First Bath at Gramma H's

Emma has had a number of first this week.  This is her first bath at Gramma Hunter's.  The other day I was home alone with Emma and needed to give her a bath so I decided to try and see if she would tolerate going into the bathtub by herself.  So I put a small amount of water in the tub and went for it.  By the end of the bath she was so happy and was able to lay in the tub and the water only came up to her ears which worked beautifully.  We tried it again this time and I think we have a winner.

Emma has started wanting to stand all the time.  And when I say stand I really do mean stand.  All you really have to do is help her balance and she does the rest.  She tried standing in the tub and as you can imagine slipped all around. 

Look at all that hair!  You can fully appreciate the amount of hair this child has when it is wet.  When she lays in the water it floats out from her head like a halo.  Right now it is light brown with beautiful red and gold highlights.

This is how our bath times end.  You would think this is how they would start or something but no, when we pull her out of the tub she is always disappointed.  It doesn't matter if the bathroom is warm or if we have a towel waiting to dry her off she always looses it when bath time is over.  Perhaps we have a swimmer on our hands...

Emma's First Ferry Ride

Emma has now officially ridden the ferry.  Yesterday we went to Seattle with Jeff's mom, dad, big bro Jeremy, and sister-in-law Lindsley.  We had a wonderful time and wore Emma out in the process.  She has been very sleepy all day today.

We entertained ourselves on the ferry ride taking photos of Emma.  She was very obliging and we had quite a few giggles out of her.

Computer Geeks

Okay, so I guess we are starting a little early but Emma loves anything with a screen. She has been having some tummy troubles and feels better when she is on her belly. After I fed her Jeff took her off my hands but I still wanted his help to figure out some file issues on my computer before he left for a meeting at church. He took care of both at the same time. When I turned around I about died laughing because Emma was totally into what Poppa was doing. Yesterday I found out that she loves black and white movies and can "see" them from much farther away than anything else.

It is pretty comical because she will pick out a screen (computer, tv etc) anywhere in the room. A couple weeks ago we were at the Hunter parent's home and we started iChatting with Jeff's bro Jeremy. We showed Emma to him and she was mesmerized by him. They sat for a while making faces at each other.

As a side note, Emma is now 12.5 pounds and 23.5 inches. My little girl is getting so big!

Emma's First Christmas Tree

Our house is almost completely decorated for Christmas. There are a few things that won't go up this year but I am happy just to have the tree up and decorated. Emma was pretty happy to hang out with Poppa in her front pack.

This is the first year that we have the tree in front of a window that you can see from the street so we decorated it all the way around. I always thought we had a lot of ornaments and we do if you are only decorating one side. I will be hitting the after Christmas sales for some fun ornaments this year to make sure we have enough for next year. I like to put tinsel on the tree as well but that may have to wait until next year. As you can see fun was had by all. ")

Happy Play Mat

Jeff's mom Linda bought Emma the Little Einstein's play mat and gave it to her over the Thanksgiving vacation. It comes with a star that plays music and lights. Every time we have put her under that little star she starts giggling and laughing with out fail. I don't know what it is about it but she loves it.

Vacuum Cleaner Possessed

So, we borrowed a robotic vacuum cleaner from Jeff's parents to see how it would do on our floors.  We set it up and haven't had the time to program it and such so it is hanging out in between our entertainment cabinet and the closet.  I went to pull out the yoga mat and blanket that we use to play on the floor with Emma and left the closet door open.  Our cat Calvin went in to investigate and on her way out hopped on the start button for the vacuum.  I was feeding Emma in our chair and could only watch in amusement as the robo-vac made its way around the little bit of floor that was available to clean.  It bumped into everything, the cabinet, the walls, the basket, everything.  Finally it got caught up on the blanket and sat there munching on the blanket then beeping for help and I couldn't do a thing about it.  It finally gave up and powered down.  It's kind of hard to see in this picture but the vacuum is the round dark gray disk that is eating the upper right corner of the pink blanket on the floor.  You can just see the closet door that is open in the left corner and the chair I was sitting in with Emma in the right.  The cat hung around ready to attack it for a while but then lost interest.  And there is our tree that only has lights on it right now but we will be decorating it tonight, yeah!  Then I can move the decorating boxes back up to the attic.

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

Every year we tell ourselves that we will get our tree early in the season and never do.  This year we finally managed it.  We went with Jeff's family and had a blast.  One of the funny things that seems to be becoming a tradition is tree hunting in the dark.  This has been I think the third year that we have gone tree hunting in the late afternoon and haven't gotten done until after the sun went down and the colors had faded from the sky with only the moon and stars to watch us.  And we have done this regardless of who seems to be with us.  So, if we ever ask you to go tree hunting with us in the future know that this is what you are getting yourself into.  We were very successful though and left the tree farm with four trees, one for us, one for Jeff's parents, one for the little bro, and a small one for the cousins.  This is certainly a tradition that we treasure.  I was just looking at our tree as I sit here and was thinking that next year Emma will be much more mobile and that is a crazy thought!  For now I will enjoy her being my little reindeer because it won't last for long.  

Poppa and Emma 

Our favorite little reindeer!

Our tree

What fabulous memories!  Emma really did quite well in the front pack the whole time.  This was during the cutting of the tree and we dropped the binky.

Little Bro's tree.  The tree farm folks said it was a "junk tree" and gave him a deal on it.  I believe it ended up taking up residence in Jono's extra bathroom toilet until he could get a stand for it.  I hear the room mates and their girlfriends were quite surprised.  This is his first christmas tree for his own place.  

See, I told you she did just fine.  :)

Hunting in the dark.  This was the last tree that we found which was for the cousins.  There was a friendly older gentleman who followed us around helping us.  I think it was more to get us out of there so they could go home than anything but he was very helpful if not a bit pushy in an old man sort of way.  But very cheerful.