16 months and st. patty's day.

i feel like this blog is benjamin button...i am going in reverse order of how things happened, but that is just the way it is today.  back in early march, emme turned 16 months old.  16 months is a funny milestone for me because that is how old i was when my parents had my little brother.  it's so crazy to try to imagine what our lives would be like if we were bringing home a sibling right now.  clearly, that was not in the plan for our lives at this current juncture, but it's fun imagining nonetheless.
what can i say about emme at 16 months?  everything really just keeps getting better and better, if that's even possible.  other than the chronic ear infection(s), ek is a healthy, happy toddler.  she is busy and extremely curious all the time.  her language is taking off which makes life easier for all of us.  i have lost count of all the words she says - writing this after the fact, i can say that her speech is even better after the tubes.  she loves to make animal sounds.  she loves books.  she wants to be outside as much as possible.  she adores her swing.  she loves bath time with dada (mostly because he encourages as much splashing as possible).  her daily reports at school frequently touch on her great sense of rhythm and her infatuation with anything in the sky.  e's relationship with our pets is a great source of happiness for me...she is so gentle with them and calls them each by name.  she gets so excited to see the dogs when we get home from school in the afternoon.  as the intense animal lover i am, i am so glad that she delights in our furry family members as much as i do.  and they seem to love her too, with the possible exception of pippa the cat, who can only sometimes be bothered to tolerate any of our affections.  she is a great sleeper and a great eater, when i can admit it to myself.  i am such an obnoxious worrier that i will occasionally convince myself that she's finicky, even though i know she is far from it.  she weighs about 22 pounds and is getting tall.  her head is still ginormous.  she is still missing her two outer front teeth, but is getting her lower canines, bringing total teeth up to 12!  her hair is wispy and curly and getting blonder...i am not sure where the blondness or the curls come from, but her hair texture is definitely that of kk and her daddy.  emmeline can be a total ham and is happiest when she can dictate the agenda, but everyone is paying attention to her.  she loves the park and i have a feeling we will be spending a great number of hours on slides.  not surprisingly, her stubborn streak continues to make an appearance and, as one of her teachers so eloquently put it, "she's got a little sass in her".  she is not the most graceful child - sadly for her, she may take after her mother in this arena, although i'm optimistic that the tubes will help in this department too.  she is still rather cautious, but that is just fine with me.  i am STILL nursing her...once a day, in the mornings.  i keep trying to break it off, but i just can't say no.  sigh.  eventually, i will wean this baby.  i never thought i would be an extended breastfeeder - one year seemed like a very reasonable goal to me....anyway...i can't say that i mind it, honestly.  it's been a wonderful thing and i feel so lucky to have had such an easy time with it.  i imagine it won't be long before it's over - too brief in the grand scheme of things.
i could go on and on.  i love this little mosquito so much.  she is a hoot, and clearly the best thing that's ever happened to us.  below are lots of pictures we took over the course of st. patty's day weekend.  that was a little later than her official 16 months, but i had been saving this dress (an adorable gift from kerry anne) and we loved taking all these pictures of her on our new deck and in the bluebonnets.  we also had a delicious traditional irish lunch on st. patty's day that mike prepared - corned beef, cabbage, soda bread, etc.  it was delicious, and i don't like any of those dishes.
and now for the embarrassing onslaught of pictures...

visiting big joe.

nearly a month ago, in mid-to-late march, kk and emme and i took a trip to minneapolis to visit big joe.  joe has been living in minnesota for nearly 8 years now, and he is moving back to louisiana after he finishes school this may.  embarrassingly, i had never been up there to visit him (a wedding, two moves, graduate school, and a baby are my excuses...), so we decided it was now or never.  plus, it's my goal to visit all fifty states, so i needed to knock minnesota off my list!
we expected to have a good time, but i don't think any of us were prepared for how much fun we actually had.  emme was a trooper, despite her ongoing ear infection.  she barely napped and was up until nearly 10 every night...and she remained in a great mood throughout the whole trip.  i will try to tell the story of the weekend with the inundation of pictures i took.  as an aside, this trip made me really really appreciate our typical family photographer, justin.  i am just too distractible to take great pictures, i think.  so....lots of pics that are overexposed, somewhat blurry, etc.  alas...at least i took pictures!

so, the trip out was super easy.  we flew out early thursday, with a connection in denver.  emme LOVES planes - she points to every airplane that flies overhead and can hear them and starts looking for them to show us.  because of this love, being in airports and on an actual plane were super thrilling events for her (i don't know that she remembers her earlier flights to florida and jamaica).  she would fall asleep on kk sometime in the midst of take-off and slept through each flight.  awesome.

big joe was at the airport to pick us up and he went right for emme.  it took her a minute to figure out that he was cool, but by the time we left lunch, they were old pals.  we dropped off our gear at the hotel, had lunch at a really yummy place (one of those hippie austin places, according to my brother), then we hit the mall of america.  

i am not a shopper.  i do not enjoy malls as a general rule.  this is why i look like a hobo most days, but i digress.  the mall of america is like a destination.  it's insane - it's probably bigger than vatican city.  it's also super fun, albeit a little overwhelming.  when you walk in, there is a giant aquarium that you can go into.  we didn't, but emme did really like the fish they had out in big tanks.  

next, we hit up the carousel.  all of us rode, and we strapped emme to a big chicken, with me standing right by her, of course.  she was not so sure about it at first, but i think she ended up enjoying the ride.  big joe, who is not an amusement park goer, thought it was kind of scary too.  

 next, we rode a little train.  kk sat this one out, but emme and big joe and i rode together.  e's favorite part was waiting to see kk waving around the bend.

 we also put her on an age-appropriate ride that she really loved.  she would get nervous when she couldn't see us, but then light up again when the ride carried her into our view.  hilarious.

 friday morning, we hit up the university.  i took zero pictures, but it's a beautiful campus and if minneapolis didn't have demon winters, i could probably live there.  joe met with one of his professors, so mom and emme and i got treats for everyone at the bookstore.  after that, we drove over to lake calhoun.  minneapolis has gorgeous lakes everywhere - it's like town lake in every neighborhood.  i'm convinced we would be in much better shape (and our dogs would be much better leash-trained) if we had this easy access to lakes and trails....
i was so touched by how hands-on joe was with emme the whole time.  he was constantly pointing things out to her and taking her on little walks to explore various sights.  she loved the attention.

 this was really funny - i tried to get a picture of mom, joe, and ek on this bridge.  there are like 5 shots of her being distracted and not paying attention, and then there's this one of mom and joe just sitting there because she took off.  her intense need to explore was a theme for the whole weekend.

 after the lake, we headed to st. paul to the museum of natural history.  there was a dinosaur exhibit and lots of hands-on science fun.  i am not sure who had more fun - emme or joe.  she was enthralled with the "dinos" and she especially loved this exhibit on air streams.  there were also bubbles and musical instruments for her to delight in.

 after st. paul, we ended up back at the mall of america for dinner.  emme was SUPER busy while we were there and was waving at all the other patrons.  she did manage to sit still for salmon and veggies, but this kid is not about being still for very long.

saturday, mom and emme and i went back to the mall for a little while before joe picked us up there.  he had some work to finish up and we were ready, so we shuttled over.  when he picked us up, we took a little drive to minnehaha falls.  this is just this gorgeous park and waterfall in the middle of the city.  very cool.

next, we trekked out to the zoo.  the weather had been a little overcast that morning, but by the time we got to the zoo, it was gloriously sunny.  we rented strollers for emme everywhere we went (i was not about lugging the bob through airports and everywhere else), which worked out really nicely for us to stash all our gear.  we all loved the zoo.  it's really nice and well-kept.  it was tremendously crowded, what with it being a beautiful saturday afternoon, but we had a blast anyway.  we saw a huge grizzly bear taking a bath, impalas very close up, a baboon with a pacifier in its mouth, lots of baby monkeys, fish, tigers, and all kinds of other animals.  

 for our final outing, we headed out to the wilds, joe's country club.  my brother is a big golfer - has been his entire life - and the wilds has been his club basically since moving to minnesota.  he even won the club championship tournament there a couple years ago.  anyway...we got out there right around sunset.  emme fell asleep and stayed napping in the car for a little while, so joe and i got to chip a few balls on the practice area while we waited for her to get up.  we headed into the clubhouse for a little dinner and got to meet a few of joe's buddies who were hanging out after a round.  then we walked around outside and enjoyed the winding down of the day before heading back to our hotel.

our flight out was at 6:15 sunday morning (i am a crazy person, but i also like early flights because they are more likely to be on time), so we had planned to take the shuttle to the airport at 5.  joe showed up at the hotel (to his credit, he told us he would be there, but we didn't believe anyone would wake up at that hour if they didn't have to) as we were preparing to load up in to the shuttle, so he was able to taxi us to the airport and say goodbye.
all in all, an awesome trip.  we were non-stop, but not exhausted at the end.  joe and i got along amazingly well (we are both very opinionated and this can lead to heated debates when we're in close proximity for long periods of time).  emme had a blast.