Recent Pics

Emma Claire 10 months old!

Emma Claire is 10 months old and has already taken her first steps! She took a few steps 2 weeks ago when we were in Ferriday fleeing from the Hurricane. Since then she has taken several steps everyday, but usually it's only 2 or 3 in a row before she falls into whoever she's walking to. She has taken up to 7 steps in row, but that's very rare. She says: mama, dada, dindin, night-night, izzy, diapee, & kiki. She is crawling all over the place and getting into EVERYTHING! She'll eat anything you put in front of her as well anything she finds on the floor, like ladybugs and leaves.  She LOVES he big sister and wants to do everything she does. She is such a happy baby!

Izzy is 2!

Izzy turned 2 on August 31. We had her birthday party a week before...good planning on my part since Hurricane Gustav decided to arrive on her birthday! She had a coloring party. It turned out just as I imagined it. When everyone left she said "Thank you Mommy, I loved my party!" It doesn't get any better than that. We moved Izzy to a "big girl bed" the day after her party and she LOVES it. She is so proud of her bed and wants to show everyone that comes over. She has started Mother's Day Out, 3 days a week, and is doing great. Every morning she wants to get in the car to go see her teachers. When we pull in the parking lot she starts unbuckling her seat belt and says "Bye mom", like she's a teenager or something. Her teachers told me Izzy could teach the class. I hope that means she's participating. She gets in the car after school and starts telling me everything all at once. She'll sing a bit of a song, then talk about the playground, then start naming kids in her class. It's really funny. I'm so glad we signed her up, she really needed to play with kids her age.

Izzy is almost 2! (22 months)

Izzy is 22 months old and is embracing age 2 with a passion! She is very opinionated and throws quite the tantrum if she doesn't get what she wants. She plays hard all day and usually crashes at nap and bedtime. She LOVES her sister and wants to take care of her all the time. She even wants to wash Emma's hair every night after I've already washed it. Izzy really like to dance and wants everyone to get get up and dance with her. Her vocabulary is really growing and we can actually understand her most of the time. She is still extremely attached to "Other" her lamb that she's had since birth. He goes EVERYWHERE with us. She even insists on bringing him in the pool when we go swimming. Izzy LOVES Hannah Montana. We watch it everyday. I swear I'm raising a pre-teen!

Emma Claire 8 months old!

Matt thinks Emma has "rocker" hair, so he thought she needed a guitar to go with it. Her hair is ALWAYS sticking straight up. It will not lay down no matter what we do. I've decided to just let it be. It gives her a spunky little personality!
Emma is 8 months old now! It's hard to believe she is that old. She's been babbling, mainly "dadada" but I swear she has said "Izzy" and "diappie". I think she said "mama" today, but it was only once.

Bye, bye baby food! Hello "pick-ups"! The girl can put away some fruit and cheerios. She would rather feed herself now. I still try to spoon feed table food to her but she prefers to feed herself. 


Emma has been pulling up on everything. She's pretty steady once she's up. she can stand in the same spot holding onto the couch forever. She also really likes it when we hold her hands and let her walk around the house. She is great at putting one foot in front of the other. I don't guide her at all, I'm just there for support. She's been pulling up to her knees when she's in her crib. It is really getting in the way of nap and bedtime! She just cries until we come in to lay her back down. She sleeps from about 6:30pm-6:00am and takes 2 naps during the day.



Emma's favorite spot to crawl to is under the exesaucer. She LOVES to crawl under it and just sit there. It's pretty funny. Most kids want to get in it and lay with the toys. Not Em, sje just wants to hang out underneath it!



Here are some pictures of Emma crawling. She usually does more of a bear crawl, on her hands and toes. Every now and then she drops her knees. But she's definitely quicker on her feet.

Izzy's first works of art!

So I was running out of ideas for entertainment the other day and decided to bust out the paints! I know, what was I thinking? Well, it turned out to be entertainment for about an hour and a half. I had some canvas in my junk closet and tons of paint, so I covered the kitchen table with garbage bags, put an old button up on Izzy as a smock and let her go to town. I had to keep turning her canvas so she could reach all of it and I also tried to wash her brushes as much as possible so that the whole canvas wasn't brown. I was very impressed with her final products. So much so that I decided to frame and hang them in her bathroom. She would sometimes paint right handed, but mostly left. And she would sometimes paint with both hands at the same time. She never tried to put her fingers in it until the very end when I showed her how to do it. It was VERY messy but tons od fun! We will definitely do this again!

Izzy LOVES to play in Mommy's make-up!

Beach Trip with the Raymer's

We went to Panama City, Florida the last weekend of March to with our best friends Lauren, David and Caroline Raymer. They are in the middle of moving out of their house and into a new one and had a week in between with nowhere to go so they decided to go to her dad's condo at the beach. Luckily we were invited to join them. It was so much fun I wish we could have stayed longer. The first day we went to the beach Izzy freaked out! I mean she was screaming and would not let us put her down. She was clinging to us so tight you would think we were trying to make her walk through fire. She finally was ok sitting in the sand by our chairs, but she kept her shoes on. The next day she walked around a little bit, with shoes on and played in the sand a little closer to the water. By the third day she was running right into the waves. It took her three days, but she finally warmed up to it. Emma enjoyed being outside too. She would just soak in the sun and nap. What a rough life she has. Caroline is 2, 5 months older than Izzy. We were interested to see if the girls would play together. They really just played near each other, but never really with each other. Maybe next time when they are both a little older. The trip was very fun and as relaxing as it could possibly be with 3 kids in tow.