14 months + 1 day.

sooooo...my streak of semi-frequent blogging came to a screeching halt over the last week or so as this was the busiest week of all time ever.

the most important thing that's happened lately is that our duder started WALKING.  last wednesday, march 5, he apparently took some steps at school.  i'm refusing to focus on the fact that i missed his very first steps ever (oh, working motherhood) and instead just wallowing in the super cuteness of a new walker.  ek has dance on wednesdays and this was jb's week to take her, so i quickly ate through the memory on my phone trying to capture some steps, but i finally succeeded!  he is so proud of himself (still) every time he takes steps - belly out, big grin.  love this kid.

also...please excuse my obnoxious cartoon voice.  i can't help myself.

ekb turns one - the video.

our tireless family video chronicler, justin aka dada, finished editing the footage from the little bunny's birthday party.  i think he did a great job of capturing what a fun, great day it was for all of us.  makes me want to throw more parties....and make another gumbo this weekend!

la croix.

we don't drink soda in our house (or, very very seldom).  but sometimes, you just want a little change from the water and coffee i subsist on.  enter la croix, a zero calorie, zero additive sparkling water beverage that is delightful.  we buy it at costco in the variety pack that has plain, lemon, and lime flavors.  on this particular evening, alison and cameron were over and all of us were snacking while feeding the babies.  justin was drinking a la croix and emme wanted a sip....

welcome to negril

So it has been about two months since we traveled to Jamaica to see Mike & Kim get hitched. I'm just now making it through most of the video I took over the 5 day excursion. It's easy to see just how much fun everyone had when sifting through the images - really an awesome trip. I've put together the first of what will probably end up being a series of videos from the weekend. We flew in to Montego Bay and took a shuttle out to Idle Awhile in Negril. I think it's safe to say we would go back in a heartbeat (when it's time to stay idle awhile that is). Mike did a ton of research and found this little gem tucked away in a lazy stretch of Seven Mile Beach. More video of the weekend to come!

emme's 6 month video

dear emme,

this has been the best 7 months of all time ever. it has been a joy to watch your little personality emerge day-to-day. thank you for making this a wonderful fathers day. you are a ball of energy and fantastic entertainment. don't ever change.

whoa.

this was a big big weekend full of developments for our little bunny.

when i got home from work on friday, emme and i were playing on the floor in her room.  the next thing i knew, she was up on all fours crawling towards me and then climbing up my body like a jungle gym.  insane.  i thought maybe it was a fluke, but sure enough, when justin got home, she did it again and again.  we were amazed!  i totally cannot believe that this itty bitty person is so mobile.  every developmental milestone absolutely boggles my mind.  humans are incredible.

as if that weren't enough, on saturday we had an insane day.  e was up early and we had engagements and appointments basically all day.  all semblance of schedules and structure went out the window, so emme had to catch winks in the car to and fro and even diaper changes were handled on the backseat.  i expected her to be completely unglued and exhausted by the time we got to erin and derek's for derek's 30th birthday bash, our final engagement of the night.  but, she held on for a while and stayed in a relatively good mood the whole time (my anticipation of her being cranky is always WAY worse than any mild crankiness she ever has).  she got to drink water out of a cup (her favorite thing) and spill it all over herself and me.  and she also demonstrated that she had figured out how to wave bye bye.  this was the first time she did it on command, essentially in response to us saying bye bye to everyone at the party.  luckily, dad was on the scene to capture the event for posterity.



finally, over the course of the weekend, justin noticed that emme was saying mama in a way that was really pretty much directed at me.  she has been saying mamamamamamama for a while now (as well as lots of other consonant noises, that chatty little thing), but i don't think i would have said she really understood that i am her mom.  but this weekend she would call me when i would leave the room and talk to me when i came back by calling me mama.  clearly one of the most rewarding feelings since becoming a parent.

the only drawback to all of this excitement is that sleeping has been nuts for a few days now.  i think she just has so many new things to practice that she just can't stand to waste her time with shut-eye.  hopefully she will remember her good sleep habits soon...

national potato chip day 2011

our friends, the riders, throw an annual chip party that is growing in size and popularity. i'm also pretty sure a potato chip party can be found somewhere on stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. this was the 3rd annual chip party celebrating national potato chip day and was an awesome celebration of carbohydrates. this being the only celebration in the free world of its kind, i brought my camera along to document the party. chris went all out this year with fancy chips, or "crisps," shipped from our friends in the UK, Canada, and Australia. a couple guys from a local salsa/merengue band provided musical refreshments. emme didn't try any of the crisps this year, but did manage to meet the 2 drink minimum chris was strictly enforcing.

easter.

by now, it's been two weeks since easter and my memory of it is fading, since i don't have a brain anymore.  but, i remember it was a nice day....

we woke up later than expected, so we scrambled to get ready for church.  easter is one of the two days per year that justin will attend church with emme and me, so we really like that.  e wore a green gingham dress that was precious.  i totally didn't even get a picture because we were at church (long mass) then home and then down for a nap (and out of church clothes) so quickly, it just didn't happen.  despite our scramble, we made it to mass right before 9, only to find out that it started at 8:45 on easter sunday.  we had to stand in the far back with all the other families and latecomers, but it was a nice service and emme was well-behaved and enjoyed people-watching (one of her favorite hobbies).

while e was napping soundly, justin made a fancy brunch of jamaican coffee, waffles with caramelized bananas, and eggs benedict, complete with homemade hollandaise and poached eggs from our generous chickens.  it was delicious, to say the least.

the easter bunny brought emme a very small easter basket this year, as he had already given her a swimsuit for jamaica and a playset thingy for her floor time that were both already in use.  so, this year's basket included a bunny decoration, a polka-dotted overcoat for this winter, a bunny rattle (whose ears she gums constantly), and some colorful socks.  we didn't make a big production over that part, since i think the family time aspect of easter is more important.

in the afternoon, we dyed eggs while emmeline looked on and mostly was interested in her cups and stackable toys.  she was a good sport about it, though.  justin taught me about coloring on the eggs with crayon before dying it, which was really fun.  we went for a walk with ek and the pups, and that was about it.  a low-key sunday, but a great family day nonetheless.

the weekend after easter, we went to lafayette (more about the full lafayette trip will be forthcoming) to celebrate easter with my family, and also to see jb's dad, who was in town for festivals internationale.  kk created the cutest easter basket of all time, centered around a handmade red rocking chair that a friend of my grandparents had made for my uncle.  so, it's probably about 40 or more years old and i love it.  emme was so proud of herself sitting in her new chair.

so, that's it.  it's so hard to believe that next easter this little lady will be almost 18 months old and we'll be hunting eggs together.

rachel and chip got married.

i already wrote about it and stuff, but i can reiterate, six weeks later, that it was fun times.  to fully embrace the fun times of it all, justin made a video for them.  justin is talented (if i do say so myself...).

big big big week.

whew.  lots of developments and new things this week.  i've completely lost track of days and times, so i am not really sure what happened when, but this week we sleep trained the little monkey, got rid of the beanie, AND started solids.  somehow i don't think it's advisable to bombard your not-quite-five-month-old with tons of new things in this way, and yet....emme handled everything like a total champ.

first, the beanie.  when we were in the hospital, the second the nurses got her away from me, they popped a pacifier in emmeline's mouth.  for the record, i have absolutely no issue with the pacifier; i was just worried about nipple confusion and all of that in the first couple of days.  as it turned out, that was not an issue at all, and emme was in love with her beanie from then on.  as soon as she started sleeping for slightly longer stretches of time, we realized that the pacifier may be our best friend sometimes, but it might also be our sleep enemy.  when it fell out of her mouth, it would wake her up, and when she woke up and it wasn't in there, it would make her really sad.  in the early days, we would just get up and put it back in and all was well.  but, since she's older and so much more aware of everything now, i didn't know if this was a help or a hindrance.  in any case, waking up 2-3 times a night when you work full time to put a pacifier in your baby's mouth is not a winning proposition for any duration of months...

so, i've been reading a book called sleeping through the night by jodi mindell.  in this book, they talk about positive and negative sleep associations.  i won't get into it all (although i do think it's really interesting), but basically i believe that the beloved beanie had become a negative sleep association.  meaning, even though it helped soothe her and put her to sleep, it was the thing that caused her night wakings and ended up disrupting her sleep (and prevented her from falling asleep on her own).  anyway...right or wrong, i decided to see if we could eliminate the pacifier.  this was the precursor to sleep training.  i should also mention that my pediatrician advised me to be done with the paci by 6 months, and to just cut it out cold turkey.
wednesday night (i'm pretty sure that was wednesday) was the end of the pacifier and it was not fun.  emme cried for about 45 minutes after being put down and it pretty much broke my heart.  i had to stay in the kitchen and keep myself busy with chores and obsessively watch the clock until the next time i was allowed to go check on her.  BUT...she did fall asleep, without the pacifier.  and she only woke up a couple of times, and those weren't bad.  thursday night i decided was the official first night of sleep training (even though wednesday kind of counted too).  she cried for another 45 minutes and i had to force myself to re-read the chapter about this whole thing and make internal bargains like "i will try this and if it's still this horrible on sunday, i don't have to do it anymore".  friday night, mom came into town.  i was worried since kk hates to hear that bunny cry almost as much as i do.  but i stayed strong and she was asleep within a magical 11 minutes.  saturday night, we were down to 8 minutes, and tonight i don't think i heard even a full minute of cries.  AMAZING.  everything i read and everything everyone told me was that it would be worth it, and i must say if she keeps this up it was worth every single second.  not only do i feel like a new person getting more than 2-3 sequential hours of sleep, but emme is waking up in the BEST mood because she's getting great rest.  i seriously could not be happier about this whole series of events.

the other big action this week was starting solids.  i have read and researched way too much, and i decided that organic bananas were what we were going to start with.  since mom was coming to town, and emme seemed more than ready (it's crazy because 2 weeks ago i would have said she was not ready at all and then it was like she woke up this week demanding to eat food), i figured it would be fun to try it on friday night with all of us around.  so i mashed up a bite of banana with some breast milk and offered emme her first "real" food.  she took to that stuff like she'd been eating for years.  it was awesome.  thankfully, jb was there to document the event.  i think our next food will be avocados one day this week....

Emme's 3 month video

miss emmeline, you are so fine. you are smiling and rolling over and making baby noises and smiling and putting everything you can find in your mouth and hanging out with your nanny while we're at work and smiling and pooping and smiling. i'm expecting you to make the giggles any day now. in fact, your mommy and i have money on when it's going to go down. i still think you're the cutest baby i've seen in 10,000 years... but i may be a bit biased.

what's with today, today?

we awoke this morning at a little after 5 a.m. to the idyllic setting of 3ish inches of snow blanketing our yard and neighborhood.  beautiful.  emme woke us up, but that was about 9 hours after she went down, so it was super peaceful to nurse her in our warm bed in the quiet pre-dawn glow.  

at 5:22, liga called to say the roads were icy and snowy and she was worried about taking the bus to our house.  i was secretly hoping for the snow so i could have a day home with emme, kinda like old times....i know liga would have come up if i'd asked her to (on time or late or whenever i wanted her), but since she was a little worried about it, i didn't want to ask her to make the long trek.  justin's boss told everyone to work from home, so the three of us (and the pets) have been hunkered down inside all day.  love that.  

our pipes are still on lock down, but our neighbor across the street is out of town until next week and she said we could use her shower and laundry facilities - thank god!  

we bundled up emme to take her outside to see her first snow this morning.  she was enthralled with the bright whiteness all around.  the dogs were elated - etta promptly began trying to eat all of the snow and ollie morphed back into full-on wolf dog mode.  

there is still a significant amount of mayhem over here, even though it is pretty.  emme had a phenomenal blowout in her pjs this morning.  we have no water, so i got to use about 1900 wipes to make sure she was cleaned up enough (don't even ask me about the greasiness of her hair).  etta decided it was a great idea to puke in her crate after eating 9 pounds of snow and grass.  emme has spit up on me as much as usual, which is more of a problem because of the inconvenience of showering across the street (and the lack of clean sweat pants, which are the only acceptable form of pants when it's cold and you're at home).  i keep telling justin our house stinks (which it doesn't, really, but it doesn't smell clean either) and i think it may be starting to annoy him....oh, and we have been trying to turn the water supply off.  the meter is at the street, so we went there to see if the line was there as well.  there are about 4 inches of dirt in the meter (which makes me wonder how they're doing our water reading every month, but i digress), which was super fun for jb to dig into to find the lever.  he found a lever, but it doesn't budge.  so, i guess the plan now is to just hope our pipes aren't busted when they eventually thaw.  we saw two drips out of the faucets in the bathroom and the tub, so hopefully that is a good sign.  

there have been some good photo and video opps lately....enjoy.  

mom's videography...

this is not the best videography attempt, since i was using my phone and it ran out of space before we were totally done filming.  but, it does the job!  emmeline has rolled tummy to back three or four more times today, so i captured it....

emme's arrival: the video

this was a great, low-key weekend.  we took the dogs to the dog park on saturday before it started getting cold, watched some football, ate healthy food at home, and spent lots of time playing with emmeline.  saturday evening, justin gave her a bath for the first time (we usually tag team bath time, but i am the one that's responsible for the actual bathing).  it was the first time in a long time that she hasn't cried when coming out of the tub - awesome!  most of the time, she gets upset when i take her out and put her in her towel (i think maybe because it's jarring to go from nice warm bath into the air?  not sure...).  anyway, it was super cute to watch him give her a bath.  i tried not to be too bossy...

in addition to our other activities, justin also finished editing the first of what i'm sure will be many, many emme videos.  this is the footage leading up to and her arrival.


emmeline kay from Justin Browne on Vimeo.

christmas video (number one).

justin put together a little video of us getting out house ready for christmas.  this marks a slight departure from his usual videography styles of artsy and/or hilarious to home movie.  be sure to notice emme's feet in the last time lapse sequence.  also, i apologize for my garb in this...i'm still not back in my pre-pregnancy clothes, so i've been rocking the oh-so-attractive sweats look for a while now....hopefully i'm a little more presentable in the video i'll force jb to make while we're in lafayette for christmas....


christmas 2010 from Justin Browne on Vimeo.