!

And then of course, you have to carve the pumpkin. Here Emmy is helping Dadoo. "Emmy, how do the pumpkin insides feel?" "Blah!""Emmy, what do you think of Mama's carving?" "Ohhh! Amazing!"Be careful! Pumpkin inards are slimy!!!!But, the best part of this week is our sweet Lucas's second birthday. That boy is part genius, part prankster and all around lovable. I remember the day that sweet boy arrived as if it were yesterday--Tara the whole time trying to convince me that it really wasn't that painful (I was 5 months pregnant!) I couldn't believe how perfect and tiny he was and here he is, just as perfect but not so tiny. And a darn good little golfer! He got a hole in one at his party!

And this picture is so sweet to me... Teri Ann is Jorge's little sister and I remember when I was hanging out with all those Cross County boys, going to BearKat (her mom worked there at the time) and TA would come running up to give me a huge hug everytime I came in the store. And now, here she is, a beautiful, independant young lady. I like to think I have a part in that--:).

More San Fran Stuff...

I have a pair of black shoes that are really cute. If anyone would like them, they are going to be left on the window of the sixth floor of the Mark Hopkins International. I will never put them on again in my life. Today, I thought I would jump on the cablecar and hop on over to Lombard (the crookedest street in the world) to take a few pictures and then just hop back to the hotel. Since I was so sure that this was going to be an easy trip, I didn't even bother changing clothes or shoes after my conference today.

At the first misstep, I should have known. The cablecar was out but they said that there was a bus that would be a substitute so there was no problem. I did get to Lombard, but I got dropped off two miles downhill from the crooked area, but the cablecar goes directly by the tourist spot. Off I took walking, from a spot somewhere in the midst of where the trees are. I am really glad I did so that I could get some pictures but wow. My feet!!!!!

So, I get back on the cablecar to go back to the hotel and of course, went the wrong way and ended up back down at Fisherman's Wharf. ARGH! I ate down there again and then got in line to get on the cablecar coming back to the hotel. Finally! I get on the car and I am in the middle of about twenty fifty-ish year old French people. Of course, being the Southern girl, I offered a lady my seat... and she took it! "Merci!" she said. Not sure of how to reply in French, I just smiled, and tried not to step on her as I got thrown around the cablecar. Then, the car says it's last stop... what???????? I asked the conducter what was going on and he said that I was a lovely healthy woman and I could certainly make it three more blocks. So, here I go again, trucking it... but this time I took off my shoes.

Someone told me that there was a grocery store about three blocks down so I thought as long as my feet were bleeding, I would head down there to get a beer and a coke for the morning (there are no vending machines in the hotel). I walked and walked and walked. I befriended some residents on the way and we discussed the rental rates of the really cool apartments. I found out that the one bedrooms were about $3k a month. I told them about MY house with the full basement that was around $150k to own. They were not amused.

Finally getting to the grocery store was a treat since I got to see the first real parking lot I have seen since my arrival!

On the walk back, I heard a doorman ask a valet to get his SUV (one of the very few SUVs I have seen this week by the way) and told him that it was a tight squeeze but he knew he could do it.

Yep, that is pretty tight! As I rounded the corner to the hotel, in my sockfeet, I heard a car alarm and I am almost positive it was the valet hitting either the car in front or behind him.

As I was looking for a restaurant last night, I saw this stand. The idea of clam chowder from a temporary stand kind of freaks me out.

I ended up eating at Tarantinos' last night because, well, it was calling my name.
Tonight, I ate at Cioppino's. As wonderful as both meals were, and as much as a I have enjoyed this trip, I can say that any of this would have only been better with a buddy.

Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco Treat

I am sure that Rice-a-Roni is a treat for some San Franciscans. Mainly, a treat when you open the pantry and see that box and think excitedly, "I don't have to walk up and down those hills tonight! I get to eat Rice-a-Roni for dinner!" I had no Rice-a-Roni in my super snazzy room at the Mark Hopkins Intercontinental and I wanted to get some sightseeing in so I took off walking. Finding a great sushi place, I decided to stop in, even though I bet this place has sangrias that are just as good as those at Cafe Ole :). Okay, maybe better.

Walking back up the hills to the hotel, I absolutely had to stop and take a little break so I called to check in with Daddy. I called to check in on Emmy Ruth and Neall and Becca claim that she is being just an angel, so as Becca said her mom said about her, I am afraid of her hanging up her halo when she gets home. I miss her so much already; I can't imagine how ready I will be to get her by Friday night when I get home.

I like this sign about preventing runaways.

And here is the most romantic restaurant (see! it says it right there on the awning!) and I am without John. I tried to make him feel really guilty about not being here with me and he pretended to feel badly but I am pretty sure he will be over that guilt when he enjoys all of his faux bachelorhood.My conference starts tomorrow morning at 7am so I have to be up bright and early but I hope to go see some more fun stuff tomorrow evening. I really want to get down to the Golden Gate Bridge and take some photos and maybe even Fisherman's Wharf. For now, I am going to go to sleep listening to the trolley right outside my window. It's quite neat.

I really, really miss my girl. I can't wait to get back to her soon!!

Twenty months

I say it again, "how did we get here so quickly?" Today marks my sweet girl's 20th month with us. And we all have made it!! That in itself is amazing. Emmy is doing the sweetest and funniest things lately. If you ask her something she doesn't know, she will throw her arms up and say "Idunnnnoooo". She absolutely loves her Daddy more than ever and is really getting good at sitting in the shopping cart at stores and in the highchair at restaurants. There is nothing she won't eat but she certainly loves tatertots from Sonic, just like her Daddy.

Emmy has this best dance moves ever! She loves Devo. Literally loves Devo. It's so funny. Yo Gabba Gabba! is this cartoon that has some help from the singer from Devo on it and she loves the show. When I say she loves it, I mean that the commercials alone will make her jump with joy and squeal with delight. Victor's phone has a ring tone with Devo playing and she will immediately stop whatever she is doing and dance when it rings. Yo Gabba Gabba! is the first thing that she really has "picked" on her own and I love to see her getting so excited.

Another fun thing is that she is starting to enjoy reading books and will pick out her favorite to read over and over. Something unusual to us is that we think she is left handed. In this picture, she is coloring a birthday card for Aunt Becca and she is using her right hand but she alternated back and forth between the two. No, that isn't her bottle beside her, well, it's hers, but she uses it now to feed "Baby".

I leave bright and early tomorrow for San Francisco so I took Emmy to Wynne to spend the week with Neall, Becca and Solomon. They are going to have so much fun but I am going to miss her terribly. John, on the other hand, might lose his mind. He went to Nashville for a few days for work when Emmy was about six weeks old but since then, he has never been away from her for more than one night. They got lots of good snuggle time in last night though so hopefully he will be able to make it. Now, Solomon and Emmy on the other hand... if the two of them were any cuter, I couldn't stand it. They are so precious and the love each other so much. When we got to the house, Solomon shared his crackers with Emmy and then Emmy chased him around to give him kisses. She even shared her monster from Yo Gabba Gabba! with him. That was something. Daddy met us for lunch and he and Emmy got some good bonding time today and he always love to see the tiny munchkins.

We are so lucky!

Fun weekend!

On Friday night, Emmy stayed with Nana (Mrs. Alice). I would love to say that John and I had a romantic evening out but instead, I took a nap after work and John woke me up at 830 when he came to bed for the night! Whew! We really are party animals!

After a lovely night's rest, we got up on Saturday and meet everyone at Overton Park and then went to the zoo. It was us, the Salinases, Nana and Claudia (Jorge's niece). We had so much fun and of course, we got a picture of Emmy with the Buddha! She is tickling his foot in this picture.Emmy absolutley loves the polar bears. Her AunTee was so sweet and let her sit in her lap to watch them eat their fish popsicles.As usual, Emmy is all about Daddy.Panda bears are always a big hit as well.She was a little tired when we left. I don't think we even got out of the parking lot before she feel asleep.

Fiesta!

I got Momma this Mexican hat chip and dip bowl one year and she loved to torture people with it! Of course, I had to make sure that it came home with us when we cleaned out her kitchen. Emmy found it the other day and played with it for hours. I know that her Yia Yia was smiling and doing a little dance as she continued to play it over and over!

The Secret

Apparently, the secret to a happy bath is to leave out the water.

More bathroom drama...

I have had it! Nineteen months of screaming for baths. I am at my wit's end. I don't know what else to do. I give her baths with one toy, with no toys, with so many rubber ducks that there is barely room in the tub for her. I have tried taking a bath with her (and there really wasn't much room for her then!). My friend Rebecca gave her a bath with her daughter Grace and had her wash the duck's face and then washed her face and that worked for a little while but she is against that now too. Emmy was doing okay with taking baths for a while as long as I let her stand up in the tub, as opposed to sitting down, and that was fine with me! No screaming--well, until we started bathing. She would get all her ducks out and line them up on the side of the tub and then I would quickly wash her off before she had time to fuss too much. But, now that isn't good for her either.

The other night, we gave her and Lucas a bath together. Lucas was doing belly flops and trying to drink the water and Emmy stood at the foot of the tub and screamed.

I will admit that it helps her go to sleep at night. After all that screaming and crying, she is exhausted and goes right to sleep when I get her back in my arms.

I really don't like to clean house

I don’t like to clean but more importantly, I just really don’t know how to clean, I am just not good at it. But, on Sunday, I decided to clean the bathroom. It took me over three hours!

Emmy continued to run in the bathroom to see what was going on that she wasn’t invited. Of course, trying to corral her in the living room with John didn’t work out well. The next thing I know, she has the Scrubbing Bubbles can nozzle in her mouth! After a call to the pediatrician and the Poison Control Center, all was fine and I could get back to work. Then, I noticed how dirty the caulk looked in the bathroom so I went ahead and ripped all of that out and put new caulk in. By this time, I had gotten Emmy down for a nap and I had John down in the basement working on super cleaning the dryer vent. I was trying to help my tile grout look a little better by letting bleach sit on it for a while when John calls out asking why there is bleach dripping on to him. Oops. (He later tried to tell me that before he went to the basement, he was a dark luxurious tan and I had bleached him to this color he is now.)

Tuesday morning just after midnight, I woke up vomiting everywhere. As I was all up close and personal with my toilet and John was putting a wet rag on my neck, I cried out, “and I just cleaned the bathroom!”

Girls' Night

We had planned a big girls' night a few weeks ago. The plan was to leave the kiddos with the daddies and go out but we ended up staying at home with them! This was a much more fun anyway...

Pictures

check out Sol's birthday post for new updated pictures!

Mama's home and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

Well, that's not exactly true. I got her a LeapFrog jambox and a pair of "crocs" that were $1 at Wal-Mart--I am really trying to get through the warm weather without buying any more shoes for Emmy! But, then I realized that I didn't get her anything that I couldn't have gotten at home so I got her this shirt that is way too big for her but she can sleep in it. And she did just that last night!

Emmy squealed when she saw me but then reverted back to Dadoo; I am telling myself it is only because she was with him for so long and it will take her a few days to get back into the groove of being with me too. I think she rather enjoyed having him to all herself. She woke up at 5am and refused to snuggle with me--only her Dadoo.

I am so happy to be home!!!!

Learning the hard way...

Never try to feed a 19 month old Taco Bell at lunch. At least not if you plan on wearing back to work what you originally were wearing.

I feel as if I am missing a piece of me without my camera. I long to have Her back.

Teaching me something new every day

First of all, I feel as if I am missing a limb of my own body without my camera. Actually, I have the camera but no cord to download the photos. I feel naked and empty when I can't look at my pictures!

A few weeks ago, I decided that Emmy Ruth needed to learn to sit in the shopping cart at Wal-Mart. Until she was a year old, she was of course in the infant carrier and I just popped her in there. Then, she was okay with sitting and went through a phase where she just didn't mind sitting in the cart. Then, she was bound and determined NOT to sit in the shopping cart. Up and at 'em. I usually ended up carrying her around the store. A few weeks ago, I refused to get her out of the cart. That child literally screamed around the entire store. An employee even brought her a tissue. (I asked for a drink but she wasn't so generous with me.) The next time, she cried about 80% of the way around the store and so on it went.

This morning, I plopped her in the shopping cart only to find that the belt was broken and it was just such a hassle to move her and we were only going to be in there for a few minutes. Emmy Ruth did not even attempt to get out one time! I even went to look at John a new lunch box since she was doing so well. I couldn't believe it.

We gave each other high-fives on the way to the car and she just giggled and giggled. So funny.

What a weekend!

Our sweet Solomon turned one on Friday and we celebrated his birthday in a grand style on Saturday. He was absolutely adorable with green icing all over his face and outfit. I can't wait to go through all the pictures. He and Emmy are just so sweet and seeing so many friends and people we have known forever is just great fun. Momma's Girl. Emmy has to have a purse everywhere she goes. So, she carried this one on Saturday to the party. It was a purse of Momma's. It was so sweet to see her carrying a purse that her Yia Yia carried flitting around town.
Emmy really likes cake and ice cream. After she ate hers, she begged LynnLynn and Granny to feed her more!

After the party, we headed back to Memphis for the Cooper Young Festival. Joy and Julia brough Mary Margaret and Maggie Grace over for a big afternoon. It was great to just wander around and visit all the booths. We had sushi as soon as we arrived at the festival too. Emmy Ruth had three pieces! I think Joy was as proud of Emmy eating sushi as she was when the girl first started walking! Joy and Mary Margaret were both 'girls' that Momma thought so much of. I know that she would have loved seeing us with 'our girls' hanging out.

Nineteen months old

This weekend, Emmy Ruth turned 19 months old. I can't believe it. That is so close to two years old!! She is still all about her Daddy. We are learning more and more of our body parts and she still loves to tickle bellies. She will pull our shirts up so that she can get a better tickling on us.

Bath time is going much better: I finally just stopped forcing her to sit down in the tub. There is a mat so that she won't slip and she gets all her duckies out and sets them on the edge of the tub. There is one bath toy that I got years ago of a wrestler--bald and with a goatee. Emmy sets it out and says, "Hi, Daddy" every time. It is hysterical! She still isn't thrilled when the actual bathing process is going on but she will put every toy back when it is time to get out and she even drains the tub for me. So very helpful!!

Reading is getting a lot more fun too since she babbles back at the books now. She still isn't so thrilled with sitting through an entire book (I mean that could be five to ten pages!) so we often read the first page, then the last page and maybe a middle page in there somewhere.

This morning, Emmy put on a size 6 tennis shoe! I can't believe how tall and beautiful our little girl has become.

Traitor

Every day that Emmy has gone to the sitter's, I have driven her there and home. That correlates to me driving over the bridge once to take her, once to get back to work, once to pick up Emmy, and once to get home. My car could easily drive there by itself, I sometimes think. Usually, Emmy can see me coming through the sliding door at MiMi's and will run to me calling "Mama!!!"

Last week, since I was off work, I took Emmy to the sitter on Thursday and Friday so that I could get some things done at home. Friday afternoon, John got home from work a little early, so he rode with me to pick up Emmy. The look on her little face was sheer delight. Now, every afternoon this week when I open the door, she cries, "Daddy???" For hundreds of times I have picked up Emmy from the sitter's, she is now searching for him and is terribly upset when he is not there!

Hmph, does Daddy buy you fruit smoothies from Sonic??? I think not!

It's that time of the year!!

Saturday, Tara remarked how she loved this time of the year--cooler weather (well, somewhat) and festivals! We stopped at the Germantown Festival for a bit and the kids enjoyed riding the car, Lucas moreso than Emmy, but a good time all around. We are looking forward to the Cooper Young Festival this weekend after Sol's party. It should be a great time.
We are not looking forward to the game Saturday though!

The Rest of the Week

Well this has not been a really productive vacation, I must admit. Today, I was determined to take a nap. But, this was also the day that MLGW came to read the meters. Our outside dogs, Luke and Anna, were barking like mad for several hours. I lay in bed for an hour and finally jumped and ran outside telling them to shut up!!!!!!!! There was work that I needed to do anyway so I finished painting the front door. It looks so nice. I can't wait to get the handle and locks installed so I can put before and after pictures on here.

I have a phobia. A real problem. I am terrified of mice. Hate them. Last night, John felt awful so I said that I would feed the outside dogs if he would bring in the dog food from the car. As he was filling up the Rubbermaid container in the mudroom, I stood in the kitchen talking to him with the door open. That little monster ran in the kitchen and I began screaming. The rabid beast hit the wall and ran back out to the mudroom, thank God! I said to John, "you know I can't go through there to feed the dogs now, right?" He said that yes he knew but he was just glad that I didn't lock he and Emmy in the mudroom.

Today is the seven year anniversary that I married the love of my life. At the mall. After we got married, we had lunch at the Olive Garden by the Mall of Memphis. There were a group of older African American women wearing huge hats and John took a picture of them calling it "our reception". He is just as witty and charming today as he was then and I am so thankful for him putting up with me for the past seven years. And for giving me my Emmy Ruth.

I couldn't make up this...

I asked Emmy who loved her and she said... "Puppy Bill". I am sure that our dog Bill does love her, but I was really hoping for a "Mama" in answer to that.

As Rudy Giuliani spoke, Emmy yelped, "whoo-hoo!" Honestly, I couldn't make up this!!!

Happy Birthday????

Yesterday, we had big plans to go to visit Dr. Neall and then have lunch with Papa Richie, who had an appointment with Dr. Becca. But, Emmy woke us up around midnight to get in our bed and then again around 2am with vomit. We all got in the full size bed in her room then and cancelled our trip to Wynne. Thankfully, she had several "blow-outs" during the day but no more puking. Tara and Mrs. Alice were so good to us and let her spend the night with each of them this weekend and she ended up giving all of them a stomach virus as well!!! I felt awful, and I know Em did too. We are lucky that John and I seem to have only gotten a 'touch' of the bug--not full fledged like the rest of them. Urgh!

Today, I kept her at home with me again, just to make sure she didn't get anyone else sick, so all of my vacation projects are still on hold. Maybe tomorrow!

It was a wonderful birthday with lots of great wishes from friends and family. I am so lucky to have gotten cards and calls from friends from Arkansas to Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Pretty cool. And pretty cool to have a sweet monkey girl that sings and dances on command. I was washing dishes and she came in the kitchen and said, "Dance, Mama!" So I did. And she did. Best birthday dance ever.