"It's a Baby, It's a Baby, It's a Boy"

Remember this picture and caption? This was all the cousins (sans Emi, who was inside avoiding the sun) at our house on Memorial Day.  Little did I know I was a week or two pregnant and that I would be eating these words later!

P.S. No boys allowed.

In early October, Emi, Jesse and I were able to go to St. Joseph to find out the sex of the soon-to-be 4th member of our family!  As we were driving Jesse and I were talking about what we thought this baby would be.  Jesse said he was positive it was a girl, and I thought it was a boy.  I hadn't been nearly as sick as I was with Emi and my appetite was completely different as well.  With Emi I would eat a few bites of food and be full, and never wanted any sweets.  With this baby I am always hungry and want to eat all the chocolate in the world.

When the ultrasound tech first started looking at the baby I thought I saw evidence that it was a boy, but she didn't say anything, so neither did I.  Then our little stinker decided to turn over and curl up so they couldn't see anything.  They had me get up and use the restroom and move around a bit to try to get baby to move, then the doctor came in to see if she could get a look and I was right! It is a boy!

This is unprecedented in my family.  I am the youngest of three girls, my sister has four girls and Jesse's brother has two girls.  We were so excited, but a little nervous at the same time.  This is completely unfamiliar territory to me.

Oh boy.

That evening we invited my family over for a gender reveal, a la Pinterest. I didn't have as much time as expected though, so I had a blue cake with frosting melting off of it and blue cake balls that were falling apart and showing their color through their white chocolate coating.  Sigh. I had a few that I deemed acceptable so we just had Audrey bite into one and show the family. Before we did the big reveal though, we had everyone vote for what they thought the sex of the baby was.  I was the only person on the boy side.The reaction was mostly disbelief.  My mom said, "What are we going to do with a boy?" and my dad said, "I'll believe it when the baby comes out."  Haha.

We are all still wondering a little bit about what we are going to do as we venture into the world of trucks and dirt, but I think we will be just fine.  We are super excited to meet our little prince!

I will end my post with this gem from Audrey.  She wanted to sing a song to welcome baby boy to our family, which is where the title of this blog post came from.

Happy Halloween!

I have always loved Halloween and was so excited for Emi to experience this holiday for the first time! While she didn't know what was going on or get to go trick-or-treating (I have issues with babies being carried around collecting candy) she got to wear a cute little Halloween tutu outfit and dress up twice! We also went to the pumpkin patch and took a very bumpy hayride...we may wait a few more years until we do it again.

Happy Halloween!

Eating pumpkin pancakes for breakfast before heading to the pumpkin patch!

Emi's little pumpkin.

At our ward Trunk-or-Treat. We decorated our trunk like a jungle to match our little elephant. :)

Cute pumpkin!

Emi and her favorite buddy, Papa.

"Trick-or-Treating" to Mama and Papa's house.  She got a bag of puffs and a few packages of Mum Mum crackers.

Emi 6 & 7 months

I can't believe how quickly the time is going and how fast our little girl is growing!  Emi's 6th month was so much fun, she seems to change every day.

New and exciting things for Emi at 6 months:

• Getting really skilled at using her hands to stick everything in her mouth.
• Started eating purees of real fruits and veggies and LOVING it.
• Rolling over a little bit.  Grunts and whines whenever she ends up on her stomach.
• Sitting up for a couple minutes at a time.
• LOVES jumping, giggling while watching the dogs wrestle, and playing with her cousins.

Having fun with Nonna at the ward Memorial Day breakfast.

Meeting CocoPop (Jesse's dad) for the first time.

Emi LOVES being outside (when it's not too hot) almost as much as she loves playing with Papa.

We go over to Mama and Papa's house almost every day.  Emi loves her Mama, and I love taking a break while they play with her.

This baby stuff just gets better and better.  It never ceases to amaze me the love I feel for my little girl.  She is becoming a little person and is always full of smiles.  Emi's seventh month didn't bring a lot of new changes, but rather a mastery of skills.  This is what she's been up to this month:

• Sitting up like a pro!
• Sleeping through the night.  That's right folks, I have a 12 hour/night sleeper.
• Rolling over like crazy, and even tolerating being on her belly for a few minutes at a time.
• Eating many more varieties of fruits and veggies, as well as Gerber Puffs and the occasional Italian ice from Vacarro's (you can blame Papa for that one).
• 0-3 month shoes finally fit without falling off. I may even have to move to 3-6 month shoes soon.  I love that she has small feet like the women on my side of the family.
• Separation anxiety has kicked in - she whines the second I walk out of a room. Hopefully this doesn't last long.
• We've gone swimming at our friend (my former student) Todd's house a couple of times and Emi LOVES it. She even stuck her face in the water a few times (or mommy had her "swimming" on her belly and dipped her a little too low by accident) and she didn't mind at all.

I somehow got a shot of her looking like she is enjoying being on her stomach.

The biggest news of the month, though, is...

Emi is going to be a big sister! It took us about a year to be blessed with Emi so we figured we would start trying early for baby #2; little did we know our prayers would be answered the first month of trying!  This baby is due around February 21, so they will be almost exactly 14 months apart.  Heaven help me.

Baby Stamm #2, complete with "tail".

  

Memorial Day

It's become tradition that we have our family over for Memorial Day every year.  We grill and let the nieces play in the sprinkler, which is just too cute because the "cousins" (I don't really know what you would call my nieces' relationship to Jesse's nieces) have so much fun together.  You'll notice a difference in quality of these pictures as compared to my normal pictures.  Jesse's brother Scott is a photographer. :) www.thestormwatch.com


Also, I realize these pictures may be Audrey heavy but let's face it, that kid was born to be a performer.

Cute Emma

Emi had to stay inside and out of the sun.

The Audge

Pretty Karina

The Grillmaster

Cousin Sydney

Audrey

Karina

Molly

This girl has had some dance lessons.

Seriously, where does she get this stuff?

Emma finally gets in on the action

Carolyn and Sydney

The sprinkler got stepped on and wouldn't move anymore.  Of course the eldest cousins in each family stepped in to fix it.

Emi is going to have so much fun playing with her cousins.

And P.S.  No boys allowed.

Mother's Day Trip to NY

Jesse, Emi and I spent a week up in central NY visiting Jesse's mom and stepfather for Mother's Day.  I got to enjoy my first Mother's Day relaxing, taking two naps and not changing a diaper or preparing any food the entire day. :)

We always enjoy our time in CNY with Fred and Connie.  Here are some highlights:

Not so sure about Grandpa Fred yet, but at least she wasn't crying. :)

Playing with Nonna

So much fun!

Having lunch at the lake and trying to minimize sun exposure- hence the awesome sun hat.

Me relaxing with a cold one.  Haha, jk.  That is Grandpa Fred's.  I don't know why I think it is so funny that it looks like the beer is mine.

We took a short drive to the town of Cazenovia, which is about 20 minutes away up in the mountains.  It has a cute main street and happens to be the hometown of Ann Burrell from the Food Network (one of my favorite Food Network stars).  After a little stalking and talking to store owners, we found out her mother owns a flower shop on main street.  So of course we stopped in and chatted with Momma Burrell for a little bit, which I just thought was so cool.

Fred and Connie live way out in the country.  The closest town, Chittenango, is about 10 minutes away and happens to be the birthplace of Frank L. Baum, the author of The Wizard of Oz. They have an Oz festival every year, and there are a couple of stores devoted to selling all things Oz that I have always wanted to visit and finally got to during this trip.

Poppies!

Emi 4 & 5 Months

OK, so I'm a bad mommy blogger.  Maybe Emi will just get posts every other month. That's not so bad, right?

Four Months
My little girl is getting so big way too fast. At four months, Emi's pediatrician told us we could (and should) put her in her crib to sleep.  I knew it was time, she was just getting too long for her little bassinet.  So the night of her 4 month checkup Jesse and I did normal bedtime routine: bath, lotion/massage, jammies, family prayer, nurse and down for sleep.  When we laid her down she was looking up at me with those big brown eyes and looked so tiny in her big girl crib...I told her I love her then walked out and balled!  Jesse was already sitting in our room ready to console me and let me cry on his shoulder.  I really do like having our bedroom back to ourselves so we don't have to tiptoe around and whisper, but I still miss her once we put her down at night.

Mmmmm, so yummy!

Also at her four month mark we were told that she could start eating solids.  I bought some organic oatmeal cereal and we invited my parents over for dinner and to see her eat her first food.  She got cereal for three nights.  We had a rough couple of days around that time, the third day was full of particularly high-pitched painful wails that ended after a big diarrhea (TMI? I think baby bowel movements are ok to talk about). I figured her tummy wasn't handling the cereal very well and decided to skip it that night and see if we had a better day the next day.  Lo and behold my angel baby was back, smiley and happy as ever. Jesse and I decided we should wait until she turned 5 months to try cereal again.

Somewhere in between 4 and 5 months...

Emi has been "talking" since she was really tiny, but lately she has been finding new things to do with her voice and mouth that are just so cute...or maybe just cute to me. :)

Five Months
Five months has brought so many changes!  Emi has gone through a major growth spurt- at least it seems so, I should probably weigh her. We started her on cereal again and her tummy is doing really well, she LOVES to eat (not a huge surprise). Thank goodness for that too, because I would feel so horrible whenever we would eat because she would smack her lips and drool because she wanted some too!

I love Mr. Elefante!

Emi has also begun grabbing everything and putting things in her mouth.  Thankfully she is pretty content with her toys right now and doesn't get upset when I don't let her take my phone, the remote, my iPad or other non-Emi things. It's really cute when I am dressing her or changing her diaper and she grabs my arm with both hands like she's captured me.  Along with the discovery that she can use her hands, she has also learned to play games with me. She thinks it is hilarious when someone "eats" her hands or feet, so she will put her hand up to my mouth and I will gobble it, which makes her giggle and pull it away, then she'll repeat.  It is just so neat that she can interact and show her sense of humor. A few short months ago she couldn't even smile and now she is giving me belly laughs and squeals of joy. It's just too precious.


I can't even describe how much I love this little girl, and my love grows more and more every day which really kind of baffles my mind.


Months 4 & 5.  Serious growing action!