Together Again in Heaven: Emma and the Traveling Pants

I can hardly believe my little bean is eleven months old already! I am in denial about this. It helps that she is so small for her age. However, my illusions of her staying my itty bitty baby forever are often shattered by her constant love of movement. Lately she can't stop moving. My heart stops when I catch her at the top of the basement stairs in the kitchen and I realize I forgot to close the baby gate just as she is about to take the plunge, or when I hear Lucy yell from halfway up the stairs that her and Emma will be right back - and I run to the stairs and Emma is 75% of the way up already with Lucy yelling for her to hurry it up.

Emma's favorite form of mischief and movement however involves snatching and hiding Lucy's clothing. It's like the two of them have formed a plot against me. Here's how it works: as soon as Lucy gets in the house, she strips off her shoes, socks, pants and any sweater or jacket she may have on. Then Emma swoops in and covertly carries off each article of clothing and hides it in a strategic location. Flash forward to me frantically getting them ready to be on time somewhere that requires Lucy to arrive in clothing. We can't find her clothes and Emma conveniently isn't talking. I rummage around the house until I realize we are late, abort the mission and grab a new set of clothes for Lucy. When we arrive back home, the scenario repeats itself. Here Emma is below looking innocent.

And when I tell her to drop the pants, she just laughs at me and I realize that what I said came out wrong.

I caught her in the picture below, hiding one of Lucy's socks in the dining room corner behind the rocking chair.

Since we are having unseasonably warm weather this past month we have spent a lot of time outside. There's nothing more cringe inducing than your eleven month old crawling across the concrete, or up a set of concrete porch steps. Or even worse, toddling around using toys with wheels on them to get from one place to the next. She just seems way too young to experience road rash yet.

Her little soft-soled shoes needed to be replaced this month with some hard-soled ones to keep her feet dry playing outside so I found Lucy's first pair of walking shoes and put them on Emma. After a week of pinning my little Cinderella down to put the shoes back on her after she walked out of them for the 100th time I decided that I would have to buy Emma her very own pair. Her foot measured at a size 1 1/2. Walking shoes start at size 4 if that gives you any idea how small Emma's feet are. We had to get special (translated - expensive) shoes for Lucy's first pair because her feet measured at a size 3 double wide. Well, Emma's are even smaller it turns out! Forty bucks and a really cute pair of shoes later, Emma is walking on her own! She has taken up to five steps unassisted and is getting more confident on her feet every day.

This past month was brought to us by the letter "H" for Emma's three new words: "Hi!", "Hot", and "Hug." Whenever she sees a phone she says, "hi" and she also waves and says "hi" to people we pass in public. She learned the word hot by touching the door of our oven while I was baking something. It isn't super hot, but it does get warm and she definitely didn't like it. Now every time she comes near the oven, she sits down on the floor and says hot while waving at it. My favorite word though this month is "hug" as she passes out hugs to not only her loved ones but her baby doll Huggums as well. It is so cute to watch!

Emma also likes to repeat the phrases, "What's that?", "Who's that?" and "What's this?" while pointing at things. I think this is from us always pointing at objects and asking her those questions. She is still quite good at shaking her head yes or no when we ask her questions. For instance, "Emma, did you poop?" is usually met with a happy head shake indicating that yes, what I smell is in fact poop.

Emma has had a rough month with sleep. We think her system is off from the stomach flu she had that lasted over two weeks, as well as the antibiotics I have been on this past month for my toes. After talking with her gastrologist, we have put Emma on some baby probiotics that have worked wonders. We started off the month with no naps a day unless we were holding her or driving in the car, to two naps a day again - mostly only lasting a half hour each, but this is better than none at all. Her night time sleep at the beginning of this month was horrible too - up every half hour. She is going into some longer stretches again though now, and we are hoping she will continue to improve as she feels better. Another culprit for her poor sleep is teething. She has been actively cutting five teeth and two officially popped through this past month. I would not be surprised if the other three weren't here by her first birthday. Lucy got her teeth one at a time, so this is a new experience for us to have five teeth cutting at once. I think after they are through though, this method is better because it gets the pain (and sleeplessness!) over with faster. Here is a picture of Emma dealing with a tummy ache coupled with complete exhaustion - she fell asleep sitting up and I watched it happen. After making sure she was still alive, I took a picture. That is some hardcore flexibility, especially considering she is wearing a bulky cloth diaper!

Emma is eating more foods this month and her favorites are pancakes made with coconut milk, cheerios and floor grout. Oh wait, floor grout isn't technically a food but she does love picking it out between the wood slats in our dining room floor and eating it. This is a downside of living in an old house, but if you would have told me that when we bought the place, I would have said you were crazy. Who would eat floor grout, especially after the first time when you realized how gritty it was? She loves crunching on it for some reason, and we even have a little routine we do that goes something like this:

Me: "Emma, what's in your mouth?"
Emma, with a grin on her face: "Aaaaaaaaaaah"

Emma's love of carbs is definitely packing on some chub finally and I find that I can't stop squishing her chubby little cheeks and legs. She has become quite demanding at the table though, making mealtime rather stressful for me, especially if I am alone with both girls. She wants to feed herself, but I can't put her entire plate in front of her because she will just stuff her face until she chokes. So she has to rely on me to place three pieces at a time in front of her and by her opinion, I am just not fast enough!