It's so sad that Emory turned a year old and I've all but forgotten about her on this blog :) She's changed sooo much since then too - I've got to document some of her milestones.

To be cliche, she is a bundle of energy. I told one friend I think God gave her an extra dose of "presence" in this world. Even next to a vivacious 5 year old and rowdy 2 & 1/2 year old twins, Emory never gets overlooked in this house! She gives all of them a run for their money!

Here's what she's doing now, almost 16 months :

• Running all over - she started walking right about 13 months and as predicted never slowed down from there. She & the twins will line up at the door and say "Mark, set, go" and run races. It's hilarious, of the 3 of them, at least 1 of them never makes it to the finish without losing track and going off to do something else. :)
• Talking - she started talking right around the time she was walking, and off the bat was saying all kinds of things. She continually says new words every day, and a couple of phrases like "over there". At one point I started to make a list of her words but I lost track at 40 over a month ago. It has amazed me to see her learn so quickly on her own. We taught the little ones to call Kaleigh "KK" and she says "KK" all the time when she sees her but just today I heard her saying "Kaleigh". (Kayee) She calls Alexis "sexy" HA! Actually she calls both the twins that. She's definitely learning tons from her sisters. Sometimes when she repeats the twins it sounds just like them.
• Another thing she's learned early and is advanced at is temper tantrums. I'm just hoping this is a very early terrible twos thing that she's learned from watching the twins. :) She can hold her own with them too.
  
• she follows instructions really well. I'll tell her to get something and she'll get it and bring it to me
• Can point to her nose and belly. Loves her belly! I haven't said much about her belly button but she had a herniated belly button. It stuck out a ton but has gotten smaller & smaller and is almost normal now.
  
• Likes to look at books, climbs, "talks" on the telephone. She can turn almost anything into a phone :)
• I've actually sat her on the potty a few times. She tells me a lot when she's stinky so I figured I would give it a go. She wanted to sit on the potty after seeing the twins training. Which is not going well, by the way. Anyway, I thought, why not just do all three at once. None of them ever go, so it may still be a while.
• We haven't been to the doctor in so long but I think she weighs like 24 pounds. We just moved her into a convertible car seat. We don't make it to regular check ups and she's only had one series of vaccines (that's a whole other post). But she's been pretty healthy.
  

So that's pretty much where we're at right now. I love her soo much. She's still so chubby and cuddly but losing her babyness :(

Mother's Day, Zoo Day, it's all the same to me...

Not that I'm hoping to win some kind of award here, but I let Nathan go out of town on Mother's Day, gasp! That decision was multi-faceted, the first being that he had a chance to go with some good friends to a free Cardinals game, how do I tell him to pass that up? The guys really don't get together a lot, which brings up my 2nd reason - the girls do get together a LOT! :) And thirdly, I kinda remember getting really sulky last year when my kids (who were 4, 1, 1, and 3 months) didn't seem to get that they were supposed to be really nice and easy and cooperative, at least on that one day a year. So this year, I figured, whatever, no expectations, no disappointment. And that Nathan will make it up to me in a BIG way! HA! Not sure what that looks like yet.

It was okay, though. First, Kaleigh upon seeing me Sunday morning said "Happy Mother's Day!" then ran out of the room & came back with my card that Nathan had helped them do ahead of time. It had quotes from all the kids and was soooo sweet and funny. "I wuv you mommy", "i like favorite mommy", "uh uh uh uh meow, meow" and Kaleigh had written "I Love you mommy" in the prettiest handwriting. I tried to scan it but the thing just will not work. Then Avery saw me in my dress and told me I was pretty. So they were actually pretty nice to me. Getting them all ready for church went surprisingly well too.

After church our friends Andy & Liz offered to take us out for lunch. I asked them "are you sure" b/c my kids can be quite the handful. Emory especially. We did it and it was fun, and the kids did throw the expected number of fits. They got to eat lots of chips & salsa too! It was such a thoughtful thing for them to do. And Nathan got back that afternoon & we celebrated at his parents house. It was a pretty nice day overall.

Yesterday was our annual church outing to the zoo. It's basically our one time a year to go. Patti came with me to help. Our Mommy & Me outings are to try and get to know other Moms from our church a little better. I think it's a great idea but I really can't be that social since I'm having to chase all the kids around! The twins are at a great age to really enjoy the zoo, although Avery was having more fun petting our friend's baby. I told Sara, next time we'll skip the zoo and just come stare at Lily.