Seven teeth and counting

We got the pictures from Aunt Laura's camera, so there are more pictures in the photo album below from Emma's party. If you already looked yesterday or early today, look again. The new ones are worth an extra click. I know we still didn't get pictures of everyone there, so if anyone has more pictures they want to share from Sunday, please feel free to send them our way and we'll add them to the album!

Last night, I stuck my finger in Emma's mouth and discovered another tooth! This one is popping through on the top. No doubt there will be a matching one on the other side coming through soon.

For those of you who haven't gotten to see it in person, here is the best shot we could get of Emma's mean, scary Halloween face. You really have to see it live to get the full effect with the snarly breathing, but this is a pretty good idea of what the face looks like:

We'll be sure to get lots of good poses tomorrow with the halloween costume. I'm sure she is going to the the cutest one-year-old scary-faced cow ever!

Happy birthday to Emma!

Emma turned 1 on Sunday. We can't believe that a year has gone by so quickly. And yet, at the same time, Emma has changed and grown so much over the last 12 months.

We had family and a few friends join us at Webb Bridge Park for Emma's first birthday party yesterday afternoon. We couldn't have asked for better weather, and everyone seemed to have a good time. I'll let the pictures tell the story of how Emma reacted to her birthday cake! Here's a teaser...

Click here to see the whole story and more pictures. There will be some more pictures to come once we take the pictures off Aunt Laura's camera, but these will do for now.

Happy birthday to our sweet little Emmy!

12 month check-up

I'm going to do a separate entry for the birthday festivities, but we've had alot going on over the past week to share (and pictures, finally!). First of all, Emma's cousin Alex officially became a member of the Korey family. All of the adoption proceedings were finalized last week. Yay!

On Saturday, we headed over to see what progress had been made on the house construction. We found some very visible developments. The granite countertops are in, and some of the appliances have arrived and are ready to be installed:

The railings are up, and they look really nice:

The family room is really starting to take shape:

The official front door has also been installed, and the shutters were lined up on the driveway, ready to be put up shortly. We're down to about 4 weeks now, and we are so excited!

Emma had her 12 month check-up today. She weighs 21lbs and measures 29" long, which are both right around 50th percentile. Dr. Dewling thinks she will walk before Thanksgiving, but I'm not so sure. She pulls up constantly, but she barely cruises while holding on to something, and I have yet to see her let go and try to stand on her own. She got more than a few shots today, which is never fun, but she stopped crying as soon as it was over. She's a trooper!

When we got home, she was a little out of sorts from the shots. While she was playing on the floor, she came over to me, pulled up so that she was standing next to me, and reached over to give me a big, snuggly hug. We sure do have a sweet little girl.

Quick announcement

No pictures again (sorry!). Just taking advantage of this public forum to make sure everyone has our correct email addresses. Through all of the mayhem of Part 1 of our move, we have lost access to our Bellsouth email accounts. Here are the email addresses you should use to contact us from now on:

Amanda - amkorey@yahoo.com
Tim - commishkorey@yahoo.com

Sick bay

A nasty virus has made the rounds through the Korey household. Tim fought through it like a trooper last week, and just when we all thought we were out of the woods, it took both Emma & me out of commission for most of this past week. The symptoms started over the weekend (fever, nausea, sore throat, achiness, etc.), and we seem to both finally be starting to feel a little more human today. We each paid visits to our respective doctors, who both came up with the same diagnosis: a nasty virus that just has to run its 5-7 day course. No flu thankfully, but this wasn't your run-of-the-mill cold, either. And talk about bad timing -- we move out of our house on Saturday morning. Poor Tim has packed up 3/4 of the house all by himself!

Hopefully we will have some new pictures and a fully-recovered update once we are settled in our new temporary home...

Welcome, Ashley!

Forgot to mention in yesterday's entry that Katie & Richard's little girl Ashley Carolyn was born on October 10th. (That's the baby whose shower we went to in Florida last month.) From the pictures we've seen so far, she looks adorable and so tiny. We can't wait to meet her in person one of these days! It's hard to remember Emma being so small, although she was almost 3 lbs ahead of Ashley from the get-go!

Congrats to the new parents, as well as the grandparents and other family that are reading this!

Pumpkin picking

Emma had her first trip to the pumkin patch today. We had planned to go up to Burt's Farm up in Dawsonville, but with everything going on lately, there's just not enough time to make the trip. We stopped by a church down the road instead. Thankfully, Emma is young enough that we didn't have to worry about her begging to go in the moon bounce or to get her face painted. Next year, we may not be so lucky! Here is Emma looking for the perfect pumpkin:

And here we are with Emma's very first pumpkin.
Before pumpkin picking, we met Grandpa & Grandpa Korey over at the new house. As you can see, we now have a front porch with columns:
We went to the back yard, and Emma pointed out all of the trees:
Most of the doors are now in, as well as the trim and moulding. They have also installed the fireplace and the kitchen cabinets. As we left, it looked like the railing on the stairs was on its way in. Things are really starting to take shape!

Dancing with Spiderman

Emma's babysitter has an adorable video of Emma and her daughter Laila playing with a dancing Spiderman toy this morning. Click here and look for the entry called "Too Cute" to watch the video. You need to have the sound on to get the full effect, and make sure you watch all the way to the end, when Emma gets really excited!

Forgot to mention last time that we have more progress to report on the new house. As of last Saturday, we finally have a driveway and a front porch. The patio in the back was also poured, and the drywall is ready for paint. We forgot the camera, so there are no new pictures. We'll try to take some more next time.

Barring something unforeseen, we should be closing on our current house on October 24th. We are very excited to (almost) have our house sold, but that's in less than two weeks -- yikes! We'll be busy packing from now until then, I'm sure. Grandma & Grandpa H will get a big dose of family time, as we will be staying with them and Aunt Laura for about 5 weeks until our new house is done. Sounds like a set-up for a bad sitcom, doesn't it?

What's up, doc?

Emma would like to remind everyone to eat your veggies! (That's a carrot she's holding above.) Actually, the carrot is part of her little garden play thingy - don't know what the proper term is - that she absolutely loves. It keeps her busy for awhile, which is not something we take for granted these days! You can see Elmo joining in on the fun below: We had a busy Saturday over at Niki, Andy, & Audrey's house having a garage sale to try and get rid of some of our stuff before we move. We did pretty well, considering neither Tim nor I had ever done one before. Emma hung out with Audrey and Audrey's cousin Ian for part of the morning. Audrey has started walking in the last few days, but it hasn't rubbed off on Emma yet! She is starting to pull up more, but we are in no hurry.

Today we found a new food that Emma seems to love...blueberries. She's clapping in this picture to show how much she loves them:
You may notice that there are none on her highchair tray. Cheese...eh, turkey...you can keep it, goldfish...nah, but there is not a blueberry left in sight! I only fed her a few at lunch and dinner to make sure she doesn't have a reaction before she downs a huge helping, but so far so good. It's nice to see her enjoying something that actually has nutritional value for once...

We also made another discovery this evening: two new teeth! She had been fussy on & off last week, but we attributed it to her cold. Plus, last time I checked, there were only 4 teeth in there. Tonight, I ran my finger along her gums and felt extra bumps on the bottom. I took a look (which is harder than it sounds when you have an uncooperative tot on your hands), and there they were -- one on each side of her bottom teeth. They look like they must have come in within just a few days of each other. No wonder she was cranky!

We'll end with a photo of Emma's favorite new game, called Throwing Toys Under The Couch And Getting Them Back Out Again Over And Over. At least she's good at pushing them under just far enough, so that she can still pull them out.

Dinner with friends

First of all, the promised pictures from last week's dinner with the Farbotko clan. We couldn't get a picture where both the girls and the dads were looking at the camera, so we settled for half.

After dinner, the girls crawled around in a courtyard near the restaurant. Audrey was all about the gravel, but Emma...not so much. For those of you that have seen it before, she held her feet above the ground and did the little foot circles!

As it started getting darker, some people came around with glow-in-the-dark bracelets. Tim scored one and let Emma try it on. She loved it. This is one of my favorite expressions - the scrunchy face.
Since then, we've battled head-on with a family-wide cold, and poor Emma managed to develop an ear infection. We caught it early, thankfully. She's been on her antibiotics for 2 days, and she seems to be feeling much better. We saw a new doctor at the pediatrician's office. For those of you from Ohio, she lived in Westerville as a child and moved to Dublin as a teenager. I know some of you reading this have lived in at least one of those towns. Small world!

And now, Emma is excited to bring you a new photo, taken in our front lawn today:
(Doesn't she look like she is meditating in the picture? Makes me relax just looking at her!)
Anyways, that's right -- our house is officially Under Contract! We'll leave it at that for now and save the details, as things could still change at a moment's notice, but having the sign in our yard is a huge step! As for the new house, lots of changes last week. The brick was just about done, and the sheetrock was up. Click here to see the latest photos.