She loves any kind of art (or anything that makes a mess), and it's so fun to watch her in her element. She gets Gymbo stamps every Saturday morning after class--just a rubber stamp of Gymbo, but she wants them on her hands, feet and tummy every time. We bought her a couple of stamps of her own, and it's very apparent that she enjoyed them.
Em hasn't used her high chair in months--it wouldn't fit close to our table, so when we moved to the new house in July, we just put it away and started using her booster seat at every meal. We love the fact that we all sit down to dinner together at night, and she seems to enjoy being at the table with us. She knows where each of our chairs is, and will ask us to move if we sit in the wrong one!
She continues to be a good eater most of the time. She almost always eats a great breakfast, and most days eats breakfast at least twice (once before we leave and again at school). She does pretty well with lunch, and dinner is getting to be a toss up. Some of her favorite foods are a little surprising--broccoli still tops the list, and she loves fish (especially salmon), green beans, peas and corn. Rice is something she asks for a lot, and she prefers it over potatoes. She loves cheese, and of course bread. When we have bread with dinner, we've started serving it at the end of the meal--it's the only way she'll eat anything else on her plate! Ketchup (or pretty much any sauce) is another trouble maker at the table--if she sees ketchup, she'll want to eat it with her fingers and not touch anything else. Pizza is the one food she'll always say she wants for dinner if we ask her--the only problem is that when she sees Daddy's black olives, she doesn't want anything else. Silly girl.
Our challenge with meal time is that she wants to play now more than eat. She'll sometimes take a bite or two of her food, and then pick up her plate and dump it on the floor! I mentioned it the other day to her teachers, and they couldn't believe it because she's so well behaved for meal times at school. We're working on our consistent reaction when she does it, and have even tried a time out chair a few times, which really seems to hurt her feelings. One night, she dumped her food on the floor and Mick told her to go sit down--she put herself in the time out chair and cried! Sometimes it's tough not to laugh at some of the things she does--but we know the behavior won't be cute and funny for long.
Em battled a 24-hour stomach bug this month, but she bounced back pretty quickly. It seems to be that time of year again when there's so much sickness going around--we're hoping she can steer clear of most of it this winter! It's nice that she's beginning to communicate with us when she doesn't feel well and tell us what hurts.
She's becoming more imaginative when she plays--one afternoon, she sat in Mick's recliner with Mickey and her baby doll and rocked her to sleep. Check out her funny little smirk as she tried to convince us that she was sleeping too.
She's becoming more attached to her stuffed animals, and she always wants to hold at least a few of them when she dances (which is anytime she hears music). Here she is dancing with Gymbo and Frosty.
Emily's vocabulary has to be at or above 200 words now. I was keeping a list of her words, but it was difficult to capture them all. I hope she'll always have the same love of books she does now, because I think us reading with her all the time is part of the reason she talks so well. She remembers everything and everybody, and is excited to keep telling people "Merry Christmas" or "Happy New Year." She won't know what to think when the holiday season has passed. I have to admit that I'm sad to see it go this year too--it has been a great month!
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