Ice, Ice Baby

Or as Emma says, "ish"...our kid is nutso over ice and not the good kind of nutty. If she deems there to not be enough "ish" in her sippy cup, which is every cup, a tantrum ensues and yells of "ish, ish" follow. Last night we had to remove the cup from the dinner table and she is banned from "ish" until the temporary restraining order, of no less than 2 years is lifted...we will revisit "ish" when Emma can recognize that a few cubes is plenty and the cup isn't left sweating all over furniture because she knows how to use a coaster. Sitting on a wet couch isn't fun.

Over the weekend, we went to a graduation party and Emma kept grabbing ice from the outdoor beverage bucket. As soon as one melted, she "had" to have another, but following around her cousin, Maria, finally distracted her enough from the ice bucket. Who wants to hold ice?! Brrrr.

D-O-N-E

Last night we had our final social worker visit to complete the China post-placement report requirements.  The social worker visited for about an hour and a half to observe our interactions with Emma and to track her development.  Of course Emma put on quite the show...dancing, skipping and cleaning up her toys.  In general, Emma has been a bit of a wild woman the last few days and not in a good way, so we weren't expecting the best from her during this visit and she was naughty a few times.  The social worker will write a report, send it to our adoption agency, who will then forward the report to China.  We have decided to no more kiddos, so yes, we are really, really, done with a crap load of paperwork forever...but not really.  We are still dealing with the IRS/adoption credit issues and we need to file re-adoption paperwork in Ohio to receive an Ohio birth certificate; having an Ohio certificate makes enrolling for school easier and if something would happen to her Chinese certificate, it would not be replaceable and as we all know, birth certificates are extremely important.  We hope to have everything finished before Christmas...we hope. 

How old are you?

Emma's response, "I'm one", in a deep, growly voice and she also holds her pointer finger up to show you the number.

The last few weeks, she is putting more words together and "connecting the dots" between objects and numbers.

Her recent phrases:

"I'm ready"- when having a game of roll the ball across the floor, she situates herself across the room and let's us know she is ready for us to roll the ball in her direction

"Come on"- when we are taking walks or in stores and she gives us a hand movement trying to hurry us along to follow her

"1, 2"- while counting her blueberries or noodles

"all through the town"- screaming this phrase as we sing "The Wheels on the Bus"...we have a really cute video I should post because of course she won't do this unless it's just mom and dad

Her language clams up when in a crowd or when we ask her to display her new skills in front of others, so we always end up looking like liars. :)

Emma is now 21 months old and you just "see" her brain sponging up everything, all day long and she is growing in height like crazy. We try to measure her height around the 14th of every month and this month she grew from 32 1/4 to 33 1/8 tall... almost a full inch! I've had several people tell me how much taller she looks but I never imagined she grew this much! She has lost her "baby Buddha belly with all our summer acitivity, just in time for swimsuit season, lol. We had to downsize her diapers since Buddha disappeared.

Oval

Emma owns a few of the wooden Melissa & Doug shape/color/word puzzles, with handles, that we have been working on since Christmas. From the get-go, she has been able to put the shapes in place and sometimes she says the colors, sometimes she will say circle, but last night she handed me a piece and said, "Oval" all on her own...the piece was oval, so of course we cheered and clapped. I took this opportunity to go through the other shapes, but then all the pieces were oval and Emma said this with a Cheshire Grin. Emma knows exactly what she is doing, being funny. You could see the twinkle in in her eyes and grin, that she knew each shape was not an oval, but was going to say "Oval" anyway because it's not what we wanted her to say.

Zoo, Zoo, Zoo!

We went to The Cincinnati Zoo for the first time today and Emma loved it!  In fact, I just purchased a membership so we can visit a lot more this year and attend the Festival of Lights at Christmas time.  The weather was perfect today, in the mid 70's and it did not get hot until right when we were leaving.  Emma did a lot of walking, a lot of being held by her Auntie T., Gramma Cheryl or Uncle Jeff and I (mom) spent the majority of time pushing a empty stroller with purses, lol.  I was old news today with this many helping hands, she was not having being held by me at all until it was lunch time when I gave her a slice of pizza and Moo-goo cookie dough ice cream for lunch. 

I can't say there was one animal in particular that Emma loved more than another, but she loved making monkey sounds and she loved saying "bear"...strangely enough, she seemed to like the alligators, which I thought would freak her out.  Emma did NOT love the Manatee exhibit...this exhibit is inside and kind of dark, so Emma got nervous and we made a quick pass-thru.  We will not be going into the Nocturnal or Reptile Houses anytime soon! 

After a 3 hour trip to the Zoo, it took a lot of singing and Tom-Foolery on the way home to keep her awake, but the effort was worth it!  Emma slept nearly 3 hours!  The Zoo will wear a kid and a mom out...I took an hour nap myself.

Lots to catch up on over the past week

Emma had her eyes checked last week and her prescription stayed the same.  Doug went with me for the appointment and Emma handled the testing so much better sitting on Daddy's lap, with me standing behind the Dr., so Emma could see me while she was being examined.  I also asked the Dr. to please pretend like she was examining me with each step of the process to show Emma it was ok, because Mommy was getting her eyes checked too.  Our previous eye Doc left Children's Hospital and the new Dr. is a female which also helped.

Since the beginning of last week, we have had MAJOR nap and bedtime issues.  It all started when I transitioned Emma from the car straight to nap last Sunday.  Every nap and bedtime, has been a war zone.  The last few days she has stopped doing this with me, but she is still putting Doug through the ringer.  I think Emma got disoriented during the car transition and it flipped a switch on her....she has been showing nervous/anxious behaviors all week, similar to the issues she had when we met in China and first came home.  I think she equates sleep time with major changes and gets scared she is going to wakeup in a different place.  I can't wait until she can talk, so we can talk to her about this more.

Today we went to swim class for the first time.  Emma didn't mind going underwater, splashing, jumping etc., but she wanted nothing to do with floating on her back.  The last 10 minutes of swim class was a bust because of the back floating incident.  She kept clinging to my neck and wouldn't let go to participate in the other skills that were being taught.  Emma also saw the floating noodles towards the end of class, which she played with at Gramma Cheryl's pool this weekend and when she realized she couldn't have one during this class, she was not very happy.  Hopefully we can practice back floating some more and she will get comfortable enough to continue.  The class was a little more hardcore/intense than I expected.  We were told that if they wouldn't go underwater without a bunch of panic/crying etc. that we wouldn't be coming to the next classes...they weren't kidding.  I guess they would just refund our money???  Thankfully, we dunked Emma in the pool last Sunday for the first time and she didn't care, so today wasn't the first time she went underwater.  I'm glad I decided to do this before swim class!  Something in my gut told me I should do this, so she wouldn't freak out in swim class and boy, I'm glad I did!

"I Wuv You" and Music

Emma now says, "I wuv you"...brings tears to my eyes just typing it!  She has been a cuddly love bug the last week, hanging onto us like a Koala Bear when we try and put her down.  I taught her to point at her eye, then her heart and point at Doug or I as an alternative way to say "I wuv you"...it's sooooo cute!  I have to watch her though, because most of the time she is cramming her finger in her eye!

Last night we let Emma play on a piano/keyboard I have and she was in Heaven!  However, she tried to pull an Elton John and stand on her piano bench (really her picnic table) while she played and got into trouble.  She loves music and singing so much...I can't wait to see what talents emerge as she gets older.  Whenever a teenager drives by our house blasting music, Emma stops what she is doing and busts a move...the girl likes to dance!