6 Month Birthdays

This month will mark the half birthdays for both of my beautiful girls. For some reason, I always feel a little bit guilty about doing posts for one of them without mentioning the other- so I thought I would wait until somewhere in the middle of the two and just do a big long cute post for the both of them. Are you ready for some mind blowing cuteness (sans pictures unfortunately- blogger hates me)? Here are 10 cute things about each of them.

Emma Rose
1. Emma learned the 'Clean Up' song from nursery and she LOVES it. She gets excited to help me clean anything up as long as we are singing that song. She will even create messes just so she can clean them up. She dumped out her big bag full of legos three times yesterday ony to turn around and clean them up while singing her new favorite song. Hopefully this love for cleaning will continue.

2. We were working out in the yard a couple of weeks ago and Ross was spreading some manure in some of the patches that we are trying to re-seed before the frost hits. Emma came running over to him and wanted him to pick her up but Ross told her that he couldn't because he had cow poopy on his hands. To this, a very indignant Emma replied, "Goss (gross) Daddy! Yucky- you do poo poo in da potty. Naughty, Daddy! Goss!"

3. On a related note to the last one, Emma is pretty much potty trained. I still put her in a diaper in the car (since we are 20 minutes away from the nearest public restroom) and for overnight, but she very rarely needs it. For the past 3 weeks we have only needed 3-4 diapers a week. She is still a little nervous about 'big potties' but she will use them if I am holding on to her and we sing some songs. This would be a little embarrassing for me if I wasn't so excited about her finally sitting on the big potties. She has been terrified of them for so long that I thought I wold have to take her little potty with us everywhere if I ever wanted her to not use diapers in public. I am thinking of investing in some cloth diapers for overnight. I would never consider them for the long haul because I have been in houses where people use them, and while they save money and are cute (seriously the new modern ones can be REALLY cute) there is a smell associatd with them, even if they do run a load of diapers every night. I think I could handle one every other day or so though.

4. Emma is a picky eater, but lucky for me, a lot of her favorite foods are quite healthy. She loves cornflakes and has asked for seerol (cereal) as her potty treat on a number of occasions. She also really likes lettuce, carrots, apples, grapes, and the most recent surprising addition are 'appo peppas' (bell peppers- they look like apples to her). Also, I can get her to at least try pretty much anything if I tell her it is chicken.

5. Emma and Sara have become really good friends. Emma loves to tickle her and make her laugh. She calls her Baby Sara Bear. Unfortunately, she has had a hard time sharing toys with her, now that Sara is on the move and shows interest in a lot more than just her binky. Emma can get kind of possessive about even the toys that she hasn't played with or thought about in months. She is pretty good about trying to replace whatever she is taking away with something else, and so far it has ben OK because Sara giggles and smiles any time Emma shows her any attention whatsoever. We are trying to make Emma understand that the toys are not just hers- which is hard because up until now they have been all hers. We also need her to understand that a crumpled up piece of paper is not a suitable or fair trade for a stuffed bunny, nor is a plastic spoon a good trade for a pile of colorful leggos.

6. We recently introduced Emma to Cinderella and she LOVES it, but her favorite part is the fairy godmother. She likes to get a whisk and run around the house singing her own version of Bippity-Boppity-Boo. "Boppyboo abbygooby bippyboppy puppykitty booboo mommydaddy dabbyboppy. . ." It is really cute.

7. Emma is shaping up to be quite the 'girly' girl. She likes to pretend she is putting on make up with me, and I usually let her have some 'lippy' (lipstick) if she is a good girl. She also likes getting her hair done now (which is nice because up until about a month ago it was like pulling teeth to get her to sit still for even two minutes while brushing her hair) and insists that eveyone in the house tell her how cute she is when I am done. "Am I pree (pretty) Mommy? I show Daddy! Daddy see me pree, so cue (cute). Emma so pree." She is also in the habit of borrowing mommy's shoes, and a lot of times I have had to have her find the ones I was looking for. So far she has had a pretty good memory about her weird little hiding places (the fridge, the dryer, her bath-tub, bookcase, her pillow-case. . .).

8. Emma has her mommy's curly hair- poor thing! Right now it is super cute because it is a very loose and sweet curl, but so was mine at her age. I am predicting that within a few years that curl will start to change and tighten up, and then she won't be too happy with me and my genes. Hopefully I can help her handle them better than my mom helped me. My mom has a very different/prettier curl in her hair than mine, so she was pretty much at a loss of how to help me control it. It was up to me to try all the different styles and products until I found something that worked- it took me until I was about 15 to finally have presentable hair on a regular basis. For now we are living it up by showcasing her adorble curls any chance we get.

9. Emma ends most of her prayers by saying, "Yay! AMEN!" While I know that she is most likely cheering because she can finally move around and make noise again, I still think it is very cute. She has also taken to saying her own random prayers. I have found her in her room a couple of times with her head bowed and arms folded just mumbling things I can't quite hear, and then she ends with her jubilant, "Yay! AMEN!"

10. Finally, Emma loves music. She loves to sing and dance, and refuses to go to bed without some goodnight songs with mommy (not daddy- she has stopped him in the middle of songs a couple of times to request that mommy come and finish out some songs) and refuses to get up for the day without some morning songs. Her favorite parts about the movies we let her watch are the songs, and she would rather dance to a CD than watch a movie in the first place. Her favorite is Enya. She is also a very good audience for my beginning piano skills. She likes to get a pillow and some stuffed animals all lined up behind me while I disgrace the hymns. Sometimes all the animals and herself all get blankets and they have pretend naptimes, and other times they are at a concert and she claps for me when I finish. Yesterday while I was upstairs folding clothes Emma came and took my hand and said, "Comeer (come here) Mommy!" and gave me the sweetest little smile that I couldn't help but follow her to see what she was up to. She led me downstairs to the piano, patted the chair, and said, "Piano Mommy, peese (please)."

Sara Belle
1. Sara is crawling, and she can be a quick little bugger when she wants to be! I guess it is still more of a scoot than a crawl because she doesn't hold her stomache up all the time, but she gets some good speed and distance in her little scoot/crawl hybrid.

2. She is very good at entertaining herself as long as there are toys or books to stimulate her. This can come in quite handy when I need to take a little nap, get something done around the house, or when Emma needs some one-on-one attention from me.

3. Sara has decided that sleeping through the night was boring, so now we have a routine of getting up together for a 4 am feeding, then she crawls around on our bedroom flour for about 15 minutes. I usually put some toys down for her to explore with while I catch a little bit of shut-eye. When she is done playing and starts fussing again, I rock her to sleep in my rocking chair and sing little songs, and then put her back in her crib until about 7:30. At that point she gets up for another feeding, and then she will play around on the floor again for almost an hour sometimes.

4. For some reason Sara loves to play with old magazines. Emma went through a phase like this too, and it was always kind of weird to me, but it kept her so entertained and quiet that I couldn't bring myself to put a stop to it. Sara likes to get into our stack of older Ensigns and Parenting Magazines. She will flip through the pages and rip them up and she giggles the whole time. I think it is a combination of the bright colors and the crinkly sounds that keep her so entranced. I worry about paper cuts though. . .

5. Sara has finally been introduced to the world of solid foods. She started on rice cereal last week and she seems petty happy about it. She is so funny about it though. She will NOT open her mouth for me. I have to pry her jaw open and slip the spoon in really fast before she clamps it shut again and turns her head- but once it is in there, she doesn't spit it out. She kind of mulls it around in her mouth before swallowing it. She must like it though, because if I wait too long between spoonfulls she starts fussing for more.

6. I have another Daddy's Girl on my hands. Sara can tune into Ross's voice like nothing else I have ever seen. When she hears him talking or laughing in the distance she will stare in his direction and either cry unil I start heading that direction or will wiggle until I put her down and then make a bee-line in his direction. At night, when I am nursng her on the couch while chatting with Ross, she will stop to smile and coo at him numerous times, and then go back to nursing at top speed so that she can sit on Daddy's lap again. Some day I hope to figure out what it is that he does to win such strong affection from such cute girls.

7. Sara loves Emma. She gets very excited whenever Emma even glances in her direction. Her loudest and deepest giggles have been brought on by Emma. She can't quite keep up with Emma yet, but she sure is trying! When Emma gets too fast, Sara will just follow her around with her eyes.

8. Sara has been teething for a long time now. She has two front-bottom teeth that are in, and then she has one on bottom and one on top that keep going back and forth. I really wish they would just come in and stay in. It is so not fair to make her suffer more than once for the same tooth.

9. Sara has pretty much been given up on binkies now. She still takes one when she gets really upset or when she is really hurting while teething, but she doesn't really like or need them anymore.

10. Sara, like Emma, really loves music. She likes to kick and crawl to fast tempos, and nothing puts her to sleep like a good lullaby or hymn. She LOVES when I pull out my flute. She will stare at me with the widest, bluest eyes I have ever seen the whole time. As stated earlier, she is good at playing by herself, but she will play by herslf the longest when I play some music in the play room when I leave her there. Her favorite seems to be piano music like Jon Schmidt or the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack. Maybe someday I will be able to play something she will enjoy. . .