Busy weekend

Ok, I backdated my last post because I really did write it weeks ago, I just didn't get my act together to add the pictures until this morning.

So here we are, a week and a half later and Emily and I are still sick. It has been mild, luckily, and Emily has the gleam back in her eye that tells me she is not feeling TOO badly, but her poor little nose has been running like a faucet for over 2 weeks now. Again, I would think what I am dealing with here is allergies, as I now have a nice cough but danged if Emily isn't coughing right along with me, which kind of negates the allergy theory. Maybe we'll feel better by summer.

But anyway, today is Emily's 11 month birthday! For some reason 10 months freaked me out a little more than 11 months has. 10 months was when I realized that she was quickly closing in on 1 year. I guess I've had a month to come to terms with that so it's not as big a deal right now, although I am starting to panic that I only have a month left to get her party together. Having been a procrastinator all my life though, I know it will get done, even if the stress level is through the roof near the end. Being a mother has taught me to work ahead when I can though (nothing like leaving everything to the last minute and then having your darling daughter get into the plant and dump dirt all over the floor/get sick/throw a fit and prevent you from being able to finish), so I flatter myself to think I have gotten a little bit better in that area.

At 11 months, Emily seems to finally be settling into a nice routine. I have made it a point to establish a bedtime routine and to feed her her meals at specific times recently. She eats pretty much whatever food I give her, she's even letting me sneak in kale again. She is napping regularly in the morning at around 10:30, and if I'm lucky she'll take another one around 3 in the afternoon. She'll only fall asleep if she's in the car or riding on my back, but I'm just grateful for the naps right now, we'll work on the rest later.

Her favorite pastime is pointing at things, if she is especially interested in something she'll say "Zzzzzzzzzzz!" while she's pointing. She loves to dance, and she loves moving her hands around to music, almost like she's conducting the song. She still coughs to get attention, even though she has a real cough now too. She has started playing with Mingus, she'll crawl very quickly while giggling, and if he follows her (or even if she thinks he's following her) she bursts into laughter. She still doesn't seem to be near talking, but she's close to walking. She can take a few steps on her own, but she usually leans forward too much with her upper body to be able to stay vertical for very long.

She really is a good baby...she made it through this very busy weekend in excellent spirits. We went down to DC 2 days in a row to visit my friend Jen who had come down from Minnesota (who I had never actually met before). It was nice to spend some time with she and her daughter (and her mother and aunt when they were there) and to finally meet the person I've been talking to online for years! We saw the cherry blossoms, went to the aquarium in DC (which Emily loved!) and did a lot of touring on foot. Saturday we did the zoo, where Emily was usually more interested in the people or the animals' habitats than the animals themselves, although she enjoyed things that were big and moved a lot, like the Orangutans and the turtles.

Immediately after our second day in DC, we drove down to Mary Washington in Fredericksburg to see my sister Krista's last dance recital of her senior year of college. Emily hung out with Aunt Kathleen while Mommy went to the recital and to dinner afterward. Dinner, unfortunately, did not occur until around 10:15PM, and the way mommy was feeling reminded her forcibly of her trip to Japan last year (i.e. so nauseous from both exhaustion and lack of food that I was calculating the shortest route out of the restaurant should the need to vomit become a degree or two more severe and trying to figure out which way to direct myself for the softest landing should I start to pass out) so mommy wasn't the nicest dinner companion. Afterward, as mommy tried to fall blissfully into the arms of slumber at long last, Aunt Krista's neighbors went outside under mommy's window and had a pogo stick party. The things college kids do these days.

After making the 2 hour drive home on Sunday, I fell into a weak, sickly heap on the couch. My wonderful husband made dinner and washed all the dishes by hand, since our dishwasher is broken (more on that in a subsequent post). After last night's wonderful rest though, I feel like a new person. A person who periodically doubles over with fits of coughing, but a new person nonetheless!