10.5 months

Every day I find it harder to believe that in less than 2 months I will have a one year old living in my house!  As I hunt for birthday invitations for Emerson's birthday, it all feels very surreal.  Our lives have changed so much since (almost) one year ago; but it seems even moreso, she has changed so much in (almost) one year! 

Here we are at a 10 and 1/2 months and she gets cuter every single passing day to me!  There isn't a morning that I'm kissing her goodbye in her carseat as Terry takes her to Beth's that we don't look at each other and say that she's the cutest girl ever!  She is such a big kid these days, walking with her walking push toys, saying 'mama,' 'dada,' 'duck,' 'dog,' and 'bye bye!' (at least when there isn't a crowd around); and her best trick of all, throwing her arms straight up in the air when we say 'touchdown!'  She is most proud of herself for this last trick, and immediately goes from touchdown to clapping for herself.  Emerson loves playing with other kids, especially little boys - and so she was thrilled to get to play with Caleb this past weekend for her Grammy's birthday in Emory!



(This hilarious tutu outfit is from her Grammy - she looked like such the little girl!)

This past month has been seemingly extra fun as her personality comes out even more!  She has the greatest grin full of 8 shiny teeth (which she loves to brush!) with two more teeth on the way!  She is always on the move, and loves to climb under the table, up the stairs, to any object that she can pull things out of, and thankfully has also recently learned how to put things back in!  Em loves to count her toes and play 'this little piggy,' her favorite song is Old MacDonald (aside from the ones we've made up about her which she also loves), and her best best friend in the world is "Cali," the pig she started sleeping with in her crib after our California trip, that her Aunt Laura gave her.  Aside from Cali, we like to think that we are her best friends.  At least she is ours - we couldn't love her more!  I miss her more with each passing day of going to work and keep praying for some miraculous way to get to work part time instead of 3/4 time!  (Better go buy some lotto tickets!)



Broken, broken, broken...

The internet is broken.
The computer is broken.
The point-and-shoot digital camera that takes video is now also broken. 
I haven't been able to find the cords to the cameras to bring them to work to upload pictures (despite a clean house thanks to my mom who helped us out with babysitting and all things house related all summer)!

But I found the cords, so I have at least a few pictures to share so you can see how big our girl is growing and get a glimpse of what we've been doing during all of this chaos.  We have been having such a fun time, and our 9 months with her have FLOWN.  Life has changed in huge ways as parents, almost all wonderful.  I still might dream of sleeping in until 9 or 10am on a Saturday :)

We went to California and played with the cousins.

We went to the beach for a wedding and let Emerson play in the ocean for the first time.

She has been standing and cruising and letting go and getting a few bumps along the way.

We spend a lot of time playing with the tags on her stuffed animals.

We made our house look really redneck and kept an inflatable pool on the porch during the summer which she LOVED.

We traveled to Wisconsin for an intern reunion and flew there with Molly & Bella (somehow, the only picture on my camera was from in the airport...) - And yes, those are 7 teeth in her mouth.

And (surprise) she looks more and more like her daddy every day! (except who knows where these killer baby blues came from!)

It has been a busy and wonderful TWO MONTHS (I know, horrors that it has been that long since I have posted!)  Somehow, we love Emerson more every day and I keep trying hard to cement memories into my mind of her just how she is each day.  She has the sweetest most joyful spirit and we pray every day it sticks around for life.  She loves to eat (as evidenced by the chub!), loves to play rough and be tossed up in the air by Terry, but also loves to snuggle at bed time and early in the morning.  She is on the go and we feel pretty sure will be walking soon. 

I started working a different schedule this summer which gives me more time with her each day that has made life as a working mom feel much more manageable even though I still miss her like crazy and can't wait to get home to her.  Beth is still keeping Em, and she had a blast having all of Beth's daughters home this summer for extra loving.  Terry and I got to have several date nights this summer while my mom was in town, which were such a welcome gift of time together.  Terry also became a master Scrabble player - we played each week when my mom was in town - and won almost every game.  I didn't win any.  Alas.

Hopefully technology will be repaired around our house soon and you'll be hearing from us regularly again!  I miss my blogging world!

Food 101

Go back with me in time 1 month ago and pretend Emerson was just eating food for the first time and you wanted to hear all about how it went.  It's taken us about a month to learn how to eat, so it's really more appropriate than not that it took me this long to blog and post about it!  Emerson LOVED chewing on the spoon, but the fist time she ate rice cereal, she wasn't totally sure what she thought of it.  She didn't seem to not like the flavor, she just wasn't really associating that opening her mouth equated in getting food.  So lots of it ended up lots of places other than her mouth.

[Oh hello big picture - haven't tried this yet since the new formatting lets you upload pictures in XL fashion!]

So after about 2 weeks of eating twice a day...the sweet girl still hadn't gotten it.  Poor Emerson that her mother is a pediatric therapist that specializes in feeding...poor, poor Emerson.  Wait, what am I talking about - POOR, POOR ME!  This was super stressing me out.  I was stressed every time I fed her, and for like 20 minutes before and afterwards.  Just ask Terry.  And in the meantime, be thankful that Beth fed her a lot during the week and her report was always that she 'did great.'  Again, praise the Lord for Beth.  So not to worry, of course I asked a speech therapist I work with about it, who of course told me she was fine but to just keep working on it and she would get it.  And one weekend, she did.  She just got it.  The mantra in my head when I was stressed is exactly what I tell families all the time, as I have been taught: "Variety=quantity, variety=quantity, variety=quantity."  And it worked.  Imagine that!

So the rice cereal was fine, whatever, I spiced it up with cinnamon, switched over to oatmeal, kept spicing it up, tried it bland, but the real fun started when the real food started.  We were having roasted sweet potatoes for dinner, so Emerson did too.  We were having green beans for dinner, so Emerson did too.  The sweet potatoes (with nutmeg and cinnamon) were a breeze, but the green beans...well not so much.  I thought I had done my due diligence in reading about how to 'best' make them, but I had no idea how hard it would really be to puree the shells.  It might have something to do with how old my blender is.  But don't worry, I tried the food processer, blender, and immersion blender - just to be thorough.

All this turned into these tiny little pods (which were a total rip of and waste of money - have switched to ice cube trays) - way to think you needed something fancy at first just to be proved wrong Ellen, K.I.S.S! [remember this acronym??]

If I had remembered it, maybe my kitchen sink wouldn't have looked like THIS the first cooking process:

I know, I can't believe I'm showing you this either.  But really, I'm just showing you so that I can tell you it's gotten much easier, cleaner, and efficient. 

And since, we have made & eaten: sweet potatoes, green beans, avocado, butternut squash, carrots, pumpkin, strawberries, blueberries, pear, apple, apricots, prune juice, watermelon and 3 bites of icecream :)  Now she opens her mouth and chows down like a champ - hooray Em!

More on the ice cream and visit with Molly & Bella later.  But before that you'll get to hear all about our trip to California!

[I'm kind of loving these new huge pictures.  Please tell me if they are obnoxious!]

Proposal

For the record, I am so glad Terry didn't do something like this when he proposed to me...but this is hilarious and awesome!  Found it here.  It makes me so happy to be loved and in love.  xo

Still kickin'

If any of you are left out there, you've either:
a. been checking daily for blog posts and have been very disappointed
b. stopped checking all the time and are shocked to find something new on here today
c. know that our computer hasn't been working and take pity on us, because you know no one wants to read a blog post without pictures!

But thankfully, Aunt Becca was here this weekend, and I was able to steal a picture from her on facebook so I could post and not lose all of our family members, blog stalkers, and other miscellaneous friends! We have been crazy busy the past few weeks checking lots of boxes off of Emerson's list of firsts! 

- First plane ride, check.  All the way across the country to California - and she did AWESOME.  No crying, took 2 hour long naps, no ear problems from the pressure change, entertained nearby passengers with wide mouth smiles and lots of giggling.
- Met 5 cousins that live in California, check.  LOVED them, I mean she loved them - Taylor, Riley & Jordan could make her smile and laugh like no one else!  She and Mikayla loved grabbing at each other's faces and smiling, and meanwhile Kaden was a pro at making a baby laugh from the backseat! [I have SO MANY cute pictures from this trip, I cannot wait to share them with you all once the computer isn't sick anymore!]
     - Went on her first yacht ride
     - Stuck her toes in the sand and in the freezing cold ocean - she might not have liked the ocean so much.  But it sure did make for hilarious photos.
     - Went to In-N-Out.  Yum.  Well, she didn't eat it, but we did, yum.  Also on this list should be: Pinkberry, Yogurt Town, Yogurt Land, Yogurt Mania, and 800 other yogurt places we saw and wanted to go to because they are all delicious.  [Sidenote, HOORAY found out this weekend there is a new yogurt place here in Charlotte - Yoforia.  I wonder how many other names they can come up with.]
- Eaten a ton of new foods including but not limited to: rice, oatmeal, avocado, sweet potatoes, green beans, butternut squash, carrots, apples, pears, blueberries, strawberries, bananas, prune juice (as you can imagine the ones that are crossed out aren't really preferred...at all)
- Gotten 2 teeth ?!?!?!?!
- Started babbling with all kinds of new sounds mamamamammababababababbabadadadadadada

Hoping to get the computer and all of its accessories working this weekend - while visiting Molly & Bella and celebrating Molly's 30th birthday! - (I'm blogging from work, shhhhh) so that I can show you some of these fabulous photos from the last month's happenings.  Don't give up on us, we'll be making a big comeback! 

Mid-week Musings

Little known facts and other miscellaneous things floating around in my head today...

We are the Bruces. I know you know this, but do you really know that we are the Bruces and not the Bruce's? When you come to our house, you are going to the Bruce's house, but when you are talking to us, you can say, "hey Bruces!" We are plural, not possessive. Updated. I have since researched my correction. We are still the Bruces, (which was the point of this debacle) but sources (online grammar sites, teachers and peers included) have varying opinions on if you are going to the Bruce's house or the Bruces' house. Hmm...


I think Emerson knows that today is her 6 month birthday. And she decided she should not sleep through the night without her middle of the night feeding until she was 6 months old. So she did. Last night. Praise the Lord. Please do it again tonight Emmy. And please let the doctor tell us next week that it's okay to keep doing this even though you are so wee.

These are some of the cutest little hair clips. I cannot wait for Em to have hair to wear these.

Could this dress be any cuter, and at any point in my life can I validate spending that much money on a dress for a child? But I really love it...maybe it will go on sale, you know before Emerson is 4 or 5 and would be cute in it. Or maybe by then I can become a seamstress. Or at least be able to hem pants - baby steps.

Oh yeah, I'm really thankful for the randomness of the gene pool that resulted in the blue eyes pictured above. GOR.GEOUS. [thanks katie b for the precious outfit to bring out the blue!]

And have I mentioned recently how much I love my husband? He is a great man, and makes me understand why a synonym for patience is long suffering. He is very long suffering with me...aka, I think I make him suffer for long periods of time with my craziness :) Thanks, hubs!

Twins

Dear Emerson.

Seriously. Could you look any more like your father? Bruce genes are the strongest genes I have ever known. You, my child, are not anything like I ever imagined you looking. You are SO MUCH cuter. You will turn 6 months old next week. I have no idea how we suddenly have a 6 month old child and not a baby anymore (I know...you are still a baby). But you are almost sitting up for more than 30-45 seconds at a time, though you still face plant if there is a toy you really want in sight; you are starting to commando crawl around on your belly if there's something to push off behind your feet and something worth crawling to in front of you. Next week, you will get to try some real food, which I know you are excited about because you keep trying to get your hands in everything your dad and I are eating if you're around it! You are growing up TOO FAST and you are precious to me little girl.

Your mama loves you, xoxo.