7 Months!

Emi was 7 months old on the 17th. I still have a hard time remembering that. She's been growing and learning so quickly. She now sits up by herself and is learning what things do. She's figured out that she is supposed to push the buttons on her mobile, but I don't think she's figured out that that's what makes it go, yet. It's fun to watch her take things in.

Of course I took more pictures of her. Instead of individual pictures this time, though, I made collages. I'm uploading them at their full size, so you should be able to click on each one and it will show you the bigger image. Then if anyone wants to download them to their computer and print them they can. I wanted to get some of her with the blanket that Grandma Watts made for her because it's so pretty, so I used that as a background. I also wanted to get some with her blankie, her dragon, and her book--her favorite things right now. Enjoy!

Happy (Belated) Valentine's Day

We at the Steven Watts residence had a pretty good Valentine's Day. Probably partly because we weren't actually at the Steven Watts residence. We were at the Nick Watts residence visiting grandparents. We originally had taken time off to go down and see our new neice, but her parents decided to take her to Colorada a week early, so it ended up just be a vacation to see the grandparents.

I woke up Saturday morning to find a trail of Valentines (the kind that you get for the kids to take to school for their classmates--these were Winnie the Pooh and Transformers) to a box of chocolates. The best part, though, was that Steve had written something that he loved about me on each of the valentines. Isn't that sweet! I just got him a card and pre-ordered the new U2 cd. U2 is his favorite band, so that makes it a little better, but he definitely outdid me this year. :)

Steve's mom made a crumb cake for breakfast--yummy! But Emilia had pears and rice (of course!). She doesn't eat anything else. It looked kind of like she had a mustache and goatee after we were done. It was really funny:

Then for lunch Nick and Wilda took us out for lunch at Red Lobster. MMMmm! It was SO good! I had coconut shrimp and crab legs. Everyone else had steak and some sort of seafood. They also got calamari and fondue for appetizers. We were all stuffed by the time we left. Whew!

We drove home Saturday night and Nick and Wilda were kind enough to drive up, too, so we could bring our new washer home. Yea! No more hand-wringing our laundry! Not that I did that so much anyway. I stopped doing it after like the second load after our old washer stopped spinning the clothes out. Steve was more diligent and would do a couple loads a month. We took the rest to our parents' houses when we went to visit. It will be nice to do laundry at home again.

I also thought I would share this picture. I took it a few weeks ago and forgot about it. Emilia has started recognizing that there is someone in the mirror and she is facinated with babies, so she is of course facinated with herself when she sees herself in the mirror. There was a little mirror that came with the toy my parents bought her for Christmas and I took it off and set it by her the other morning. She didn't notice it right away, but then she caught her movement and leaned over and peeked in the mirror. Then she sat up and looked at me, and then leaned over and peeked in the mirror again. It was like she was playing hide-and-go-seek with herself. It was so funny! Here is a picture of her doing it.

littlelittle as promised

It's kinda long. sorry. I can't seem to delete my baby. ergh.

addendum to videos

I had to run off to work this morning and didn't have time to put the first video in the post. I just left the web browser open on the computer and ran. (I didn't work a single one of my three shifts last week, so I was never at work to get my schedule for this week and typical of me, I didn't even think to call before today to find out if I was supposed to be there at 10am. ) Steve was kind enough to run home to watch Emi after work called me and he saw the post up on the computer and just pushed "publish," not realizing I had another video to put in there. After work I went and helped that family again, then came home and made dinner and then went grocery shopping with Emi. Now I am exhausted and I'm going to bed. Maybe I'll have time to post the video tomorrow. At least you have one video to tide you over, right? :0)

videos

I haven't been posting as much lately because Emi doesn't eat long enough to do anything during a feeding. So I have to find spare time to do it, and it seems to be scarce lately.

I had a job interview on Friday for the USDA job I told you about a few posts ago. It seemed to go well and they told me they would make a decision this week.

I also helped out a family in our ward on Friday. They had triplets in December and their help went home Friday, so I went over and helped feed them and folded laundry and things like that. They are cute baby boys. (But I'm sure glad I just had one-Oy!)

My one has been doing cute things lately. She found a new sound she can make and it's extremely cute. It sounds kind of like little-little-little-little-little. But you can hear for yourself. Here is a video of her doing it.



She also has decided she loves to jump in her jumper. If it wasn't made she'd have broken it already. She really goes to town as you can see.

She's so big now

I took some pictures of Emilia a few weeks ago and I'm just getting around to getting them off my camera, so I thought I would post them. She was still not feeling well when I took them, so we got all of 3 good pics, but at least I got a few. I messed around with a few of them in photoshop. You'll have to let me know what you think.

faded to pink on this one

original

modified

original

modified

I took a picture of her with her dragon, too. This was the first stuffed animal we* bought for her, so we had it with on her first day in our family. She's so big!

* Steve swears he picked it out and bought it for her.

For the last few days, I have been in Eagle Mountain with Emi. For her Christmas present, I offered to give Megan's (my sister) bedroom a makeover. There were more than my fair share of foul-ups so there were a few major things that didn't get done, so I don't have pictures yet, but once the paint gets re-tinted and things get painted, I'll have her take some after pics so you can see how it went. They say they like it, so I'm glad. Hopefully they weren't just saying that to make me feel better. My neice, Ariana, thought we did a terrible job and said--and I quote-- "They ruined my beautifulness!" At least I don't have to be afraid she was trying to spare my feelings, right? :)

Emi caught a cold while we were down there, so she went to bed early tonight and I've been working on these pictures and my church calling. I started taking pictures of all the people in the ward so the bishop can put names with faces (we have a lot of people move in and out on a regular basis because of the college, so it's hard for him to keep up). I renamed all the files with the people's names and then made a contact list with this handy little program called FastStone Image Viewer. I think it's freeware, so if you don't have a good image viewer, I would suggest googling it.

Productivity

Things I did today:
--Read scriptures
--Gave Emilia a bath
--Tried feeding her peas (which ended badly for her pants)
--Took her to JCPenny to do another practice session - I did one with her last week when she wasn't feeling well and got 2 frames in before the screaming began. Today went MUCH better. She was her normal smiley self.

(Oh--I don't think I mentioned the not-feeling-good-last-week thing. We both had the flu about 2 1/2 weeks ago. She threw up for a day, then had diarrhea, and then seemed better although she wasn't eating well breastfeeding and she refused to eat solid foods completely. I finally took her to the doctor when she started being really constipated the middle of last week. Her doc said it is normal for babies' digestive tracts to be affected for up to 2 weeks after having the flu and said she should get back to normal quickly. Well she got back to normal over the weekend and decided to be gung-ho about eating. My milk supply was down because she hadn't been eating well and she still wasn't eating solids. I thought I was going to die. She was eating every hour sometimes, and every 2 hours at night. She didn't eat that often as a newborn! So...we finally got her back eating solids, but I've had to supplement with formula while I'm getting my milk supply back up. I won't go into the whole feeling guilty bit.)

--Went to Walmart and picked up pictures of the Ward Christmas party that I took so I can finally put them up at church.
--Made up some sample logos for my mom's online bakery (I'm trying to get her excited about the idea.)
--Made dinner (We ate before 8pm. Hooray!!)
--Got the baby to bed
--Watched my husband play Tomb Raider: Legend (Sometimes I wish I could be like Lara Croft. I'm sure my husband wouldn't mind me looking that good in skin-tight leather either! haha)
--Loaded and started the dishwasher
--Put away dinner

I think this qualifies as a productive day, don't you? Well, maybe.