All About Emery #2

I was right, I knew that I would remember more things that I had wanted to share about what Emery has been doing lately. To continue from my last post...

5) She has been wanting to hold the broom on her own. In fact, she cried when I tried to take it so I could finish sweeping the kitchen. So I let her have at it, at least until she started swinging the broom around and I was afraid she was going to knock something over.

6) She also has been enjoying going outside a lot. She likes to swing, but she's usually done after just a few minutes. She'll say and sign, "All done!" so then we go on to something else out there. We like to look for the neighborhood cats that roam our yards, or we listen for one of the dogs to bark. And sometimes we blow bubbles.

7) When we're outside, Emery usually likes to go into our detached garage, where we have our washer and dryer. She likes to pull out the clothes and put them into the laundry basket. After the first time that she did this, she grabbed on to the basket like she was helping me carry it in. It was so cute, and she's all proud of herself. Love it.

I just hope that all of this helping will still be around in a few years when she can really do chores! But if she's anything like me, probably not.

All About Emery

I'm afraid I'm one of those moms. You know, the ones who always talk about what their kids did or said the other day. I just can't help it. I get so excited to watch how Emery learns more and more things, and I just want to share it with people. Plus, all of the things she is doing makes her seem even cuter than I already think she is.

Here are a few of my favorite things that Emery is doing right now:

1) She puts a purse or bag over her arm, then puts her hand up and says, "Bye!" She also does this with any kind or strap or cord (not electrical). Or really anything that fits on her arm, like in these pictures.

2) Right now, Emery loves "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes." She puts her hands on her head when she wants me to sing it. Then she usually touches her toes, then maybe her eyes and ears.

3) Usually close behind "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes," from Little Einsteins, is raising her arms. On the show, this is what they do to generate power for the rocket to take off. This starts with "pat pat pat" on your legs. Emery switches back and forth between the patting and the raising her arms.

4) Lately when I've been picking Emery up from her school, she starts pointing to each child and trying to tell me their name. It is so cute! So now I've started trying to teach her her name, but she doesn't really say it yet.

Those are just some of the things for now. I'm sure there are more that I'll think of that I forgot.

Project Life: Week 1 Done

In my last post I mentioned thinking about doing Project 365, which is when you take a picture every day for a year. You really can start whenever, but I think most people start with the new calendar year. I like the idea, but I knew from reading about others' experiences that it would be hard to continue. I even said in my last post that I wasn't completely sold on it, although I had been taking a picture every day since Jan.1. In the mean time, as I was "researching" others' Project 365s, I stumbled on another project, called Project Life. This is a scrapbooking system that was originally created by Becky Higgins, and it seems to be becoming very popular. Even my go-to scrapbooking site has just started a line of products that follow this type of system. I think a lot of people do Project 365 with Project Life, or think that you have to take a picture every day for Project Life, but you don't. They say you can do it however you want, so I've decided to stick to the everyday memories (which is what I liked about Project 365 and why I thought about doing it). The way I'm planning to do it is to make a two-page layout for each week. I want to focus on our everyday lives for the most part, particularly with Emery, because I realize that time is going to fly as she grows up. And I'm not worried about taking a picture every day. I only went 10 days before I decided I didn't know what to take. But I think I like it better this way. I'm still taking more pictures than I would have, and I'm thinking more about grabbing my camera than I had been, so I think this will get at what I'm setting out to do.

A lot of people work on their layouts on Sunday, for the previous week (most go Monday to Sunday, which I'm doing). I just finished my first layout tonight, so I'm technically 2 weeks behind, but I'm trying to stay on top of which pictures I plan to use. The system is supposed to be simpler and less time consuming, which I can see, I just took a while at the beginning to get materials together and to figure out exactly how I wanted to go about it. Now that I know, I expect the other weeks will be quicker.

For this, I got most of the products from www.acdigitals.com, which carries the digital version of Becky Higgins' products. I also got some from Scrap Girls (see above, my go-to site). Here is my finished first week.

Project Life: Week 1 (left)

Project Life: Week 1 (right)

Project 365

Many people have probably heard of Project 365, where you take a picture everyday. I've always thought that would be fun, but I've never done it before. I have begun this year taking at least 1 picture each day, but I'm still not completely sold on doing it. The site that I've gone to for inspiration, captureyour365.com, shows pretty artistic photos, and I don't really take those kind of pictures. But that's ok. I'm more about recording my life and, more so, my 15-month-old daughter's growth, so I think that's what my pictures will focus on.

I already do a Project 52. When my daughter was born, my husband wanted to take a picture of her everyday. That lasted until about the time that I went back to work. So it transitioned into a weekly photo, which I'm happy to say that I have kept up with. I'm actually working on a photobook for the first year of her weekly photos. Here is an example of one. I'll post a link to the entire book when I finish it. The chalkboard background was created by Melissa Renfroe of scrapgirls.com. The alpha template was created by Erica Hite, and the border template by Caroline Kaiser, both of happytocreate.com.

Happy Birthday, Emery!

Emery's first birthday is here! It's crazy to think that a year has already gone by since I was feeling her movements inside of me. She has grown and changed so much already, and I know so much more is to come. We had her birthday party on Saturday, and it turned out to be so beautiful. (I was reminded of something about myself during this process, I can come up with an idea, but I'm not always great at implementing it. Something I need to get better at.) I had help from our family in order for it to turn out how I wanted. When we were planning the party, Jason and I agreed that we wanted to have just a color theme...pink and brown. That's pretty much been her colors for her whole life so far. But she was great, the decorations were great, and just the whole day was a good success! Here are some great pictures that my brother-in-law took. I think the last one is one of my favorites :)

This Time Last Year #5...

My due date, September 22, had passed, and I had a doctor appointment on the 23rd to see how close we were now. I still was not much closer, and Emery had not dropped that much, but when I left that day, we had scheduled for me to be induced on September 28. Jason and I decided to go see a movie, and then grabbed some dinner at Red Lobster. Later that night, things did feel a lot more uncomfortable, and I remember thinking I didn't know if I could handle 5 more days of that feeling. But sure enough, as we were heading to bed around 10 or 10:30, my water broke, and everything for Emery's birth was put into motion. It's so hard to believe that it's been a year since all of that.

This Time Last Year #4

It was the day before my due date and I was freaking everyone out by still being at work. I had gone to the doctor and knew that Emery hadn't really dropped and I wasn't "inducible" so I didn't really expect her to be born soon, but I was hoping.

I'm going to stray from last year for a while to focus on Emery's birthday party tomorrow. I read a blog recently that talked about how the first birthday party is a celebration of the parents, too. Just acknowledging everything that was accomplished in the first year, moving from the novice parent not really knowing what they're doing, to the much-preferred feeling that you've got more of a handle on things. I'm just so excited that her first birthday is coming. It's just such a special milestone. And I can't wait to celebrate at the party tomorrow!


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