Emmie's first trip to the dentist

Today Emmie had her first trip to the dentist! I wasn't sure how it would go especially because Ellie was with us too and Emmie woke up sooo whiney this morning. We went to Ellis, Green, and Jenkins because that's where Mikey and Lucy go and their mom has always told me how great they are. Well I was sooo pleased! Their office is beautiful and very open and kid friendly. They even have a movie room and a game room where you can sit while you wait! Each chair in the exam room had it's own TV. They had a gazillion different flavors of toothpaste too...strawberry (which Emmie picked), watermelon, orange, chocolate, and cookie dough to name a few! The hygenist was phenomenal and did a really good job explaining everything to Emmie and letting her touch and look at all the equipment. Emmie was super cooperative and I was so proud of her! The only thing that seemed to get her a little worried was when they leaned her chair back to clean her teeth...haha! After they finished cleaning her teeth and Dr. Amy (aka Dr. Green) came in and looked at them, Emmie got a whole bag full of prizes! She got a tshirt, toothpaste, toothbrush, floss, a pencil, stickers, a little chalkboard and chalk! The hygenist and Dr. Amy said that Emmie's teeth looked great! When we go back in 6 months Ellie is going to get her teeth checked too...hopefully she'll be as cooperative as Emmie!

Emmie has a chipped tooth in the front so they did an xray just to check it. The hygenist was very patient in explaining how to bite on the xray piece and after a few minutes Emmie got it figured out. Doesn't she look so tiny in that chair?

The hygenist letting Emmie touch the toothbrush.

What a big girl!

I

Who loves spaghetti?

Ellie loves spaghetti!

(yes, that was a thinly veiled reference to Kennan and Kel!)

Steps to eating spaghetti. By Ellie.

1. attack noddles (the claw hand works best for this)

2. shovel it in

check fingers for any remaining noodles

(fyi...any reject noodles or sauce can be thrown on the little puppy under your chair)

Little girl ate her bowl of macaroni noodles and then those were gone so she ate some regular noodles. She was picking them up by the handful and shoveling them in her mouth...hilarious!

playdate

This morning we went to Mason's house for a playdate and then we took the kids to Moe's to eat and my mom met us there. The girls had lots of fun with Mason (although Emmie was not on her best behavior). Ellie's favorite part of the day was Moes. She ate her quesidilla and most of Emmie's...she's probably going to explode tomorrow but that's ok because my mom has her...hahahaha!

Mason, Ellie, and Emmie

Painting! Lindsay was very brave to have 3 toddlers painting!

Ellie did a pretty good job painting...

...until she decided to paint her tongue!

This afternoon it started pouring rain so I sent Emmie out to play. She had a great time having a tea party in the rain. Ellie joined her but she wasn't as excited about the whole thing as Emmie.

yummy!

I've been in kind of a recipe funk lately. I can't ever seem to get my act together to plan far enough ahead of time for a yummy dinner meal and I haven't been able to find any new recipes lately that excite me. Until I opened my mailbox the other day and found my Publix "Grape" Magazine. I have found that "Grape" always has the BEST recipes. I actuallly haven't tried any until today but they always look yummy! There are quite a few that I think I'll try this fall. This issue had a lot of apple recipes and I love to cook with apples.
So today I made the Fall Harvest Salad. 

For this salad you mix together lettuce, 2 honeycrisp apples, toasted pecans (chopped, I coarsly chopped mine), feta cheese, and craisins. I added some cut up rotisserie chicken to mine so we'd have a meat in there. I also recommend being heavy handed with the pecans...they really add a great flavor to the salad! I also recommend going light on the feta cheese.

For the dressing you mix together 1/2c. poppy seed salad dressing,, 2tbsp apple cider vinegar, and 2 tbsp balsamic vinaigrette. I didn't use the salad dressing, I'm a ranch girl, but I think next time I might try it!

Next up? Perhaps the Maple-brined chicken breasts with fresh apple compote and for dessert perhaps the apple galettes and cinnamon ice cream!

For your viewing pleasure...

I pulled out the video camera when Ellie started taking her steps and I've enjoyed taking some quick videos of the girls. I feel like they grow up sooooo fast and I love being able to capture and preserve some cute moments!
When I was videoing Ellie taking her first steps, Emmie told me she wanted me to "take her picture" so she sang a song for you!


I absolutely love how much my girls love each other and how excited they are to see each other in the mornings and after naps. Whenever Ellie wakes up and we walk out of her room she points to Emmie's room...she really wants to go see her sister! Ususally Emmie is up from her nap (if she even takes one!) before Ellie but the other day Ellie was awake first and when it was time to wake up Emmie I let Ellie have the honors!

(I was hoping that when I moved the bear Ellie would crawl up in Emmie's bed. It's one of her favorite places to hang out! Instead she got distracted by her water cup!)

Zoo

Today we met Christina and Jackson at the zoo. The kiddos had a blast. There are lots of "extras" at our zoo that we don't normally do...really because Emmie hasn't been at a stage where she enjoys them (2 traumatic rides on the carousel cured her of wanting to do that for quite awhile!) and Ellie was too small. Today we went all out and did the extras and the girls and Jackson had a blast!

Ellie enjoyed being able to get out the stroller and look at the parrots.

Trying to get 3 children to sit together and all look the same direction at the same time so this was the best we could do!

Emmie and Jackson on the elephant statue.

They had the BEST time feeding the giraffes. This was the first time that Emmie would REALLY feed them. I think it's because Jackson was doing it too. Usually she very hesitantly gives the giraffe a piece of lettuce and then she's done but today she kept coming back for more.

This is quite the fascinating process apparently!

My brave little Ellie! When I was giving the other kids their lettuce Ellie held her hand out. I thought she would try and eat it but she watched the big kids and realized that she needed to give the giraffe her lettuce too. She was done after getting slobbered on once though!

Feeding the giraffes is SO funny!

Apparently there was something fascinating on the ground!

Ellie loved getting to look over the fence like the big kids.

Checking out the ostrich.

Slide!

I love this picture of Emmie on the slide!

Ellie checking out the rabbits. They're one of her favorite animals at the zoo!

Train ride! Emmie was SOOOO excited.

Riding the carousel. This was the first time in a long time that Emmie has ridden on one of the animals. Usually she rides on the bench which still freaks her out a little but she was being brave today! She even was on an animal that went up and down. She had a few moments where she started to freak out but the older girl beside her kept saying how much fun it was so I think that helped keep Emmie calm.

Ellie did such a good job sitting on her animal! She was a little bummed that her animal didn't go up and down! She's my child that loves a wild ride!

Christina and Jackson

Worn out after a long morning at the zoo!

Emmie came home and took a nap and then we had lunch when everyone woke up. Ellie and I had to wake Emmie up (mostly Ellie...she loves to wake Emmie up!) and this is what she did when I put her sandwich in front of her!

Just a side note about Emmie. Tonight when Paul got home I told her to tell him what she did today (ie we went to the zoo). She told him she went to Chick-fil-a (we got it for dinner after My Gym).  Then when I said tell Daddy what you did with Jackson she told him that she went to the zoo...when he asked her what she did at the zoo she said she ate a snack! HA! Can you tell my little girl loves to eat!

Also, I have to brag on Ellie. She comprehends soooo much! She doesn't say a ton of words and she's a little behind on her gross motor skills (but she's got some excellent fine motor skills and little girl can rock a fork!) but there is a big ol' brain in that girl (I'm probably a little biased though!). Tonight Emmie wanted Ellie's grapes out of her fruit cup and of course she just wanted to reach her hand in and take them. I made her ask Ellie for the grapes and Ellie picked one out and gave it to her and then proceeded to take out all the grapes and hand them to Emmie. This is just one example of her comprehension. She does things like this all the time and it just amazes me that this tiny person can understand so much. What a brainiac :)

A bit of excitement

So this morning should have been a quick, uneventful trip to the doctor. Of course miss Ellie thinks uneventful if boring. We headed to the doctor this morning to get Ellie's ears rechecked and as long as her ears looked fine we would get her 1yr old shots. Her ears checked out fine so we were all set to get shots.
This is where I will back up quite a few months. On Easter Sunday I went upstairs at my mom's house to change Ellie's diaper and she was really tired and really mad and when I went to change her diaper she held her breath...until she turned a little blue around her mouth! Ever since then she has done the holding her breath thing a few times a week. She does it when she gets really mad or if she gets hurt. Usually I can blow in her face, say her name loudly or rub her chest or back and she'll take a breath. Often she turns blueish purple but that's it and I'm just kind of used to it now. She's even done it a few times at the doctor's office, in front of the doctor.
So back to today...the nurse came in to give her the shots (4..yikes!). As soon as she stuck the first one in Ellie started holding her breath. No big deal. Four shots later she was still holding her breath and looking very blue. I quickly picked her up and she gave one little cry and her eyes rolled back in her head and she went limp. Miss Priss PASSED OUT! For the next few minutes she was really lethargic and she'd open her eyes and they'd roll back in her head again. It was the strangest thing I have ever experienced as a mom. Of course the nurse in me takes charge and tells the nurse giving the shots (who I'm pretty sure was brand new but she was super sweet) that I think we need to check a pulse ox (that's the little glowing light on your finger that checks your oxygen level to all the nonmedical people. Her oxygen level was fine so my heart rate went down a little. The nurse told me we would definitely need to stay for a while and she went to get Ellie a cup of water while I took Emmie to the potty. Ellie was sooo pale. While Emmie was finishing up in the bathroom Ellie lifted her head up and started talking a little. Her doctor was in another room when all this happened so by the time he got in the room Ellie had perked up quite a bit but was still pretty pale...the nurse and I assured him that what he saw was a big improvement from a few minutes before! He wanted us to stay until her color was back so we were there about 10 more minutes at which point she was pretty much back to normal. The rest of the day was quite uneventful and the sweet nurse from the doctor's office called midday to check on Ellie and make sure she was still ok.
I definitely wasn't panicked when Ellie passed out but it did unnerve me quite a bit! She's been holding her breath for long enough that I knew one day she would pass out and I'm very glad that it happened at the doctor's office! We will definitely have to have a discussion before her next set of shots about breathing during shots...don't want to go through all that again!

New Things

Today was full of new things in our little world. This morning the girls and I slept in (thank you Ellie...she slept until 8:15!) and then laid around and finally got up and going. We had to run a quick errand at Belk and so since we were in the area we stopped at Stride Rite to look at shoes for the fall. Both of the girls are going to need black shoes for church in a few weeks (we're very firm on the no white shoes after labor day...good southern girls at this house!) and I figure we should go ahead and get them closed toe shoes for everyday (seeing as how we're having a cold spell...it was only 80 degrees today!). Plus I wanted to peruse my options for sandals that weren't white...I'm thinking those will be a Target buy since they'll only be wearing them for a short time and Target has all their sandals on mega clearance. Anyway, I digress. I ended up getting Ellie some black church shoes (they didn't have ANY of the little white walker shoes...can you believe that?? I'm going to have to order them online, luckily they have free shipping right now!) and I got Emmie some sneakers (no cute black church shoes at the store...need to look around for some good ones). Emmie was soooo excited because she got to pick out her sneakers. I showed her the shelf of sneakers in her size and told her to pick the one she wanted. She picked up 2 different ones and I asked which one she liked the best. This is what she picked:

The silver part is really sparkly which I think is why she picked them. She also is a big fan of the color purple. I think she did a great job picking her shoes. She was so excited when I let her wear them home and she wore them all day today!

The girls were up around 2 from naps (for those children who chose to take their nap instead of playing with their dollhouse...ahem...Emmie) and we didn't really have any plans for the afternoon so we just hung around the house and the girls played. I feel like so many days we run around town all day and they don't get a chance to just play at home so I think they really enjoyed having some down time! Because they were playing happily I was able to get lots of things done around the house which was soooo nice.
The last few days Ellie has been really grumpy at meals dinner started out the same way...she wouldn't even eat her food! I had let her sit in the booster seat when we were coloring earlier in the day and she did really well so I moved Ellie to the booster seat and Emmie sat in a regular chair and they did soooo well. Ellie was so much happier being a big girl! I think tomorrow I will be packing up the highchair!

A very happy big girl!

And finally to the most exciting news of the day...when Paul got home from work tonight Ellie took some steps to him ALL BY HERSELF! For about a week she's been walking around just barely holding on to us with one hand and I've been trying to get her to walk by herself...I guess Daddy was the incentive she needed! We clapped and cheered but she seemed pretty oblivious! I did manage to get 2 steps on video but that was after she'd walked by herself a few times so she was getting pretty bored with us.