-Emma is quite a ham.  She loves attention and making us laugh.  The twinkle in her eye and her mischevious smile gives us great joy.  She still loves the same old peekaboo games, such as opening a door accompanied by screaming, shutting it quickly, and running down the hall only to repeat.

-We are having fun with arts and crafts, such as finger painting and painting with water a few times a week.

-Emma is super chatty, talking up a storm and rambling a lot.  Emma’s favorite word of the month is an assertive ”no” and other variations such as ”no,no, no” accompanied by an extremely miserable whine, squinted eyes, and tears.  She is definitely asserting her independence!  My favorite word that she says is “a-ro-ro” for orange- so cute!  She also says “mon” for monkey and says mamama and mimimi.  She can repeat many words but doesn’t use them regularly.  She still says ba to mean so many things.  She says “pa” for puppy and “da” for dog and “ba” for Barkley.  She emphatically nods her head yes and shakes no in answer to questions.  She still says ”pees” for please and now says “ta” for thank you.  She says “da” for duck and “bir” for bird.  Still says “bye” and waves, even for night night.  I have heard some two and three word phrases but can’t figure out what they mean.  I think she repeated “i love you” the other day, but it’s hard to say for sure, although it was emphasized with a hug.  She still says “boom” every time she falls or someone falls and “ouch” if she is hurt.  I love when she says “oooo” or “oh” for something she is excited about seeing.

-She initiates praying for dinner by folding her hands and she has even started to bow her head.  She doesn’t stay focused for long but it is cute.  At the end of the prayer, she claps and says “men” for amen.  I have noticed that she also will fold her hands at church and recognizes when people are praying.  She claps after every song and also pats her leg or sways to the music.  She recognizes the people at church and will hug them if she’s in the mood.

-Emma is incredibly sensitive to moods, responses, criticism, etc.  She is very observant.

-Emma is getting very particular about things as well.  She wants to pick what to wear for the day and pulls out clothes from her drawer several times a day.  Her favorite clothes are ones with dots or animals.  She is all about asserting her will and likes to be in control.  She likes her socks off and will pull them off regularly no matter how cold the floor is.  She sometimes fights diaper changes or putting pants back on depending on her mood.

-Emma can point to numerous pictures accurately, particularly animals in books that she reads daily with Daddy.  I think she is getting a good education so far.

-Another cute thing- Daddy will ask her to “make him a cup of coffee.”  Emma will then go to her play kitchen, take out the coffee thermos, and pour Daddy a cup of coffee.  She will serve it to him in a minute after she pretends to make it.

-Emma loves to be outside- especially playing at the local playground or at the beach.  She enjoys climbing and sliding a lot!  Every time we go out the front door she points to the playground down the street and tries to convince me to take her there.

-Emma has really taken on a helper role in our home.  She thrives on structure and routine.  She feeds Barkley every day (puts the bowl down on the floor) and hands the bowl to me when he is through.  If I spill water on the floor, she will grab a towel and clean it up.  She will pass her dish to me when she is done eating and help set the table.  If I am changing the crib sheet, she will get a new one out and hand it to me.  She likes to help with the laundry- putting clothes in the washer, transfer from dryer to basket, pushing the basket into the next room, and unloading the basket- fun stuff.  She will throw trash in the can and run all the way from the living room into the kitchen to do it.  Everything is a game!

-She has really taken an interest in cooking and is always asking me to pick her up so she can see.  A lot of times I find myself mixing things on the floor so that she can see and help.  She is much more likely to eat something we make together.

-She is learning to use a potty at bathtime and how to brush her teeth.

-Emma still loves to dance to music, especially with a beat, but now moves a lot more.  She spins in circles, stands on her head in quadruped, and somersaults.  She runs around the house.

-Sweetness continues: hugs, “noses” (rubbing noses), kisses, raspberries, face cradling, and head butts.  Love all the affection.  One of my favorites is family hugs where everybody piles on the sofa for a few minutes.  Emma will hug and kiss us, back and forth from mommy to daddy.  It is one of the highlights of every day.

-Emma enjoys and looks forward to skyping with family.  She will point to the computer and ask to skype.  She reads books on skype and shows her toys to her family, trying to get them to kiss the screen.

-She gets so silly when she is tired and runs around in circles and falls over repeatedly.  Guess that’s one of her cues that it’s time for a nap.

-In the car, Emma is usually either napping or playing with her electronic dinosaur that says letters and colors or her turtle book which reads stories.  She will turn it off and hand it to me when we get to our destination.  She likes to take a stuffed toy on car rides too and will carry it out to the car.

-She is interested in buttons, buckles, belts, snaps, and zippers but still needs help with most of them to use them right.  Today she was able to unzip her coat and figure out how to take it off by herself.

Emma is growing so quickly I can hardly keep up!  Seems like each week brings something new as our little girl continues to blossom and grow!  What a blessing she is!

Since Tim drove us most of the way there, he rested Saturday morning, while Emma and I played at McDonalds play place across the street from the hotel.  It was a fun morning activity, except part of the place is structured like a drive-thru window, not something Emma needs to get to know well when so young!

We enjoyed the animals of San Antonio at the zoo on Saturday and Snake and Animal Farm of New Braunfels on Sunday.  Since one of Emma’s favorite past times is talking about and looking at animals, she had a great time.  It is so much fun just to watch her reaction to every animal as she runs from place to place pointing out everything.  She is just so excited and joyful.

Food of San Antonio area was also good.  One notable place was the culture of the Little Red Barn, an over the top cowgirl themed steak house.  It had a fun atmosphere, but the high chairs were the most unsafe I’ve ever seen.  The first one kept sliding every time Emma leaned forward on the table.  We also enjoyed the Irish pub on the Riverwalk with some wonderful comfort food.

On the way home, we stopped at Buckee’s, a huge silly truck stop on I-10, where Emma hugged the beaver character.  We also bought her mittens and went shoe shopping.  Shoes were too expensive to buy, but Emma was so cute wanting to try on each pair!

Overall- a fun weekend, too short as always, a bit of disrupted sleep patterns when sharing a room with Emma, but a good time for the family.  We were very grateful for the opportunity to get away for a bit!

• We loved telling Emma the Christmas story, sharing the birth of Jesus through song, stories, and toys.  She could identify the baby Jesus, mommy Mary, and Daddy Joseph, but she really loved all of the animals in the manger scene too.  For our family, we want Christmas to be all about celebrating Jesus’ birthday.  We are excited about future Christmases and developing new traditions for our family.
• Emma was not sure about opening gifts.  She seemed to be unsure about tearing the paper and wondered what we were doing for the first few.  She finally figured it out but then got tired of opening them and wanted to just play with what she had.  She enjoyed playing with the paper and handing it to Daddy.  Dad and Ruth sent a kitchen that we set up for her to find on Christmas morning and she loved that as well.  With so many gifts from generous family members, we spread the gifts out over several days to make it less overwhelming.
• We spent Christmas day with our friends Lauren and Greg and their daughter AnnDee at our house.  It was a great time- so much fun.  It is a great blessing to us to have good friends here in Texas.  It was also such a joy to watch AnnDee and Emma play all afternoon.  Neither one napped very long, so they were a bit fussier than usual, but I think they still had fun.  We sure did- watching the girls, playing with them, cooking, catching up, eating wonderful food, etc.
• Christmas morning at Primera was bring your gifts to church Sunday.  Tim and I played a trumpet and clarinet duet of “O Come all Ye Faithful,” and Tim played his guitar and I sang “Jesus, All for Jesus” as a song of recommitment.  Different members of the congregation shared testimony, readings, Scripture, piano music, and songs.  It was a wonderful time where we offered our gifts to Jesus to celebrate his birth.  Although we were not perfect, I do think it was a joyous occasion for God to receive those humbly given gifts.  His Spirit was surely present with us.

Some 16 month fun:

• Lots of talking- says hi to everyone, bye too, mama, daddy, eye, no no.  She loves sound effects still- ahm for biting, mhwa for kisses, ooo, boom for falling, whee for something fun, baaaa for sheep, monkey sounds, ouch when she steps on a burr, shrill noises and screams.  Her words are starting to sound a lot more like actual words as she is learning to repeat and shape her mouth differently- buh for button, ba for ball, no for nose etc- but sometimes she still resorts to just generic short sounds ba for everything she wants.  Sometimes she says dog.  She says “pees” for please and uses the please ASL sign of rubbing her chest.  She is so cute when she does it I have a hard time saying no.  I think if I was more observant I would hear and understand more variations in her vowels for specific things, but I am too slow at times to pick up on her communication.  She is really thinking hard about answering questions.
• gives many people hugs
• spent most of this month in a cast- very adaptable- hasn’t stopped her at all from being active.  Finally, she got the cast off this past Tuesday.  She had a little dry skin underneath, which must have been itchy- poor baby.  Nothing that a little lotion and time won’t fix though!
• new teeth- 4 bottom, 4 on top total
• spent some time with babysitters- mommy and daddy finally had some date nights!
• talks on the phone- holds it to her ear and says hi a lot
• this game has been going on for awhile now but she loves to point to parts of our faces and then to her own- favorites are eyes, ears, hair, nose and lately teeth!