A mother's love

    When I was younger (even up until right before I got pregnant with Emily) I wasn't fond of babies. I thought they looked like a wrinkly, alien version of a bratty little kid. I remember crying one night when I was pregnant wondering if I would love and adore my little Emily like a good parent should. I knew I would love her and it would all be different as soon as I saw her but I was still afraid...What if I did have post-pardom depression or the baby blues...? but just like everyone assured me, as soon as she was in my arms I loved her. A greater love than I could ever fathom surrounded me and filled me and I know in that moment that I would never be the same. 

     As we approach Emily's second birthday I look at her now in all of her terrible-two-ish-ness and even though she drives me crazy on a regular basis I wonder: how is the human heart capable of such love? I guess it will always be a great mystery to me...but I know now:                  

NOTHING is greater than a mother's love!

     Emily right after she came home from the hospital. I thought this was the CUTEST picture I had ever seen. I should have seen it as a good idea of what she was going to be like in the future. 3 days old and already sticking her tongue out at me.

Right before her first birthday when her toothless grin was the CUTEST thing in the world...it still is, of course, but her little gopher teeth win my heart now.

Now...I know I'm a little bias (yeah? meaning I favor her.) but she seems to just get more and more beautiful with every picture I take of her.  I love this child more than life itself.

Terrible Twos

    That's right! Emily's "terrible twos" are right around the corner and I swear on everything that with every day closer to her birthday the more terrible-two-ish she gets. Not only is she in the developmental stage where testing mommy is becoming a minute by minute habit, but she is also going through a growth spirt. She has eaten my entire pantry and if she thought hard enough about it, I'm sure she would start gnawing on the baseboards. Along with the growth spirt comes moodiness and clinginess. She will cry over something like dropping her bouncy ball her babies shirt being on "wrong". The literal clinginess is probably the hardest for me to handle. She's almost two and wants to be held in the shower, while I'm eating, on the toilet... . So needless to say, my "me" time has significantly decreased. Perfect example...

     Even as I was typing this she has to be right here on my lap. In the midst of hitting keys and clicking she managed to get across the point that she wanted me to take a picture by pointing to the camera at the top of my computer. I took one picture and she was excited...then started crying because she wanted my sunglasses. SO I put those on and took another one...she was happy then and crawled off my lap. My guess is that as I'm typing the rest of this...she's TESTING to see if my sunglasses fit down the toilet. *FLUSH* I should probably go, but I know it's too late.... 

Family

     Today was possibly the longest day of my life. I got up at 7:00...AM. and for me that is EARLY. I got ready, fed Emily, got her ready and then headed to San Luis. I figured if I could get an early start I would be home before the heat of the day and be able to get something done around the house. I was wrong! I had originally gone to get my old camera fixed up. After one guy said that it was useless, and that I could buy the same one used for less than what it would cost to fix, I walked around the shop and swooned over all of the pretty camera lenses in there. My friend Jess (I dont know what I'm going to do without her!) watched Emily so that I was able to take in the beauty of everything in the shop. I left...disappointed because my camera was shot and because I'm not a millionaire. I went back and picked up Emily and had planned on going home. Instead I decided to go to another hole in the wall camera place that I had hoped would give me a different result. The guy there took one look at my camera and said he wouldn't charge to fiddle with it. His mistake, because his fiddling actually further broke my camera. Okay so the good news in all of this? Because he worsened the problem and literally broke it he's keeping it and fully fixing it for free! "FREE"- since my dreams of being a millionaire are nowhere in my near futures sight, "free" is a VERY good word.

    I ended up getting home about 2 hours later than I had hoped but when I went to pick up Aaron's littlest brother, Andrew, from his Aunt's house, I was pleasantly surprised to see Aaron's cousin Brooklyn there! Brooklyn is almost exactly one year younger than Emily and is Aaron's first cousin...so she's Emily's second cousin, once removed...? or something like that. Yeah, me an Aaron switched up the family tree a little. Grace became a great grandma one year and then had another grandchild the next year. Actually we messed it up on both sides. Margie became a great granny and had another granny-child a year later (and hopefully more in the near future). 

     I have a bad habit of calling every other baby I see the second cutest baby, next to Emily, but really, Brooklyn is in a dead tie with a good ten other babies, for the Cutest baby EVER! I couldn't help but take a few (just a few) pictures:

I love that she's "lovingly" squeezing Brooklyn's head.

I actually think that they could pass as being related!

"talking"

Brooklyn eyeballing Emily's pig-tail. Don't do it Brooklyn

it was a fight to just get those in. She won't be very

happy if mom has to put them BACK in.

Jessie and Reid
I LOVE this one. She didn't like the feeling of the grass so she hovered

her hand around in the air not wanting to put it in the icky grass.

I love her hair too in this picture!

This last one is my FAVORITE (good job g.g.grace)