forgot the garden picture

I thought I had more than this, but I don't, so I'll have to take some today and post them.

BEFORE:

My talented, cranky baby

Only 6 more days and the cast comes off! My excitement has no bounds. :) Emi is getting around pretty well with it on though. Here is a video of her crawling. It was taken on Steve's camera, so there's no sound.



Miss Emi has a pretty big vocabulary for a 10 month old. She now knows kitty (that one you've seen), daddy, tree, duck, pretty, and keys. When she wakes up from a nap, she often says "Daddy?" wondering if he's home. Steve says the other night she was pointing at all the plants in the house and saying "Tree! Tree!" It actually comes out more like, "tee," but that's close enough.

I was able to set up the video camera tonight when she wasn't looking and captured her playing with the box of wipes. It shows how well she entertains herself (which is nice for me). She tells herself stories as she plays and sometimes tells herself jokes that she laughs at. It's really cute.



She has been REALLY cranky this week. I don't think she's been getting enough sleep. She's transitioning from two naps to one and I'm not doing a good job of transitioning with her, so we're both confused and lacking sleep. But! she's still adorable and we should figure it out within the year, so I just have to be patient and think of the bigger picture. ;)

Also wanted to show you some pictures of my garden. My peas are coming up. (YEA!!) and my herbs are growing well. I killed one cantaloupe plant and bought two more, which are doing fine. My beans didn't come up at all, neither did either zucchini or yellow squash. I can't remember which is which. One of them came up great and the other didn't come up at all and now i don't know which one to replant! Mom and dad had a good laugh about that one. Some of my lettuce is coming up and my tomatoes are growing well too. I asked Steve to help me plant cucumber and carrots and neither are coming up well. I got 4 cucumber plants out of probably 15 or so. My carrots aren't big enough to see how well they will do, but only about 1/3 of the area he planted is showing any signs of life at all. I'm grateful he was willing to help, though. We'll just have to buy carrots from the store. I bought more cucumber plants and my dad gave me one, so those should end up doing okay.

Other than that, we don't have much new going on. I'm still doing photography; Steve's still working and doing school. Emi's still eating and pooping and laughing and generally being cute. Hopefully she keeps all that up. Just with less crankiness. :)

Virtual Cast Signing

For a little fun: Anyone who wants to sign Emi's cast, just reply to this post with exactly what you would write if you had a Sharpie in your hand. I'll keep the replies and put them in her memory book with pics and stuff of her in her cast. I look forward to seeing what you'll say!

Emi's new way of getting attention...

...should earn me the worst mom of the year award. I'm embarrassed to show this to everyone, but you must know. Ta da!



The Story:

Monday evening Emilia fell asleep on the bed. Rather than move her to her crib and risk waking her up, I let her sleep on my bed. She doesn't move around much when she wakes up from a nap on the bed. Usually she just lays there talking to herself and playing with her blankie. Of course, that's not what happened on Monday. She woke up and I heard her talking to herself and decided to finish up what I was working on and then go get her. Well, like a minute later, I heard a THUMP! THUMP! and ran upstairs. Emilia was on the floor crying. I picked her up and rocked her and sang to her and finally distracted her by turning on the television. She stopped crying and sat with me through the show. I thought she had just bumped her head (she did have a large red spot on her forhead where she must have hit it). Later that night, though, I realized that she wasn't wanting to put weight on her right leg and wouldn't walk like she LOVED to do. So Tuesday morning I had Steve and a friend of ours from church give her a blessing and then when the doctor's office opened I made her an appointment. The doctor checked her out and couldn't find anything wrong, so he told me to watch it for a day to see if it got better. It didn't, and so Wednesday morning I took her for an x-ray at the hospital. I didn't hear from anyone about it all that day, so right away Thursday morning, I called her doctor's office. The nurse told me that it wasn't broken and I should just ice it and give her ibruprofen. I thought that was odd, since she still wouldn't use that leg, but what was I supposed to do about it? Then, about an hour later, the doctor's office called me back and said, "I'm sorry, when I talked to you earlier, we only had the x-rays of the femur. We got the x-rays of the tibia and fibia and it is broken. We'll make an appointment with the orthapeadist to get her cast." So my baby girl got a cast put on her leg at 2 o'clock yesterday afternoon and she has to wear it for the next 4 weeks. She can't take a bath and she can't jump in her jumper for 4 weeks! I feel so bad for her! (and me too, a little bit) Good thing it's summer, or this could be a long 4 weeks for me. :) She's holding up well so far. It doesn't seem to bother her that she's got a purple weight on her leg except that it's harder for her to get around.

So there you have it. My poor little adorable baby girl broke her leg falling off the bed.

Emilia is sleeping

Well, it's Mother's Day and I'm pretty sure Steve fell asleep putting Emilia down for a nap. We haven't had much going on today. I did go to church with Emilia this morning--Steve wasn't feeling very well, so he stayed home. Although he had a miraculous recovery after church and seems to be doing fine now, so no worries. :)

I finally had a moment to breathe; since I won't work on photography stuff on the Sabbath, I had to find something else to do with my time. So, I thought I would catch up a little on my blogging. My mom scolded me (only a little) for not blogging recently, so I hope this appeases her.

Besides caring for Emilia and doing photography, I got a job doing a logo design for a friend's dad's business. He's a private investigator. It's been interesting figuring out how to not be cheesy with a Sherlock Holmes guy. :) Hopefully he'll like what I come up with. I also attended a container gardening class last wednesday that was really fun. I made myself a hanging basket that I put on my front porch and bought some really cheap vegetables. Last Tuesday I found out that I get to have a REAL garden and I'm extremely excited about that. A lady at church cares for a little patch of land that happens to be right next door to us, and she said anyone could use it for garden space if we wanted to. Me and one other lady in my apartment complex are taking her up. I went to the greenhouse and bought seeds and starts this last week. Steve said he would rototil (is that how you spell it? hmm...) it up on Monday for Family Home Evening. Hooray! I'm so excited. I think I have some of my dad's green-thumb-ism in me, so I think it will be fun to do.

Steve's job seems to be going well. He likes his boss and doesn't mind the work. The semester is finally over, so things should slow down a little bit now. He's still taking classes over the summer, but he is doing one class as a week-long lab and doing one on-line class. And he's only teaching 1 class instead of 2.

And last but not least, Emilia is growing like a weed and getting smarter by the minute. Here are about a month's worth of pictures of her. Enjoy!

eating breakfast before church

On a walk at Rendezvous Park

Giving herself kisses at Nanna's
Emi and Momma
Emi and Daddy
She was looking cute one day, so I shot some pics. The last one's my favorite.

Photography

So I've been heck-a-busy (a Utah saying) lately. Every spare moment I've had has been dedicated to processing pictures, finding new camera equipment, dealing with stupid Ebay sellers (REALLY REALLY STUPID ones), and designing...stuff. Here are some samples from my latest shoots:

Senior pics of this cute, cute girl. This was a fun shoot.

Five days later, some family/kid/couple pics:

The very next day, a wedding at the Logan Temple.


A week after that, some bridals for a beautiful girl whose wedding I'm doing this month.



I've been experimenting with photoshop a lot lately. It's so much fun to see what I can do with pictures and designing and such. As you can see in the last photo, I made it look really old. I like how it turned out. What do you think?

I've also been designing announcements and invites. Here are a couple samples.
I just booked a shoot for a cute 18 month old boy for this wednesday and I have two more weddings this month as well. It's so nice to be able to make money doing something that is so fun for me!

Just thought I'd let you see why I've been neglecting you lately. Thanks for letting me show off a little.

Naps, toys with buttons, and swine flu (not)

I've learned over the last few days that Emi has outgrown most of the toys we have for her, and that she needs less nap time. She needs something more complicated than a rattle or stuffed animal. She loves buttons at the moment. So I'm going to make a trip to DI tomorrow to see if I can find some things that she might like. As for nap times, I have been trying to wait for at least a 1/2 hour--if not longer--after she starts acting tired to put her down for her nap. That way, she is exhausted and doesn't fight me to go to sleep. I've been praying to know how to better take care of her and interact with her, and I believe that these are answers to my prayers.

I was at my parents until this morning and we all got sick. Some type of flu bug, i think. Because of the swine flu pandemic, it was interesting to get the flu and think that I had to be careful to watch it, so I didn't die. It was a very mild form of the flu, though, so I never got worried. It wasn't incapacitating, but it was very uncomfortable. So strange.