Not Again!

Emma started tugging at her ear again yesterday. I took her to the doctor today and she has two ear infections...again. Most likely the previous antibiotic did begin to clear up the infection but the ear never fully recovered and then it got worse and started all over. Since we've tried all three normal ways of curing ear infections, we are now at a last resort. She got a shot today and we go back tomorrow and Thursday for another shot. Then Friday she will begin a 7 day antibiotic. Poor thing!! To say the least I am not a needle person...I dread them, I hate them, I run from them. It kills me when Emma has to get them too. I wonder though - is it really necessary for the nurse to tell me that this particular shot is going to hurt Emma more than most shots. Why must she tell me this? Does it help anything? NO. It just makes me tear up before she even pulls out the shot. It's even more sad because innocent Emma is sitting on the chair just smiling away at this nurse and has no idea what is about to hit her. Breaks a mother's heart!

As usual Emma has not been fussy or shown any signs of an ear infection (much less two). I was second guessing myself about even taking her in to see the doctor. I always wonder if I'm being "one of those people" who just take the child in at the drop of a hat because I never have any real proof of sickness. The only signs I have are that she tugs at her ear sometimes and in the middle of the night she'll cry out a few times. Normally she makes no movement or noise during the night. So when she started crying out last night, I knew she must have an ear infection again. Thank goodness I took her in before they got worse!

If she gets another ear infection or if this one doesn't clear up like it should, she'll most likely be recommended for tubes. I hope she doesn't have to get them but I know several people who have had them, including my nephew, and I know it has helped tremendously. So, we'll see what happens. Pray that this clears up quickly for our ladybug.

Beach Babe

There is a lot to catch up on since I haven't updated in a few days...

Emma is now eating meat. She had chicken for the first time on Sunday and she really enjoyed it. Since we shredded it for her it became a little dry but once we mixed it with some sweet potatoes she thought it was amazing. She has also had toast and bread this week. Her new favorite breakfast is toast because she can be a big girl and feed it to herself. She really prefers for us to break up pieces of food and let her feed herself now. I was trying to feed her some applesauce this morning but she would push her little lips together when I brought the spoon up to them. If she saw toast coming her way though, she couldn't open her mouth fast enough! Last night we gave her whole green beans and she'd pick them up and eat them like a french fry and bite off the ends. It was so cute...especially since she still only has those bottom two teeth. It's amazing what babies can eat even though they don't have many teeth.

On the way to the beach Emma started saying "rrrooarrr." It was out of the blue and now she does it ALL the time. It's precious to see the look on her face after she says it because you can just tell that she beaming with pride that she has made a new sound. If we make the noise to her, she mimics us and says it back. The way she puts her whole body into the noise is priceless. I think that she picked it up from me and Josh because whenever she would 'attack' whatever she was chewing on at the time we would always say "rrrooarrr." For some reason this sound was what we started doing to mimic this action. I will have to get this on video so you can see it.

Yesterday we were in the car waiting for Josh to run into the store. I was entertaining Emma in the backseat and getting her to give me high fives because she thinks it's hilarious. As she was giving me a high five she actually SAID "high five." My parents are witnesses who agree that it was most certainly the words high five. Josh was very disappointed that he missed it but she will soon say something else just as amazing.

Here are few pictures for you of our beach babe:



Emma with her cousin Jay:






In her cute bathing suit:






She was very upset that I was walking away for a minute to rinse my sandy hands:


And then we're happy again...

Only Content?!

Emma gets a daily report card and it has never said anything but "Happy" at the bottom to describe her mood that day. When we saw that it merely said "Content" on Wednesday we knew we must have a sick baby on our hands. I took Emma back to the doctor on Thursday morning. Turns out she still has an ear infection in the right ear. The doctor gave her a shot since the infection seemed resistant and gave her a new antibiotic. This antibiotic is only for 5 days (versus 10 like usual) since she had gotten the shot. Yay! I think she's on her way to being back to 100% because she finally ate breakfast this morning. Lately she'll take a bottle first thing in the morning but then won't eat again until lunch which is clearly out of character for our good little eater. Josh made oatmeal with banana this morning because it's her favorite and she gobbled it all up. I hope this keeps up!

Happy September 15th

In most people's worlds today is just a Tuesday. But to me, my coworkers and fellow accountants today is the dreaded 9/15 deadline which means that as of today we're officially free! The last returns have now been reviewed, processed and electronically filed. Now the hard part is going to be letting go of my new found coffee addiction!

Now that I have some time, I can post a few updated pictures.

It's football season and of course Emma insisted on being in fashion. Here she is with her sports fan attire on before the game. It's a little hard to see the logo, but it was so cute that I had to include it!


And this is of her in a t-shirt that used to be Josh's when he was a baby. It's a little snug, but she pulls it off!


This is an indication of how much she likes her blueberry oatmeal that Josh makes for her...judge for yourselves...


Here are a few photos from this past Sunday before we went to church...

She starts out with a natural pose:


Then, she gets distracted by a pretty purple plant:


She's such a sweet girl that she thought she'd share with Daddy:


Oh, and what is that over there?...She found a stick...luckiest baby EVER:


And how cute is it that she seems so proud of herself for finding and holding onto both at one time?


Happy September 15th!!!

All's Well that Ends Well

Since I haven't been getting home until around midnight each night this week (there are big deadlines in my world right now), I have not been able to spend any time with my little ladybug. I'm so sad about it. I get up with her each morning so that I can at least see her a little bit and feed her. I have a terrible fear that she'll forget me although Josh tells me that I'm crazy. BUT how are we to know how long babies' memory spans are, right? It's something to think about. For now, I am just looking forward to next Tuesday because that is the deadline and after that it will all be over!

In the meantime, I have been waking up with her to get in some mommy time. Each night when I get home I just can't help but go upstairs, go in her nursery, and pick her up. I know, I know - I should not do this - I should let my baby girl rest peacefully. In my defense though, this normally this doesn't even phase her in the least. Notice how I said "normally doesn't phase her." That's because last night it didn't go quite as smoothly. She's had a little diaper rash so Josh suggested that since I was going to pick her up anyways I should go ahead and change her while I was at it. Seemed reasonable to me. All was fine and good...until after I changed her (she was still asleep at this point). Apparently Emma had a little bubble in her after Josh gave her the bedtime bottle and she would not burp at all. He tried for over thirty minutes and after no avail finally just put her down in the crib. After I lifted her from the diaper changing pad, it all hit me. Literally - she spit up all over me and the floor. And as my luck would have it, she had prunes for dinner last night. Not a pretty picture is it?! It wasn't a pretty sight for us either!

Although, it was not the most pleasant experience, it ended up being great. I'm sure you're wondering how that could be great. First of all, because Josh cleaned it up and I didn't have to. Thanks Josh! And second of all, because this incident completely woke Emma up so I was able to play her for a few minutes. Yay! She was so adorable and all smiles. It was so nice to be able to rock her to sleep.

Pulling Up

I can officially report that Emma is pulling herself up now. She does it over and over again and is very proud of herself. We caught her on film last night. Check out our big girl:



She is also scooting around. We'll set her down in one spot and in no time, she will have scooted several feet. We're going to have to baby proof our house now because this morning Emma scooted over to the desk and was in the process of trying to pull herself up using the drawers. That could have ended badly because when I looked down, the drawers were sliding out. Danger! I don't even know how to go about baby proofing our house. I'm still not fully convinced that we have "Josh proofed" our house yet. I can only hope that Emma doesn't take after Josh in the way that all you have to hear are two little words and you know that things are about to turn ugly...those two words are "UH OH!" You never want to hear Josh say those words because odds are there is blood and/or some sort of gigantic mess involved. As a close second, you never want to hear Josh say "Watch this!" No good can come of those phrases! Lord, please let Emma not be as curious as her daddy!

On the flip side of that, I hope Emma does retain one important quality of Josh's...her ability to laugh and to do so with no other cares or worries in the world. This video demonstrates just that...it is one of Emma's favorite games. We call it "Super Emma" and I think it's pretty self explanatory:

Talking up a Storm

I'm very excited to report that on Wednesday (9/2/09) Emma said Dada for the first time. And although I'm sorry it had to be because she had an ear infection, I'm glad that she was at home so that Josh could be the first one to hear it. I heard her say it last night so now I can corroborate the story. You can tell from her face that she's proud of herself when she says it. She gets this priceless grin and all you see are those two bottom teeth. She's so cute! I tried to get her on the video camera saying it, but of course every time I pulled out the Flipvideo she was too excited about the electronic device to do anything else. I will post it as soon as I can capture it! She definitely has been running with it though...except for the times I would pull out the Flip, she would pretty much just ramble on and on. Mama, Dada, Baba...over and over again. At one point, Josh and I realized that we were having to raise our voices just to talk over her! This could be a sign of a future blabbermouth!

On another front, Emma was finally able to go to daycare today. No more fever and she has started to pick up the eating again although she still isn't up to par. On another good note, the antibiotic that she is on only has to given once a day as opposed to others we have had to use which were two to three times per day. I guess ear infections don't require as much medicine as other illnesses that she has come across. Yay!

She is also coming really close to crawling. However, I am almost convinced that she may walk before she will crawl. She has been pulling herself up on things lately which usually doesn't happen until after they've been crawling for a little while. If she is standing and able to hold on to something stationary, she has some fantastic balance. She can stand up on her own for at least five minutes. Emma is a girl who likes to be up and see it all...we'll have to wait and see what is in store for her I suppose.

What's worse than one ear infection?

TWO! As I mentioned in the last post, Emma had a fever on Saturday of 103.5. It went down quickly after she was given the Motrin. Everything was fine until Monday night. It wasn't bad, but she had a little fever of 100ish and once we gave her some Motrin, it went away. So we thought she was fine to go to daycare on Tuesday. She was happy, she was smiling, she was totally normal. So you would think she was okay, right? Ummm no. I felt like a bad parent on Tuesday when the daycare called me around 4 to say that Emma had a fever of 102.3. I of course stopped what I was doing and went to pick her up. Even as we were walking out of the daycare Emma gave the head woman a huge smile and a wave (as she always does) and the woman said "Well, look how happy she is! I can't believe she has a fever!" That made me feel a little better at least. Josh called and made her an appointment for this morning.

We went to see the pediatrician this morning and gave him the run down. After a few minutes his conclusion was that she had a little virus on Saturday but that her body compensated for it and it is now over. However, as a result of that virus, she developed ear infections. One in each ear. Poor little baby! The doctor was very surprised by the fact that she was not fussy at all with not only one ear infection, but two. He of course knows us by now and then before he even said anything else, he said "But then again, she is always happy no matter what, so why would we expect anything different?" The only signs were the fever and her appetite wasn't as good as usual. Honestly, since the fever went down so fast the first two times and occurred so far apart, I wasn't that worried about that. It was the not eating as much that really alarmed us!

Josh is getting her antibiotics as we speak and hopefully she'll be all better very soon! He's staying home with her today...such a good dad! It's a busy time at work right now for me, so I'll be working. Although, I will take this opportunity to say that the situation will change shortly. My last day at work will be the end of September!! I decided it was the right time for me and I can't wait to spend more time with my little ladybug. I'll probably start working again in January/February so I'll begin my job search soon. I am really looking forward to the end of September!!

Red Bay Adventure

This weekend me, Emily and Jaime went to visit Leah in Red Bay. I love reunions! I think there is one word that can properly describe the town...tiny. I can officially say that it is one of the only cities that I do not think I would get lost in. Huge plus for me because my directional sense is less than stellar. It amazes me how no matter where we are, Josh can always determine which way is North. I only know which way is north if either a.) we're on an interstate that actually has North, South, East or West in the title or b.) my GPS is on and I look down and see which way the arrow is pointing. However, I will point out the fact that the only place that Josh has zero direction is in a mall and that is the one place in the world where I have perfect direction. It doesn't matter which mall or if I've been in it before...I always know where I'm headed! God's little mystery I suppose.

We had a great time in Red Bay and really enjoyed our afternoon with Leah. Her house is so cute! She has become quite the crafty girl lately and has inspired the rest of us to want to do some of the same projects in our homes. We took a tour of the town and saw all the highlights which included the True Value, the Piggly Wiggly, and the school that she attended when she was little. There is also a rooster that lives next door. I could see how that might be disruptive in the early morning hours if I lived there. On the bright side though, she is within walking distance of the Piggly Wiggly. Wahoo! On a random thought though, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everywhere in the town is technically within walking distance. She recently had some eye surgery (detached retina issues) and is recovering quite nicely. I look forward to her next visit here...hint, hint Leah! Miss you already!

On the only downside of the day though, Emma got sick while I was away. Of course, she waited until the one day that I was gone for this to happen. Once I got into an area that I had reception (again, Red Bay = tiny) I noticed that I had 7 missed calls from Josh. I called him back immediately and he told me that Emma had a fever of 103.5. Her fever had already started to go down a little by the time I called him but he had been searching for the Motrin and couldn't get a hold of me to ask me where it was. If you're wondering, I had cleverly hidden it in her bag where all of her medicine like that is. He had eventually found it though and all was well. Disaster avoided! She was all smiles by the time I got home that night and back to herself.