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Emmy has a cousin, and his name is Logan. Logan is one crazy kid, and while they were here visiting us during Christmas, some of that silliness rubbed off on little Emeline. You can see here that Logan is definitely the instigator of this silliness. Now that Logan has gone back to Chicago, little Emmy misses Logan, but she’s still silly once in a while, especially when she’s eating bananas.

My blogging effort has been often critized so I am again commiting myself to my blog. Sorry that I am not very good at remembering to do it all the time! Emmy is doing great! She is getting so big and is doing lots of fun tricks! It’s been really fun to see her get better at things becuase it makes her so happy! And a happy baby equals a happy mommy!

One of Emeline’s favorite new tricks is flipping over! She has been doing this one for awhile but she wasn’t very consistent! She would do it once and then forget how to do it and get really frustrated! So now she can do it everytime she tries and that makes her very very happy! She is also starting to hold herself up in the crawling posistion! That makes her really happy until she tries to crawl and collapses. She will try it a few times and then give up and scoot herself on her belly. She will get the hang of it though. She has her developmental check up on the 19th of this month so I’ve been trying to get her ready for that! One thing we’ve been working on is sitting up without being propped up. She does okay but then she gets excited and wiggles herself sideways!

We went to our friends’ house for dinner and they have two little boys. One is older than Emmy and one is younger! So we had Emmy try out a bunch of fun products over there. She loved all of them too! The first was a high chair and she thought it was pretty fun! The second was a sippy cup which she LOVED!! She thinks water is about the funniest thing in the world! In the tub, out of a faucet, in a cup…all crowd pleasers! Anyway, She always wants to drink out of my cup and she is done with bottles so the sippy cup is the perfect solution! And finally, her favorite thing of the night was the EXERSAUCER! Oh boy! For those of you who don’t know what that is…it’s similiar to a walker only stationary. It allows them to stand up and jump and it has a bunch of toys all around them on a tray! Anyway, Alex and I wanted to use my grandparents christmas money to buy her one but they are kind of expensive so we wanted to make sure she would like it and she does!! She loves it! So the Anderson’s let us borrow it until President’s Day when we can go to Albuquerque and get her one! I am so excited! I can put it by me while I cook and clean and she thinks that she is helping me! It is really fun! She’s such a cutie!

Anyway, we’ve been having fun finding things that entertain her! She is really on track which is great! She is also on the growth charts just barely! That means so far there haven’t been any problems since her birth! I look forward to a day when we don’t have to worry so much about her developmental check ups!

Well, we are almost finally done moving in! Emmy is also getting adjusted to her new surroundings! For the first two weeks she was having trouble sleeping because she didn’t like being alone in her room and she wanted to get up and play in her new apartment. But her sleepless nights caught up with her this weekend and she has been sleeping in lately. Which is great for mom because I get all my chores done in the morning so then we can play play play when she wake up!

Emmy’s learning new things all the time, and with those new things she’s a lot more fun to play with every day. She’s communicating better, she’s playing better on her own, and she’s growing! Here are three specific things that she’s been doing more of lately, and they make her more fun every day. She loves to play on her mat of toys, especially if you attach different things to the large plastic hooks that hang above her head. As I type this he’s sucking on a plastic watch we got from Emmy’s Grandma Baker’s house over Christmas. She also loves playing with her frog and the lion that makes noise when you pull down on him. So without further ado, here are three new things that make being with Emmy better every day:

First, she has started to do blow raspberries, except she likes to get her tongue in there, too. She’ll even do it back to you (for all you previous nonbelievers, we now have it on video, so you have to believe us). If you do it to her, she’ll do it back, and when she does, she gets a huge grin on her face.

Second, she has started to ROLL OVER! It was just in the past couple of days that she’s started this. The first time she did it, she was on her back and then rolled over to her stomach, but we were lacking witnesses because she wanted to practice while mommy got the door. The second time was just yesterday, and we have that one on video as well. She rolls over from her stomach to her back on that one, so it’s not quite as difficult as the other way, but it’s still very good.

Her third new thing is that she doesn’t like to sleep through the night much more. I know this is sort of a step in the wrong direction, so how could I say that she gets cuter and more fun as she does it? I think you have to see little Emmy’s face when you rescue her from the crib to understand that one. This might be just because she’s getting a little sick (we’ve all had it, so it would be hard for her not to). Hopefully she feels all the way better soon, because we’ve really learned to appreciate when she does sleep through the night. Since we can appreciate that now, that means we’ve learned our lesson, right?

Last week was Halloween and Emmy had a blast! She got to dress up like a super cute red hot chili pepper! Not the Band but the veggie! She was so cute! Halloween day she wore a little sleeper that said “Baby’s first Boo-oo”. It was also adorable! She helped mommy make some banana bread and a chocolate ghost pie! But other than that Emmy wanted mom to sit perfectly still while she took long naps. She was still getting over her ear infection so she just wanted to cuddle with mommy and sleep all day.

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But that night we went to trunk or treat, to the Baker’s and to Ray and Laura’s. Alex got home a little early and we had sonic for dinner. Then Alex and I got in our costumes (BYU fans) and got Emmy all ready for her first Halloween! Trunk or Treat was at the church and it was really fun. The primary presidency did a shadow show and Emmy loved it! I was worried that Emmy would get sad with all the lights out, but she had her eyes glued to show on stage and didn’t fuss at all! We decorated our trunk with some decorations and spider webs that we bought at Wal-mart. I also had some orange lights that my mom had sent me a few years ago. Alex has a little adapter that plugs in to his car so we used that to turn on the lights and wrap them around the car! I’m pretty sure it was just the lights but we won the Spookiest Trunk award! Alex thought that was funny because I’d been worried about not knowing how to decorate the trunk. I handed out the candy while Alex took Emmy around to the other cars…because he…I mean Emmy…needed lots of candy!

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After trunk or treat we took her to Ray and Laura’s so they could see her costume. We dropped off some banana bread and Laura gave us some yummy sugar cookies. Then we went over to the Bakers’ to show them her cute outfit. Kath gave us a caramel apple and Max made sure Alex had plenty of candy (for Emmy of course).

Hi! This is Alex, Emmy’s dad here. Emmy’s been having lots of fun adventures, and she’s all ready to go trick-or-treating to grandparents’ and friends’ houses tonight in her little chili pepper costume. She’s adorable! Little Emmy had a fun trip to Albuquerque with us last week to shop for furniture for our apartment (We’re moving down the street in January). She got to go to all kinds of fun stores where we were able to measure the quality of the store to the reaction of the salespeople to Emmy. The store where they thought she was cutest was the store that got our business! She did great, and even had a fun time staying in a hotel, although it was a bit harder to walk her around in such a small space.

Little Emmy had us a bit worried at the beginning of last week because she stopped being her cheerful self as much as she had been. Even after we walked her around and stopped to look at lights and chandeliers she didn’t cheer up, so after the screaming became too much she and mommy went to the hospital and found out she had an ear infection. Luckily, it was caught quite quickly and so she’s back to her happy self now, but little Emmy has no problem expressing her disgust at driving around Albuquerque. One of us had to sit in the back seat with her to sing to her everywhere we went, so we’re glad the trips around Los Alamos are much shorter!

So Emmy was a little sick, but now she’s all better again and loves her amoxicillin! The doctors think she’s growing great, and she was up to 10 lbs. 3 oz. last Wednesday. Now that she’s all smiles again, we’ll be sure to take plenty of pictures, especially as she has her first Halloween experience tonight as a little red chili pepper.