Emma: 14 Months

Oh my what a big month it's been! Both my children seem to prefer month 14 for their major milestones. Emma took her first steps at home on October 20th!! Then she stood alone for the first time on Oct 24th at the Reifel Bird Sanctuary. It was pretty much the reverse of Randy (in A Christmas Story) when he falls and can't get up. In Emma's case, I'm pretty sure her coat actually KEPT HER from falling it was so thick! :)

She officially began walking at our church Harvest Party on October 26th, much thanks to her (stuffed) Ducky costume which also helped keep her upright and provided padding for the falls. She is SO HAPPY to have finally figured it out (look at her glee in the picture above!)

 One of her favorite activities (second only to walking!) is playing on the stairs. She's totally mastered sliding down them on her belly and over the weekend she figured out how to go down the singular stair from our landing into the kitchen STANDING. She uses the baby gate to assist but she loves to crawl up it, stand up, step down into the kitchen, close the gate most of the way, open it again, crawl back up and repeat. She did it for 10 minutes straight on Friday night!

She adores babies and wants to get her hands on them whenever given access. She also happens to have MAJOR bottle jealousy (which I discovered last weekend while watching my niece Lilly). Apparently 2 months is not quite long enough of a buffer period to forget what those things look like. She was SURE I was giving her cousin's bottle to the wrong baby.

 Emma has developed a moderate degree of separation anxiety over the past month a half or so. This is totally new to us as Isla was happy to go to anyone, pretty much any time. I get paged to pick her up from the nursery at both church and MOPS about 50% of the time. The sweet girl loves her mama and I sort of ok with that.

She passes most of her days driving her pink car around the kitchen floor, reading stacks of books in her room and playing with the dishes toys and legos with her sister. And climbing the stairs. She continues to eat us out of house and home but mostly just in the carbohydrate department. She has learned to give kisses (she makes and "moo-ah" sound while leaning her face toward your cheek) and is full of sweetness and charm. She knows she's cute and she uses it to her advantage. It's probably too early to tell but I think she's going to be musical. She hums and makes sing-song sounds every time she hears music. We feel so blessed to have her in our family. And in other news, last week her hair began to curl around her ears. Looks like all of us girls are going to be curly!