11 Months

This past month Emmett has:

• grown to 26 pounds, 13 oz (94%)
• crawled through the glider ottoman to get to his books (they're in a corner behind it so he doesn't tear them up)
• started to pull off whatever he can reach from tables
• pulled a banana off the table and then proceeded to smash it all over the floor (including grandma's rug!)
• learned to wave
• dropped Cheerios off his tray to feed the dog (and then laughed when the dog ate them)
• gone on the swing for the first time; he even started to pump his legs/sway a little to keep the momentum going
• learned to click his tongue
• started to stand on his own for a while (10 seconds ish)
• held a hand and walked beside us
• started to understand the concept of chasing; he'll crawl away and look over his shoulder periodically waiting for us to come after him.  He'll also chase after us if we do the same thing (or when we're "running" away)
• enjoyed playing "this little piggy"  I think he finally gets it
• when we're reading books, he'll let us know if he approves of the selection.  He does this by leaning back into us, crossing his ankles, and sucking his thumb. If, however, he doesn't want that book, he'll push it away or throw it
• gotten his 7th tooth
• enjoyed getting into the fake moss in the fake plant pots and throwing it everywhere
• been having a biting issue...we're trying to teach him that it's not nice to bite people.  He mostly bites inanimate objects, but occasionally he'll get some flesh in there.  Any suggestions?
• been waking up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason.  But he will just stand and scream...it's totally driving us nuts
• caused me to have to call poison control for the first time: he somehow got the cap off his diaper rash cream and may have eaten a little.  Luckily, it's not harmful, but boy did I feel like an incompetent parent when I called in =(

We decided to do a small photoshoot with Emmett a week or so ago.  Here are some of our favorites:

 A scrunchy little smile

 Sucking his thumb, of course

 He decided to wave his arms around as I was taking the picture, but I just love the look on his face

 I just love this picture!

10 Months

We sure love our sweet little Emmett dude!  This past month has been pretty eventful!

• Emmett fed himself cereal for the first time...it was a huge mess, but he did get a little in his mouth.  However, we're going to wait a while before we let him try again.
• He mastered the art of crawling within about 3 days.  He now is ALL OVER the place and gets into everything!
• He loves to chase the dog.  It's really funny when he crawls toward her, gets close, and then she runs the other direction.  Then Emmett has to change directions and start the process over.
• Emmett LOVES to walk along things.  Quite often he'll crawl to something just so he can pull himself up and walk along it.
• One day while he was crawling around, Emmett found one of the dog's teeth-cleaning treats.  He, of course, promptly put it in his mouth and started gnawing on it!  It was so gross!
• Emmett fell down the stair from the kitchen to the laundry room.  He tried to crawl down it headfirst.  Since that first time, he has figured out that if he goes down slowly enough, he won't bonk his face on the hard tile floor.
• Emmett can pull himself to standing when he's in his crib waiting for us to come get him.  (Or when he's fighting taking a nap)
• He has figured out a system to get back down to the floor once he's pulled himself up to standing; he leans over and touches the floor with one hand while still holding on to whatever he was standing against with the other hand.
• Lots of times when he's sitting down, he'll cross his ankles.  It's really cute since his thighs are so chubby; his knees are bent and quite far apart, but his feet are interlocked around one another.
• He has started eating Cheerios by the handful instead of one at a time.  It's quite funny to see him try and cram an entire handful in his mouth.
• If he's crawling around and you put some food on your hand and hold it out to him, he'll come up and eat off your hand like a dog instead of grabbing the food with his hand.

Now, for everyone's favorite part of the post: pictures!

 One morning I went in to check on Emmett and found him asleep like this: he was laying on top of his arms.  I'm not sure if his arms were a little cold so he was trying to keep them warm, or whether he just felt comfortable like that.

 Emmett's cute little squinty smile

 When he tried to feed himself cereal; if you look closely, you can see globs of it all over him and the highchair.

 Emmett tried spaghetti for the first time; as you can see, he loved it!

And, as an extra, here's a cute video of him.  He's been really funny when eating his lunch lately, so I decided to pull out my phone and take a video of him.  Excuse the camera work at the beginning; it's hard to keep the camera trained on him while focusing on feeding him ;)  And yes, I do realize I sound like a crazy person.  Sorry 'bout that.

9 months

Wow... can it REALLY have been 9 months since this little man was born?  Where has the time gone?  People really aren't kidding when they say that time flies by!

Emmett had his 9 month wellcheck on Thursday.  He has gained an ounce in the past month so he now weighs in at  25 lbs, 4 oz (96%), and he is 29 inches (75%).

While we were at the doctor's, we found out that the little man has an ear infection.  We were surprised, because although he's been a little more goobey than usual, he hasn't been NEARLY as bad as last time he had an ear infection.  Luckily though, he was up-to-date on his shots, so he didn't need any of those.  =)

• Emmett now has 5 teeth (3 on top, 2 on bottom).  
• He has FINALLY figured out how to use a sippy cup!! We were so excited about that one!
• He makes the CUTEST little scrunchy-eyed smile.  He is such a ham! Although, I think he thinks that he can get away with ANYTHING if he makes that face, lol.
• He has mastered the art of feeding himself finger foods.  He loves Cheerios, fruit puffs, banana chunks (covered in baby oatmeal so he can actually get a grip on them), small pieces of green beans and cheese...pretty much whatever we give him
• He has started to move his hands and feet a lot when he's in his high chair - I keep asking him if he's going to be a conductor someday lol
• He enjoys standing up against furniture and has started to creep along it a little.  He has also become able to turn himself around if he's got stuff to hold on to.
• He can get from a sitting position to his stomach, but not back into a sitting position on his own.
• He really enjoys books; yesterday he let me read to him for at least 10 minutes and he just looked at the pictures and enjoyed it.
• He is beginning to grow out of his 18 month pants (Good thing I've been stocking up the bigger sizes when I can get them for super cheap!!)
• He LOVES bathtime.  He will lay on his stomach and play in the water as it's filling the tub, and he also enjoys sitting/laying and splashing.
• He definitely knows who mommy and daddy are; if anyone except us or grandma/grandpa try to hold him, his face melts and he starts crying.  Hopefully we'll get over this stage fairly soon.  

I've been waiting to post this until I had some recent pictures, but I keep forgetting to take some.  So here's the post and I'll put up some pictures in a couple days.

Chocolate Wonderfall

So yesterday Jeremy and I went out to Olive Garden for lunch for our super-late Valentines Day celebration.  We were having a wonderful time; good food, good service (yay!! our service track record at Olive Garden hasn't been spectacular, so we were super excited about that) and good company.  Emmett was sitting in a high chair next to me.  He starts grunting and we laugh a little about his lack of shame.  Then....it happens.

I happened to look over at Emmett and realize he's blown out of his diaper.  And not just a little, oh no.  It's all over his back, there's a pile on the high chair right behind his bum, and a baseball-sized mound on the floor underneath him.  It was awful, and it reeked!  So I start cleaning up the excess on the high chair and floor, while Jeremy tries to find something to put all the soiled wipes in.  (It's a super good thing I made sure there was an extra set of clothes and re-stocked the wipes container before we went!  I went through ALL of the wipes I put in the case!)  Our server brings us our food, and we gather things together and run to the bathroom to change Emmett's clothes and diaper, leaving our steaming hot pasta on the table.  Oh, it was a MESS!

But, we were able to get everything cleaned up and enjoy the rest of our meal.  And Emmett remained blissfully ignorant of the trouble he caused lol.  Now if we could only get him to have 2 poopy diapers/day instead of one ginormous blowout!  (This wasn't the first time this has happened!)  Oh well, such is life.  =)  We still love this little dude and think the world of him.

8 Months

Well, Emmett's been 8 months for a while now, and I'm just getting around to blogging.  He went in for an appointment and is now 25 lbs 3 oz (98%) and 28 inches long (61%).  He has become mobile; he figured out how to roll a couple of weeks ago and has since become proficient at getting where he wants.  He can scoot himself around so he can position himself to be able to roll in the direction he wants to go.  It's been really fun seeing him progress, but I am definitely a little sad to see my baby grow up so fast.  Jeremy keeps pressuring me to cut his hair, but I just can't bear to do it yet. Although I will concede that the hair over his ears IS getting a little long.  We'll see how much longer I can fend Jer off.  ;)
Emmett has gotten REALLY good at feeding himself.  Just the past few days he has started to actually let go of the food when he puts it in his mouth.  And he really likes the sippy cups that have handles for him to hold.  Now if he'd figure out that he needs to suck on the spout instead of chewing on it ;)

He also LOVES music; I have found that the Raffi Children's station on Pandora is amazing lol.

Emmett has started to want to be super independent sometimes.  It can drive us nuts.  He can just be super stubborn about not wanting help and then getting upset when he can't do it himself.  Oh what are we in for when he's older??

Well, I can't think of anything else to say, so here are the customary pictures of the little man.  =D

 This picture is kind of a weird angle, but I think it makes Emmett look super cute.

7 Months!

Wow, I can't believe Emmett is 7 months already!  He is so stinking cute and he just melts my heart every day.  We finally found a food he really doesn't like (chunky apples and squash....he likes them both separately, so I'm not sure if it's the combination he doesn't find appealing or what, but he gives me the funniest face and will try and push out the offending food lol).

• He has found his feet and likes to play with and look at them.
• He still loves his rattles.
• He is gnawing on EVERYTHING.  I think he might be trying to get some more teeth.
• He LOVES dogs.  He will just laugh and laugh at Chiquita and will watch her whenever she's moving.  It's so cute.
• He loves ANYONE who will pick him up when he's been crying.
• He sticks out his little tongue a lot; it's super cute.
• He drank out of a cup for the first time! And he did pretty well!

 Emmett with his tongue out =)

 I love the serious look on his face!

 My brother Zack decided to put Fuzzy on Emmett's head and Emmett made the funniest face.

 He fell asleep like this!  I can't imagine that it'd be comfortable, but apparently he didn't mind.

Christmas 2011

I realize this is late, but it's better late than never, right?  =)  We spent Christmas with my family this year and Jeremy's grandma came down to celebrate it with us.  Christmas Eve we went to my Uncle Scott & Aunt Kelly's for super yummy prime rib.  Luckily Santa paid a visit so I could get a picture of Emmett with him.  Emmett did really well and didn't seem to mind Santa at all.  In fact, he tried to grab his nice curly beard as well as his hat lol.  

Christmas morning we opened gifts.  Jeremy and Emmett got matching ties from one of my friends, and Emmett got a white shirt and khakis as well.  They got to wear their new duds to church that day.  They look super cute in them.  =)  Emmett also got some other clothes from Grandma & Grandpa Cress and a cute fleece blanket and pillow from Great Grandma Cress.  From us he got a crinkle book and the Lion King.  We figured he'd probably be more interested in the paper anyway, so it wouldn't really matter what we got him.  Jeremy got some targets, Cinderella Man, 17 Miracles, and some ammo.  I got How to Train Your Dragon (woot!!), some money towards books, Pride and Prejudice dvd (the long one!!).  There were other gifts as well, but they're slipping my mind at the moment.

Here's our first-ever Christmas letter as well:

Merry Christmas!  This year has been an eventful one for us.  In June we welcomed our baby boy Emmett and then later that week we graduated from Eastern Washington University.  It was definitely an eventful week and we are very glad to be done with school.  (At least, for the time being.)

Jeremy enjoyed spending time with Emmett this summer as he looked for a job.  At the beginning of November he was offered a job working at Areva as a material control handler.  However, they wanted him to start less than a week after they offered him a job, so we had to pack up and get moved out quickly.  Jeremy is now enjoying his job and we’re both enjoying being closer to my family.

Myaela is staying home with Emmett and loving being able to spend time with him.  She has been trying out a lot of new recipes lately and is having fun with that.

Emmett is six months old now and becoming increasingly active.  He hasn’t yet started crawling, which we are grateful for, but it looks like it’s not terribly far off.  He has two teeth now and he loves almost all solid foods he’s had.  He has such a sweet little personality and we are incredibly grateful to have him in our lives.

And our family portrait: 

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas as well!