Emmett first half of November Pics 15 months old

Waiting for the Olympic runners to run by with the torch Nov 2nd

Halloween!

Morning nap with Daddy

After carving the pumpkin

Waiting for the trick or treaters

Halloween fun!

Watching all the kids in their costumes

Emmett has improved in his walking a whole lot. He's not running at full tilt but close to most days. He can crouch down and pick things up and has a few times gotten up in the middle of the room without holding anything. But he's mostly walking rather than crawling now.

The weather hasn't been very good over the last week so we haven't been able to get out of the house as much. Coupled with Tyler needing the car for work most of the day it can be challenging to keep us both from getting cabin fever!

We're not sure if this qualifies as a first word but he definitely tries to say Banana and then Mumma and Dada and almost ball. I'm sure he'll be chatting my ear off in no time which will be a nice change from the high pitched screeching he seems to be doing a lot of lately.

One cute thing he started doing all on his own was a surprise to us both. Tyler was changing him and he grabbed his socks and tried to put them on! and ever since he tries to put his socks and his boots on..and I have it on video here for your view pleasure!

For Halloween we stayed in and handed out candy as he's really too young to know what Halloween is this year anyways but he loved watching the trick r treaters out the window! Next year it will finally be our turn to go out and do that and I can't wait!

Emmett as you can see in the pics was a cute little skeleton! He had lots of fun!

More Walking! Emmett a week shy of 14 months

Walking to the bath

Before the haircut that day

Walking!

Emmett started to take his first steps around Sept 7th but didn't really get good at it until this week : ) I will try to get more video up tomorrow.

Who needs to walk when you can run everywhere?

Emmett's Great Auntie Katrin and Uncle Phil came all the way from Sparwood BC too see us again. I had a great two days with them and I really appreciate the fact that they cared enough to drive all this way just for a little visit with us. I hope this will be a yearly thing : ) Uncle Phil brought us some Elk sausage, jerky and steaks and so far they are amazing as usual. We got some really nice Halibut from a fresh seafood store here and grilled it up as well as prawns nearly bigger then my hands. all in all we had a fantastic time!
Damn blurry camera!!! Grrr! I really do not like our cannon digital. Blurry shots almost all of the time. One of these days I am going to get a better one.
Looking Innocent at 13 months old


Well I am close to owning a little runner. Emmett took his first steps on Sept 9th and since then is steadily gaining speed. So far he mostly just runs betwenn furnature but gets brave and goes straight out into the middle of the room sometimes too. He is soooo busy, I can't imagine the calories he burns. He's not much into sitting quitely and cuddling unless he's tired.

He's also trying his hardest to get those first real words out there too. He tries to say Dog which comes out as "dou" and banana which comes out as "nana" The mama thing mostly gets heard when he's been put in his crib for a nap and does not want to be there and Dada is usually used on us both. He'll get the hang of it. After all, when was the last time you tried to learn a new language, walk and coordinate your hands for the first time all in a matter of 13 months. Hard work.

Tyler and I are balancing things on a fine line with regards to living on one income. It's not ideal and certainly not fun to have no extra cash but we are making due. I am seeking out that elusive evening job but I'm optimistic that it will happen soon. I do cakes on the side whenever possible and yes down the road I would love to do more of that but for now my focus is taking care of the basics and finding a job that works opposite to Tylers schedule.

Emmett is down to taking one nap a day now. He had been fighting me on that second nap for a few weeks so this week we finally dropped it. Now he goes down around 11:30 and sleeps and hour and a half or two..if I'm lucky. I intend to push it up a half hour more to 12:00 so that his afternoons aren't so long before bed time. One thing for sure is that he is going to bed at night way easier on one nap a day then he did with two. By 7:00 he is ready for sleep and the complaining maybe only lasts 5 min before he's out. Thank God!

Our Mom's Group at the community center has ended as Emmett is too old now but we still meet up with the other Mom's and Emmett's little friends for play dates etc. It's good for those kids to play together and they have done so since they were a month old. It will be nice to see them grow up and go to school together. We often joke about what they might be like and if maybe any of them will date...who knows. Right now they're just learning the basics of sharing. Watching them interact is so fun though; Emmett loves to pat heads and little kisses aren't unheard of either. I think he will grow up to be a very intuitive and affectionate kid and nothing could make me happier.

He's starting to notice things that he would have ignored before too. Tyler had a bandage on his neck from a cut and when he picked Emmett up , he got this puzzled look on his face and craned his neck around to see what it was but didn't touch it. Each time Tyler picked him up he would do the same..he looked very concerned. Then I picked him up and he got that concerned look on his face again looking on both sides of my neck to make sure I didn't have one too. I t was very funny. This goes along with the new pointing thing, nothing makes him happier then if you acknowledge what he's pointing at and point at it too....i will have to let him know that pointing at people is not such a good idea eventually.

So far for teeth we have the bottom middle two then both the top fronts and were waiting for the ones along side to come up. One night on sept 7th I was brushing his teeth and noticed that it wasn't the teeth i was expecting to come up but both first molars on the bottom. Poor kid, they were so swollen and red and it really did look painful. I gave him baby advil and some camilla drops and we have had a rough couple of weeks with those since. I think they're mostly through though now...we will see what's next.

We are still nursing once a day in the morning. Yes, I am aware that a few of you might think that Emmett is too old and that I should just ween him. But the truth is that things are slowly changing back to what they were in that regard before the formula companies came in and messed with things...though they still make it hard. But I now know more Mom's than not that are nursing past a year too. ...it's actually encouraged until 24 months now. Formula companies are a little like tobacco companies and are now are banned from advertising and pushing formula in hospitals and to doctors. This does little to deter them though If you'd like to know just how devious they can be..please read this little article here: http://www.straight.com/article-151971/breastfeeding-gets-cold-shoulder-hospitals or look up the documentary Formula for Disaster on Youtube.com

Anyways , I think we will be done sometime this month. Either way, it has been his decision how much he wants and he has been dropping feeds for a while now on his own. In a way I am a little sad but it will be nice to have my body back to myself for the first time in 2 years. I've done my part. I hope that this little extra that we went will be extra protection for him as we go into the flu season.

Emmett's favorite things to date:

-His push walker

-Bananas

-Cheese or cheddar gold fish crackers

-Pasta and Meat sauce

-Walking anywhere but especially to the bath tub in his birthday suit

-Cheerios and Milk

-Stroller walks

-Playing 'get you, get you' in the living room with his Dad where by he grabs the remote control and runs off with it as fast as his clumsy little feet can taking him looking back at you to see if you are chasing him.

-Turning the TV on and off which wasn't so bad..today he discovered the volume button

Emmett's dislikes to date:

-Bed time

-Diaper changes and clothing changes

-Having his face washed

-Laying back in the tub to have his hair washed

-Cow's Milk (still not a fan)

-the feeling of sand or grass on his bare skin (i'm sure this will pass)

- his play pen for any amount of time, this makes putting him in there so i can use the washroom etc increasingly difficult

- having his nails clipped

-having his teeth brushed (a two person job)

Here is a new batch of pictures,

My little one year old!

We had Emmett's official birthday party on his birthday and a few other friends too.

One Birthday party down one to go

First taste of cake. He managed to wipe those blue little icing hands all over my white pants too.

We did a gift exchange. Emmett got some beach toys and an automatic bubble blower. I can just hear my self "when I was young, we had to blow our own bubbles"

Wow that was a crazy party..imagine 11 babies on a major sugar high for the first time in one room. It was pretty fun though. We had the dad's whacking a pinata, a photographer (friend of one of the moms) , 11 individual mini birthday cakes that i baked and brought, games, and a lot of party food too. Here are some pictures from the party. Next party will be Sunday the 9th for Emmett's actual birthday.

One seriously hot week

My last mom's group meeting at Little Cruisers July 29th . There are anywhere between 15 and 30 moms that come to this group. It starts again in the fall but by then Emmett will be too old to go. We all still meet up throughout the week at the parks and beaches and for walks.
Hanging out on the blanket while us moms are berry picking down the rows. Emmett is the only crawler here and he hates the feeling of grass so he won't leave. However that doesn't mean that there isn't issues. We heard a squawk or two and looked up to see that one of them had found a banana and then all three of the were pulling it to pieces!

Emmett is doing great and growing fast. He climbs, crawls and is now learning how to walk/...on his push walker for now at least. We are happy to report that the nights of walking up every 3- 4 hours to nurse him back down to sleep are a thing of the past and we now have him sleeping in his own crib in his own room for 11-12 hours a night. I can't even begin to express how nice it is to have more than 4 consecutive hours of sleep for the first time since I was 5 months pregnant and started having to get up to pee all night long.

I can't believe my tiny little guy has grown up so much in the last 12 months and his 1 st birthday is right around the corner now. Soon I will have a full fledged toddler on my hands : ) He really is a lot of fun though..watching hi learn new things every day. He weighs around 23 lbs now and is about 30 inches tall and is fitting in to clothes for 18 month +

Some of his favorite things right now include swimming, bath time, cruising around the living room, being sung and read to and playing pass the ball. Things he doesn't like are nap time, being left in his play pen for even 5 min, and though he needs it and is tired he still in no big fan of being put to bed. Otherwise he is a happy baby who loves to smile at anyone who will look at him in the grocery store.

We've been really busy in recent weeks, mostly out at the U-Pick berry farms picking strawberries, raspberries and blueberries and then freezing some and making jam with some. So far we have made all of those in jam plus a rhubarb ginger jam that turned out really nice. Next up will be blackberries!

This Monday (Aug 3) we are doing a big 11 baby first birthday party. Yup that's right 11 babies and I will be doing 11 mini birthday cakes for each of them to smash up. These other babies are Emmett's friends from our Moms group that I've been attending weekly since Emmett was 3 weeks old. All of them were born in the first 10 days of August so rather than go to too many parties we decided to just throw one big one together. The Moms I have met here through that group have been an endless source of support and company and it's as much a celebration of our friendships as it will be our kids. Someday they will all grow up together, go to school together and who knows some of them might even date. Should be interesting.

The next weekend on Emmett's real birthday (Aug 9) we will be doing his own little birthday party with some friends I mostly know outside of Moms group and Auntie Corey. The forecast is for rain so I'm really not sure how this will all pan out for a backyard party.. though a little rain would be nice. The temperature here in recent days has been 30 C for almost a week now and another week as well. The house has been so hot and unbearable that we finally gave in and bought a little window air conditioner from Walmart that was on sale. SO nice that it cools the bedroom and now we have to try to keep Emmett's room cool too. We can't put an air conditioner in his window so just fans will have to do.

I know I haven't been the best at getting up regular posts up in recent months but now that I'm getting more sleep I think I can get more posts up.

11 Months Old!!

First time eating pasta and tomato sauce..as you can see, he loved it.

Out at the filberg park

Canada day with my little patriot

I will have to fill in some more of the details for you but here are more pictures for now