Potty time!!!

I am proud to say...its official Emery is potty trained!! On the last few occasions, she will actually go in the house on her own (while we are all outside) and use the potty! Most times she will go in, close the door and do her business. I won't know until she comes out and tells me! I'll put my ear to the door just to see how things are going in there and I hear her singing hahaha! I have peeked in a couple times and have seen her sitting there reading a book! Father like daughter! She'll tell Grandma, "mommy's going to be sooo proud of me"! And I most definately am! She's pretty much done it all herself. We tried that 3 day method and it bombed. She's the type of kid that wants things to be her idea--when she's ready to do it. I think this is probably a trend we will need to take note of for the rest of her growing up years!

My baby's going to school....

Went to Emery's open house at her preschool last week. She's going to be going two days a week to preschool at Sugar Hill United Methodist. I am excited for her but nervous at the same time. I know she will do great! But its still hard to think she's old enough for school :( Her backpack and lunch bag came in the mail...it's super cute--a zebra! Can't wait to see her in it that first day! School officially starts September 6th and will go from 9am-1pm. Her friend Nick is in her class so at least she will have a friend. Her and I were talking about it the other day and she told me "grown-ups don't go to school, mommy can't go to school, daddy can't go to school..." Hahaha guess the message got through to her that she will be going alone. So far she's cool with it. Her sandbox also came this week...kinda regretting it nowt that sand is tracked all through my house! She's loving it though and wants to play in there all evening, instead of our usual nightly pool visit. Wish the dang mosquitos didn't eat us alive out there though. Her favorite game these days is playing catch. She'll say "mommy catch me" and I have to run all over the yard chasing her. The minute grandma connie comes over it's "grandma connie catch me!" and grandma C has to chase her around the house. She's also a big fan of hide and seek and will cover her eyes and count to five ::cutest thing ever!:: Ballet is a hit too! She started about two weeks ago and it's just a half hour a week. Last week a little girl cried the whole time and Emery felt bad for her and kept telling her "it's ok your mommy's going to be right back" Hahaha! Love that sensitive child. She doesn't like to see other kids upset and tries to comfort them. This kid is smart as a whip too if I do say so myself. She says the darndest things! Grandma is constantly emailing me things she says during the day and it definately brightens my day. She'll tell stories all the time....sometimes making up her own stories "once upon a time there was a purple monster...." or she will recount movies/shows she's seen. Right now, she's in love with Toy Story so that's a popular one she likes to talk about. Every night before bed, we will talk and tell stories. Sometimes she will give the me the setup "tell me a story about Emery going potty". It's the highlight of my day to sit and talk with her girl to girl. I just love spending that time with her every night!

Time for an update....four months later!

The spring and summer has been especially fun for us! Let me just do an update by month:
April was a great month. Got to celebrate Jesus and all the festivities associated with that. We registered for the Governor's Mansion Easter Egg Hunt which was really neat to go to. It was a space limited event and you could actually hang out on the grounds and picnic, etc. They had some fun things going on too: cupcakes, story-telling, and of course the Easter Egg hunt. We got a picture with the Governor as well. So fun! We also did our neighborhood Easter Egg hunt and an Easter Egg hunt at Callanwolde (our new family tradition), complete with creepy pics with the Easter bunny. hahaha! We celebrated the day of Easter with Church with Granma and Pop Orza at First Redeemer (Em cried and cried in Sunday school and I had to go and get her!). And then lunch at Grandma Connie's house.

May brought some warmer weather and lots of outdoor actitives. We biked around the neighborhood almost every night! Em likes to ride bikes and look for the deer out on the meadow or check the lake for the geese and ducklings. We attended Gabriella's christening, which I was blessed to be named the GodMother for. And also left for our trip to Disney! We spent the middle week of April at Disney World. We took Grandma Connie, Great-Papa, and Grandma and Pop Orza. It was wonderful! We rented a large house in Reunion, just outside Disney World, with pool included. It was there that Emery started to become super comfortable in the water swimming. She had a pool noodle and would just float all around on it, going from one side of the pool (spa area) to the other. We did Disney World the first day--starting off with breakfast with the characters Pooh, Eeyore and gang. Emery was definately a fan and tried to feed each one that came to the table. Then we hit the rides, along with Great-pop, Grandma Connie and Grandma (Orza)! We were impressed--Great Pop rode most of the rides-including Space Mountain!! We also rode Pirates of the Caribbean and Emery pretty much covered her eyes the entire.time. I guess the dark and the shady looking pirate characters were a bit too much for her. She didn't cry though! She was a huge fan of the It's a Small World Ride and Winnie the Pooh. We rode a few more smaller rides and went to Tom Sawyer's Island. All and all it was a blast! I think most of the day she was in awe! Of course she got her picture with Minnie and Mickey too and that was definately a highlight. The next day we hung out at our resort--they had an amazing waterpark, complete with playground and lazy river. Then the following day we went to Animal Kingdom. We started off with a character breakfast inside the park with Mickey and the gang. Really awesome breakfast and Emery got some up close time with all the characters. She loves to give them hugs! We really enjoyed touring the park and riding some fun rides. Mommy and Daddy especially loved being able to leave a napping Emery with the grandma's while we rode a rollercoaster or two! :) The highlight of her day was hitting the water fountain area so she could splash around a bit before leaving. Go figure, she's a water baby! The next day was another day spent lounging at the pool and the evening was topped off by a trip to the town of Celebration. A little community that's next to Disney World. Very nice for ice cream and some shopping. Our last "Disney" day was spent at Epcot. It was a little bit hot so we really took it easy. Granma and Pop Orza came with us this time. We hit up the aquarium area first with it's Nemo ride (that's currently one of her fave movies!) and Emery decided to have an all out tantrum in the place! Everyone was starring at us like we had three heads as I dragged her out! It had been a long week of lots of activities and naptime was approaching fast. After a long nap in the stroller, she was refreshed and ready to hit the sights again. It was fun touring all the "countries" and getting stamps on her bear. You could take a paper bear to little tables in all the countries and they would spell her name in other languages and give her a little stamp. Very fun! Her favorite ride here was the ride in Mexico--Donald was a main character. Since there was no line we decided to ride it a couple of times. All and all we had a wonderful week and made some great memories with family...isn't that what life's all about??! I can't wait to return and I am hoping we can make Disney a regular family vacation. Months later, Emery is still recounting her experience, often saying "she wants to go on Small World" and telling me about waiting in line to ride it, and telling Great-pop "don't be scared" lol! I am glad she got to spend some time with her Great-grandpa as she doesn't get to see him too much.

Memorial Day weekend the following week was spent on yet another vacay--a mini one. We took a last minute drive down to the beach and Panama City and spent a couple nights there. It was fun...got to play in the sand, practice her swimming some more in the pool and of course hit the boardwalk for dinners out, ice cream and carnival rides. We even got to ride the Ferris Wheel this time! Pretty boring in my opinion and we were all over it after the first few minutes! That pretty much summed up our fabulous vacation month of May.

June brought some hot weather and the pool opening in our neighborhood. We spent pretty much every weekday night and weekend at the pool. There's a zero entry area where Emery could play and I think that helped her confidence. She started "swimming" underwater and would get more and more comfortable with her noodle. We never even really got the water wings out much. In fact, she was so comfortable with the water, when I took her to Alexanders' pool birthday party, she jumped in twice without me there to catch her! Scared me to death! Her, Gabby and Arianna had so much fun jumping in holding hands....it was the cutest thing ever to watch! Wish I had my videocamera out!

July was the month of birthdays! We attended Violet's 2nd birthday, Kota's 2nd birthday adn Jaiden's 2nd birthday. And of course celebrated the fourth of July holiday. Found out quickly that though she is a fan of sparklers she is not into Fireworks! We had to leave the fireworks show at our church because she was scared of it. Maybe the loud noise? We have no idea. But she did have fun with her friends this month. Kota had a pirate party so she enjoyed the pirate magic show and balloons. I think she has warmed up the pirates now! :) I can also pretty much say she is swimming now. She can swim underwater short distance to her dad and I. We are super impressed with how well she has picked it up. Needless to say, I don't think we will be doing swimming lessons this year! I think just being able to control it on her own and us not "forcing" her to swim helped her learn on her own. She is definately an independent child! She wants to do everything herself. We have been struggling with the potty training and am finding her to be very stubborn (wonder where she got that from?!). The three day method was pretty much a bust. Most times she would not go to the potty when asked, so we decided to give her some more time and just back off. We are hoping things change and she decides its time! We have had some small successes here and there--going potty in public and going peepee on the potty when taken to the potty. I think that she is just the type of kid that wants to do things on her own terms. Everything is "Let me do it!" and occasionally she will get very upset if you attempt to help her do something. This gets challenging when you are trying to leave the house on time! However, I respect her personality and realize that this is her way of controlling her life and most times let her be. Her favorite movies at the moment are Tom and Jerry, Tangled (Rapunzel), and Mickey (old school shorts). She still talks about Disney and riding Small World and loves to recount experiences she's had. At night now, after reading books, she wants me to rock her in her chair and tell her stories. Most times, she will give me a subject and I have to build a story with the character she mentions--works mommy's creativeness! I have told stories about a tiny purple monsters, that live in her shoe to Lions that live in the jungle. Sometimes she will request Little Red Riding Hood or The Three Little Bears and sometimes I will just sum up a movie she's seen. Another first for this month--she went to her first movie and saw Winnie the Pooh. Couldn't believe it but she actually sat throuh the whole thing (it was only about 50 minutes). She liked it so much, Grandma had to take her back the following week to see it again! She loves to recount the story and can remember most of the storyline details. It'surprising how detail-oriented she can be with it. Her favorite toys right now are her puzzles--she loves to try and put them together. She also loves her kitchen stuff and we will play pretend with her dishes and food. Every morning she likes to fix grandma a coffee. :) Grandma keeps me updated during the day with her antics. She says the funniest stuff! I was talking to Kevin and she says, "I'm trying to tell you something!" So funny! Or she will climb on the furniture and tell grandma "you can't do this, you're a grown up and grown up's can't do this." She also sits her dolls and teddy bears down and say "ok see you tonight I'm going to work" So cute! Really wish I was there during the day with her more though I know she's in excellent hands with her grandma. Time just passes so quickly and I can't help feel I'm missing out sometimes. We spend our Fridays just the two of us so that's nice.

August is halfway over already and summer is almost ending :( I will be sorry to see it go this year since we have had sooooo much fun! However, I know we have some fun stuff planned for the Fall--a last summer beach vacation to Grayton Beach in September, Kevin and I's 7th wedding anniversary, a trip to Chattanooga with friends in October and of course all the Fall festivals.

After all the parties in July, Emery came down with a slight fever for about a week and had some late nights up with a sore throat, including some swollen glands. A doctor visit resulted in an order for lab work (blood test). They were concerned about the glands being swollen--needed to check for mono, tb and other viruses. That was challenging and of course extremely worrying to us. Kevin went with me and we had to hold her down poor girl to get the blood drawn--so sad. The results finally came back that she had had mono! So crazy since I have no idea where she got it. There's nothing they can do about it...just has to go away on its own. I am actually glad it was that since the doctor says it will be unlikely that she will get it as an adult now. I had in my college days and it was awful! I had to drop out of school and was sick for about 3 weeks. I guess the younger you get it the less intense it is. We will go back in a few weeks to make sure its all gone. Whew...glad it was only that!

Now looking forward to Emery starting her dance classes (tiny tutu's) this month and starting preschool two days a week next month. Her dance class is just for a half hour on Friday mornings and school with be Tuesday and Thursday at Sugar Hill United Methodist. Her friend Nick is attending there too and her friend Carson was there last year and is now in the next age group up. As the date gets closer, I am getting more and more nervous! Based on her experience in Sunday School, I really hope she can be without her grandma or me for the day (it's just 9am-1pm those two days). Crossing my fingers that she does well. She is a bit shy around adults too though she will approach any kid (under the age of 18) haha! I did take her to audition for a Graco casting print ad and it didn't go extremely well--though she is adorable of course, once she realized she was sitting in the stroller without me there she was not to happy. Pretty sure they got a picture of her crying face lol! oh well, we may try again later and I am hoping school helps her with her shyness somewhat. Otherwise she may be doomed to be like me as a kid--super shy! I really hope she isn't as shy as I was though I guess it can be a blessing. I tended to stay out of trouble due to it and became "nerdy." Kevin's personality is not shy in the least. Forgot to mention, she has started going in the bathroom by herself "mommy you stay right there" and going potty alone! She has been doing it consistenly the past week with not too many accidents. Grandma caught in the bathroom cleaning her stool--I guess she had a peepee accident and was cleaning it up sweet girl. So, so proud of her!

I will update for the rest of the month and of course our beach trip coming up! :)