Catching up

Thanks to Grandpa Hill, we have some pictures to share from last weekend with the Haggerty group and also from a few weeks ago when the whole Hill group was here.

Here is (Great) Grandma Hill with all of her grandchildren and her one great grandchild:
(From the left - Connor, Daniel, Grandma, Caroline, Amanda, Emma, Wyatt, Laura)

And the four generations together:

Here is Emma hanging out with Aunt Laura at the Haggerty house in the chair that was such a big hit:
Great Grandma Gerken (Emma Sr.) with her great grandchildren, Nathan & Emma:

We have been super-busy seeing various relatives over the past few days, and the trend will continue through the weekend. Uncle Mike & Aunt Heather brought Alex over last night to play for a bit. Then tonight, we had dinner at the restaurant where Aunt Laura works to celebrate Tim's last day of his old job. Tomorrow it's over to Grandma & Grandpa Korey's house to celebrate Grandma's birthday. We never seem to run out of things to do or places to go, that's for sure!

Not really much progress towards crawling lately, but she is so good at rolling that she really doesn't have much interest in crawling right now. She is an expert at turning herself so that she can roll exactly where she wants to go. Her second tooth popped through on the bottom sometime around Wednesday of this week, and judging by her mood for the past couple of days, a third tooth may not be far behind! She has really gotten the hang of eating solid foods and has tried real pieces of banana, peach, and mango over the last few weeks, along with the fruit puffs she loves so much. Pretty soon we'll be trying some all new foods like cheese and Cheerios...pretty exciting stuff!

Movin' on up

No pictures yet from Sunday afternoon with baby Nathan, but we will post some once we get them from Grandpa Hill because we forgot to bring our camera -- what bad bloggers we are! Emma enjoyed trying to pull Nathan's hair every chance she could get. We figure she's jealous because he has more hair than she does! She also had a great time sitting in the little rocking chair that Aunt Martha had bought for Nathan. It was the perfect size for her to hang out in while she checked out some toys and books.

In other news, we are building a new house! We had been looking around for homes in our area with a basement, but everything near us is pretty expensive. We found a new neighborhood just a few miles north of here, and went in last weekend to check out the models. We loved the homes and loved the neighborhood, so we decided to put together a package and see what kind of deal we could get. When they came back and agreed to everything we asked for at the same price we offered, it was too good to pass up. They break ground in a month or so, and the house is supposed to be ready around late December/early January.

For those of you that are interested, you can click here to see the floorplan. Now we start the clock to see if we can get our house sold before the new one is done. Should be interesting to try to keep the house presentable with an active little one and all of her toys!

Well, hello there!

I had quite a surprise greeting when I walked into Emma's room this morning and found her like this:
Apparently she has learned how to go from lying down to sitting up all by herself! Alas, we had to say goodbye to the crib bumper. She hasn't been too pleased about her new surroundings -- the bed looks completely different from her point of view, and she keeps getting her feet stuck between the slats. As I type this, it is about 9:50pm and we are still working on getting her to sleep. Tomorrow we face the task of lowering her mattress, which should be quite a challenge if it's anything like the experience we had putting the crib together. Yikes.

We're looking forward to seeing cousin Megan tomorrow and meeting baby Nathan. Hopefully we all get some sleep between now and then!

Busy Fathers Day weekend

We have alot to report since the last post. This weekend was definitely a busy one! It started very early Saturday morning, when Emma & I went to cheer on Daddy and Grandpa Hill at the Possum Trot 10K in Roswell. Here is Tim before the race:

It was Tim's first 10K, and he did fantastic - ran the entire time. We were very proud of him. And Grandpa, too. One of the event photographers took a shot of us after the race, and it's up on their website (that's why there is writing across it):
After heading home and taking a short nap, it was off to Uncle Mike & Aunt Heather's house to see Alex, Grandma & Grandpa Korey, and Great Grandma Wisz (Nanny). Emma wowed everyone with her almost-crawling and enjoyed trying to pull on Alex's hair.



This morning, Emma put on her new dress from her Great Grandma Hill. She looked completely adorable, and we just had to show you all:

After we got home from church, it was time to celebrate Fathers Day with Daddy. Emma was very excited about the Braves board book she got for Daddy. She hopes they spend lots of time reading it together.
Have you ever seen a cuter pair than these two?

The tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but the tooth

Finally, after about 3 months of thinking that first tooth was going to pop out any minute, today I looked in Emma's mouth and there it was. Her first tooth! And it looks like the second one is close behind. Both are on the bottom. They are coming just in time because she's getting pretty good at feeding herself the cereal puffs, so more solid foods will surely be on the horizon.

Still no crawling yet, except for the occasional backwards scoot, but she is rolling around like crazy. Miss Sarah has nicknamed her "The Mad Roller" because she is all over the place lately!

She has also discovered her crib bumper and the fact that she can pull it down. I don't know how much longer we'll get to keep it on, which I hate because it's so cute! Here is what I saw when I went in to get her up from her afternoon nap yesterday:

Braves win!

We had a fun time with the Hill family last Saturday. Everyone came over to our house for a cookout, and then most of us headed down to Turner Field to catch the Cubs-Braves game. Aside from the blinding sun, a good time was had by all. Emma stayed home with Grandma Hill & Wyatt, but she was decked out in Braves gear to support her team.

I don't have any pictures with Emma (unless someone wants to email me theirs - hint, hint Grandpa), but here are Connor, Daniel, and Caroline showing off their blue slushie tongues at the game.

The family get-togethers continue as we will be going over to cousin Alex's house next weekend and seeing Megan & Nathan sometime while they are in town for the next few weeks.

Fancy hairdo

Emma wore a barrette in her hair for the first time today. I thought I'd take a picture because it looked pretty cute, and she started hamming it up for the camera (in front of her little kitchen playset -- thanks to the Hart family!). There are too many good pictures to pick just one or two, so click here to see them all.

In case you don't have time to click, here's one for good measure:

Trying to crawl is hard work!

We are pretty sure that Emma will be crawling in less than a week. She has all of the moves figured out, now she just has to put them all together. Of course, it would probably help if she could try crawling without her thumb in her mouth!

We also seem to have found another favorite food lately -- plums mixed with applesauce. It's right up there with peaches. She has devoured it for breakfast the last two mornings. She had a few fruit puffs the other day (like puffed cereal that dissolves quickly once it gets in their mouth). She wasn't too keen on the idea of solid food in her mouth, but once they dissolved, she smiled and opened her mouth for more. I tried to let her pick one up and eat it herself, but she didn't know what to do with it once she got hold of it, so she just passed it from hand to hand. We'll have to work on that. We have learned (the hard way) that she has a good, strong gag reflex, so introducing more solid foods should be very interesting!

We have lots of family coming into town for a visit this weekend, so hopefully we'll have some pictures to post afterwards. We're looking forward to seeing everyone!

Splish splash

Emma had fun in the bathtub this evening, as usual. Here is her homage to Ed Grimley (if only she had a triangle!):

We didn't get any pictures, but after her bath, she had a great time playing in an empty laundry basket. We'll have to grab the camera next time - it was super cute!

I had to post this picture from yesterday. It's a great shot of her pretty blue eyes.

Rockin' & rollin'

This post should have been made on Wednesday, but we came home in the evening to find that we had no internet connection. After 48 frustrating hours and three headache-inducing phone calls with AT&T Technical Support, we are finally back online. Being without internet service certainly makes you realize how much you rely on it!

Quick summary of the latest events in the life of Emma:

• Memorial Day weekend was lots of fun. We spent Saturday afternoon at Uncle Mike & Aunt Heather's house with the Korey family. On Sunday, we had planned to take Emma for her first visit to the park. Unfortunately, the smoke from the wildfires in south Georgia/Florida was so bad that we couldn't enjoy the afternoon outside. The smoke cleared out by early evening, so Emma and I took a nice long walk on the greenway while Tim did a 4-mile run. She seemed to enjoy looking at all of the trees and watching the bicycles whiz by. We went over to a cookout at Andy & Niki's on Monday, where Emma got to spend some time with her friends Audrey, Jackson, Avery, and Addison. Unfortunately, the weekend was over before we knew it, and it was back to the daily grind.
• Miss Sarah started watching a new 3-month old baby this week, so Emma is no longer the youngest of the bunch. It's looking like she and Laila (who is 3 weeks older than her) are going to be little partners in crime. They are both extremely close to being mobile, and we can already tell that they are going to get into all kinds of mischief together! Miss Sarah said that Emma was trying to mimic her son today when he sneezed. I wish I could have seen her!
• Speaking of being mobile, I think we are within a week or two of crawling. At this point, she gets up on her knees and elbows and rocks back & forth, and then after awhile, she gives up and lays down. But you can tell she knows that she's onto something.
  

Even though she hasn't quite figured out the crawl yet, she is quite the little roller. Here is an action sequence of a typical 30 seconds with Emma on the floor, rolling back and forth:


On this particular day, I was hoping she would try to crawl towards the book on the other side of the blanket. When she realized that rolling wasn't going to get her any closer, this smart cookie decided that instead of getting herself to the book, she would just pull on the blanket and bring the book to her! Is this kid brilliant or what?