So, speaking of Emily

She is hilarious! All of a sudden she LOVES books. As I type, she is loading up her little wagon with all the contents of her bookshelf and then settling on the couch so she can read them all. She remembers the intonations I use when I read certain stories to her and she will "read" them in the same voices I use. Some of her favorites: Big Red Barn (which is getting pretty ratty if anyone is looking a for a Christmas idea), Goodnight Moon (always a favorite), Kim and Carrots (which is actually a small magazine called Babybug, and her new favorite: OWL BABIES. I love this book. She asks me to read it to her all the time. "Mommy, Read Owls?" It's adorable and impossible to say no.

Yesterday was her 2 year check up with our next new doctor. Again, not Dr. Miller. Rats. I am starting to think about just sucking it up and enduring the long wait times to go back to her. The new doctor was perfectly nice, just not the doctor that knows me at the grocery store and knows exactly what our family history is like. Emily's stats were: Weight between 75th-90th percentile, Height 90th percentile. She is pretty much on the same trajectory she's been on since birth: BIG.

Also, I wanted to write about her memory. It is ridiculous! I can't believe how she knows things. Like today when an older sibling of one of her friends came to pick up at the sitter. She sees this boy maybe once every few weeks. He walked up and she said his name. How does she remember that? When I picked her up today she remembered that her cup was in the fridge (we don't usually bring one from home, so it's not a daily thing) and that her doggie was in the take-home drawer. I didn't actually remember either of those things, so I guess it's a good thing she did!

Happy Birthday a few days late

Dear Emily,

It is just your luck that you are not only the third child, but your birthday happens to be around two of the biggest holidays of the year. I am terribly sorry in advance for the lack of birthday preparations you will probably experience.

Love,

Mom

The fun just keeps on comin'

Today was such a fun day, starting out with breakfast with my parents and grandparents at Cracker Barrel. Brian and Emily stayed home because she is very sick! So it was just the seven of us. The kids were great and we had a nice meal despite the thousands of other people there. Then we came home to pick up Em and Brian and headed over to my parents' house for some more hang time. It was so relaxing and fun to drink coffee all day, knit, visit, and and play games. We left around 3:00 to head home, but decided to make it a pit stop at home to get the dog and the stroller and went over to Prophetstown State Park for a walk. It was beautiful. We went all the way to the back of the park where we never make it to and walked down to the creek and then took a more brisk walk on the paved trail. By the time we were leaving it was dusk and we drove very slowly out of the park to spot deer. They were everywhere! We even saw a decent sized buck with antlers. Tomorrow is Emily's birthday and gingerbread house making day.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving! It has been a very laid back day for us so far. Strangely Thanksgiving is one day that I miss having a tv. I really always liked watching the parades in the morning. Brian tried to make me feel better by pulling the Macy's parade up on someone's streaming webcam, but it actually isn't the same as hearing the banter of the annoying hosts talking about each float.

This is the first year we made food for the Lafayette Urban Ministry meal and took it down there this morning. Elijah was so proud to carry the food in to the church--it was raining and I didn't feel comfortable leaving the girls alone in the van--there were lots of homeless people wandering down there.

We'll head to Brian's grandma's this afternoon and then visit my family later tonight. We've been busy making pies (8 of them in all!) and green bean casserole. YUM! We're all a bit under the weather so we'll probably have a quiet weekend, but I have been looking at some natural toy websites and finding some REALLY cute things for Christmas ideas. I'm usually really bad about having good gift ideas for people when they ask me what to buy for my kids. I personally feel like they already have plenty of things and I hate to buy things just because that's what you do at Christmas. But, this year I am armed and ready with some quality options.

Overheard on Friday night

As we were taking a tour of the Long Center and meeting the conductor of the Lafayette Symphony Orchestra:

Elijah: "Mom, why do they have a microwave down here?" (in the downstairs dressing/warm up room)

Me:

Elijah: (before I can even respond) " I bet they just sit down here and eat popcorn and smoke cigarettes."

Clearly.

Last minute plans

Last night Elijah got to cash in on his birthday present from Aunt Meg and Uncle Everette: a Purdue basketball game. It's all he could talk about all week. (I haven't heard from him yet this morning to know how it went, but I'm sure he'll have lots to say.) But, since he was going out to do something special, we decided to take Mary Grace out too. We had planned to drive back out to Brian's school to see their fall play, but to be honest, I didn't really want to go--he is a big wig there and it's impossible to actually hang out with him except for the drive to and from. And, there's the drive. Mary was pretty tired yesterday and pretty, um, grouchy. I was envisioning us driving her home at 11:00 and our whole weekend being ruined because when she gets overtired she actually ends up sleeping less, not more. So. What we decided to do was just stay in town, grab a bite to eat, and then do something low key. But. As we were at Pizza Hut (Brian was thrilled about her choice, let me tell you) she remembered that her sitter was taking her granddaughter to see High School Musical on Stage at Jeff HS. We looked at each other and wondered. Could we do it? The time was 6:20. We didn't even know what time it started. But, that's the beauty of living in town, I guess. We finished our pizza buffet and headed for Jeff, all the while reminding ourselves that there probably won't be tickets, we probably won't be able to go, our after dinner plans will probably include walking at the mall. BUT.
When we got there there WERE tickets left and the show was just getting ready to start. MARY LOVED IT!!!!!!!!! And I was excited to see a student in the show who helps in my classroom this year and FORMER KINDERGARTNERS!!! Oh my, I am old. My first year of teaching was 10 years ago. I have kindergartners who are now FRESHMEN. In the show. WOW. It was definitely a good night and we couldn't have planned it better.

Spoiler Alert

Potential Christmas card pictures coming up...

My sister-in-law, Megan, took our first-- yes, our first. ever. family portraits on Sunday. She has them on her photography business website. MANY of them turned out really well (Does that sound vain or complementary to the photographer?) Anyway, we like lots of them. Except that our kids look, well, old. I know that seems to be a running them among my blog posts.