Emmalyn Turns Six Months

Emmalyn turned 6 months on the 21st of this month. She had her check up on the 22nd. She weighed 18lbs 2oz and was 27 3/4 inches tall. We looked at Shaylin's stats when she was 6 months and although Emmalyn is exactly the same height as Shaylin was she outweighs her at this age by 9 oz. She's a chunker! According to the doctor's chart, that put her in the 90th percentile for weight and 95th percentile for height.

She got her first tooth on the 18th of this month (which also happened to be the same day Shaylin was potty trained). Her second tooth came through yesterday - the 28th. She has also started talking a little more and can make the mamama sound.

Here's a few pictures of what Emmalyn has been up to lately.

Sept 14th - Eating cereal puffs for the first time...


Sept 15th - She started doing push-ups on this day. As you can see she was able to lift her whole body off the floor and just balance on her hands and toes. This was quite amusing to us, especially since Shaylin totally skipped this phase and went straight to walking. She has been getting closer and closer to actually crawling every day since. She is now in the rocking stage when she gets up on all fours. She is good at moving her legs but not her arms yet, which makes for less effective crawling attempts and many face plants.



Sept 18th - Wearing Matt's hat...


Sept 21st - Emmalyn ready to go to church on her 6 month birthday. She is still in the process of waking up for church, which starts at 8:30am (and is actually moving to 8:00am starting on 10/12)...


Later on in the day Jayna gave her water and a sippy cup for the first time. She seemed to get the hang of it pretty quick...

Using the potty has never made us so happy...

...well just to clarify, it hasn't been any more, or less, exciting than normal for us, but Shaylin is now officially potty trained.

Last Monday, Jayna decided to see if Shaylin was interested in potty training. She started out having Shaylin wear underwear for a few hours on and off that day. Tuesday and Wednesday were busy days, so she wore underwear for a little bit, but mostly it was back to diapers. Thursday (9/18) was the big day. She wore underwear for the whole day and she would either tell us when she had to go or we'd remind her she had to go when we asked her if she needed to go. She stayed dry the entire day on Thursday. Jayna even had to leave the house for a few hours and Shaylin didn't go pee until we got home. She not only went pee in her potty throughout the day, but also #2. We made sure to celebrate every time she went and she consumed an unbelievable amount of fruit snacks for part of her rewards during the day. She woke up dry Friday morning and has stayed dry ever since. She loves going in her potty. At first we asked her every hour or so if she had to go but she is already getting good at just telling us when she needs to go. It is very exciting. She has only gone through a couple diapers in the past week. She has even gone potty multiple times on the regular toilet at the Brugman's (she uses a small separate toilet when we're at home) when we have been there. We've always heard that girls are easier to potty train than boys, but we didn't expect it to go this smoothly - knock on wood!

We're not going to post any pictures of her using the potty online, but here's a few from last Sunday (Sept 14th) of her cheesin it up in her Sunday dress.

D-Backs Game with Jay and Jaylene

Sept 13th

Jayna's parents were nice enough to take us to a Diamondbacks game last Saturday. Even though the DBacks are quickly fading out of the playoff picture, we were excited to go since the season is winding down and we hadn't taken Shaylin to a game this season and Emmalyn had never been to one.

The game started at 5:10 so when we originally planned it we figured we would be able to get the girls home and in bed at a reasonable time. Then we found out a few days before the game that there was a free Jessica Simpson concert in the stadium right after the game, so we figured we'd stay after for a few minutes and still be home at a decent time. However the game went to an extra inning and lasted four hours, so by the time we stayed after for the first song and a half of the Jessica Simpson concert it was almost 10:00. We stopped by Jayna's parents house to give the girls a bath on the way home and didn't make it back home until about 11:00. We definitely paid for the late night the next day at church and during the day as the girls were extra tired and Shaylin was all kinds of emotional, but looking back it was worth it because they both had a lot of fun at the game.

Shaylin was smiling and having fun pretty much from the moment she first sat in the seats. Here's a few of Shaylin with her Grandpa Jay.


Even though the roof was closed there was a little sun coming in through the window when we first sat down. This was a good excuse for Shaylin to wear her favorite accessory - her sunglasses.


Here's Shaylin and Emmalyn with their Grandpa Jay and Grandma Jaylene. Jay got these cute Diamondbacks outfits for the them to wear to the game.


Emmalyn enjoying the game...


Shaylin enjoyed watching the game. It was funny because she would drop whatever she was holding (usually snacks) and clap whenever everybody else would clap and then immediately go back to whatever she was doing. Sometimes she'd even clap when no one else was clapping.


About halfway through the game we decided to walk around the stadium because Shaylin was starting to want to play on the stairs next to the seat. Here's Jaylene, Jay, Shaylin, Emmalyn, and Jayna close to center field.


Family picture with the field in the background...


The organist actually sits out in the open now so we were able to talk to him for a few minutes. He was a nice guy and he gave Shaylin an autographed picture...


We got a few cute pictures of Shaylin and Jayna while Shaylin was playing around...


Emmalyn was pooped out and fell asleep while Jay was holding her...


We were hoping Emmalyn would get a nice long nap but of course she woke right back up when we got back to our seats...


The Jessica Simpson concert was interesting. We stuck around for the first few songs and then left because it was getting really late for the girls. She sang songs from her new country album. Here's a few pictures from the concert, most of them are pictures of the giant TV screen in the stadium.

Family Pictures by Dave

Aug 19th

Our good friends Dave and Ashley came down to Arizona recently for a baby shower that Ashley's mom put on for her. They were in town for about a week and were nice enough to come down and stay with us for a night while they were here. Dave has been getting really into photography lately and at our request he was kind enough to take some family pictures for us. We drove around and found a few good places to take pictures at here in Maricopa.

There's a big abandoned shed close to our house that we found and this is our favorite shot from there.


We also found a park close by that had some nice big trees. This is our favorite picture from there.


Dave also got several good pictures of Shaylin by herself at the park.


After we got home we got a few more cute pictures of the girls. Dave got the first one of Emmalyn and we took the other two with our camera.


Group photo with Dave and Ashley. We will miss you guys!

Cute Things that Shaylin Does

A few cute things that Shaylin has done recently:

- She loves to sing and can sing several songs now. Some of her favorites are ABC's, twinkle-twinkle, Book of Mormon Stories, Happy Birthday, and the Good Morning Baltimore song from Hairspray.

- She says 'Taco, burrito' now whenever we put her to bed because she likes being wrapped tightly in her blanket before she goes to sleep.

- She is always saying 'I make turkey sandwich for you daddy' and when Matt says yes she grabs his hand and pulls her toward her kitchen and play table and says 'Let's go eat.' Other things she likes to make in her kitchen are mac and cheese, sour cream, rice cereal, and ice cream

- She has always enjoyed prayer time, but just lately she's been wanting to say them herself. She does really well with a little help and a lot of times when one of us says a dinner prayer she asks to say prayers again so that she can say it.

- Every morning she wakes up saying 'Good morning Daddy' or 'Good morning Momma' depending on who wakes her up. The next thing she says is 'I wake up Daddy/Momma.' Then she says 'Where Momma/Daddy?' and after she says good morning to us she runs over to Emmalyn to tell her good morning and that she's awake. This always makes Emmalyn smile.

- Every night before she goes to bed we read a story out of her Book of Mormon stories picture book. Lately the only story she wants to read is 'Nephi Builds a Ship.' Whenever we ask her which one she wants to read she says 'Nephi builds a ship' and quickly turns to the page it's on. She can now recite almost all of the words in the story if we stop reading mid sentence.

- She really likes nursery at church but ever since we came into the new ward a few months ago she's had a little tougher time going saying goodbye to Matt when he drops her off. So Matt has been staying in there for a while playing with her and then trying to sneak out when she's not paying attention. There are windows in the doors and usually once she realizes he's gone she'll go around asking all the adults 'Where daddy go?,' then cry for a few minutes, and then she's fine. She's usually more interested in interacting with the adults and just watching the other kids play.

- She loves to talk. She is constantly pretending to talk to someone on the phone. Her favorite people to pretend to talk to are both grandma and grandpa’s, Belle, and the Beast (from Beauty and the Beast). A typical conversation is ‘Hi Belle (about 3 or 4 times) then ‘I playing with my kitchen,’ then something about Emmalyn like ‘Emmalyn’s sleeping,’ and then ‘um Belle, call me back.’ She also loves to make conversation and will often say ‘um-a’ in between sentences until she thinks of something else to talk about. The other day Matt went in her room and she said ‘I sleep on my new bed…um-a…(looking around the room and seeing the bathing suit she got for her birthday) I love my new bathing suit.’

- She is good at saying 'please' and 'thank you' - or sometimes 'thanks' now. About a month ago we still had to remind her fairly often to say please when she asked for something. She got so used to us asking 'What do you say' that her requests starting sounding like this 'I have a fruit snack?...What do you say?...Please' - she'd be the one asking herself 'what do you say.'

- Whenever one of us says 'ow' or 'ouch' she says 'ok momma/daddy?'

- About a month ago she started picking up the house phone and saying 'Hi this is Matt.' We quickly realized that she was copying Matt because that's how he answers his cell phone (and the house phone when he knows someone from work is going to call) when he's working from home.

- A few months ago she would sometimes ask for something but wouldn't ask very nicely - usually because she was crying/whining about something else. When we would tell her to ask nicely she would just say 'nicely.'