Professional pictures

Her are the rest of the pictures from the sneak peak I posted a few weeks ago of Emily's professional photo shoot. We are so happy with the way they turned out! Be prepared to be overwhelmed with pictures over the next few days!

9 months

This is another pictureless post, but tomorrow will probably be a whole post devoted to only pictures, so bare with me. We had Emily's check up this afternoon and everything looks great for the most part. Em has passed all of her milestones with flying colors with the exception of 2. She isn't clapping yet and she isn't waving. The doctor seemed concerned at first and then said she wasn't worried because Emmy is really outgoing and has a great personality. Either way, we are going to work on this at daycare and are determined to have her clapping and waving by Friday. What's funny is right as we were leaving, the doctor waved at Emily and Em waved right back. So she actually marked it as an accomplished milestone. She is very pleased with how she has grown and how vocal she has become. Emmy chatted up the doctor the whole time and offered lots of smiles. The doctor said she has the best personality and thinks she is a total ham, so that made me feel a lot better. She did mention that overall she thought Emily was an advanced motor skills baby for her age with the crawling, pulling up and standing. So here are Emily's stats.

* She weighs 17 lbs 3 oz and is 27 inches long. She is only in the 20th percentile for weight and even less for height, but the doctor said that was perfectly fine. She is just petite.
*She is now wearing size 3 diapers, mostly because we ran out of 2's and had several boxes of 3's and there wasn't a big difference in size
*She wears some 6 month (3-6 months) shorts, but is mostly in 9 month (6-9 months) outfits. I have a feeling she will fit in this size for a couple more months because a lot of the clothes are still big.
*She sleeps for 11-12 hours each night and sometimes more on the weekends.
*Bed time is between 7 and 7:30. She is a champ at going to sleep by herself. This kid loves her sleep.
*She pulls up on everything and is starting to test her balance limits by letting go.
*She walks awesome while holding your hands.
*She has 3 teeth that are all the way in and 3 more that are just breaking through. She looks so funny. I got some good pictures of her grill yesterday, so stay tuned.
*She is still drinking 24oz of milk a day, however we are working on transitioning her to a schedule that the 1 year old room follows. She drinks a bottle before school, but she started taking 3 oz of milk with her morning snack and 3 with her lunch. Then has a bottle at 3 and one more before bed. We are also working to increase the amount of solids she is taking in, with 3 main meals and a snack during the day.
*Speaking of solids, this kid will try anything you give her as long as she can feed it to herself. For the most part she loves food, but there are days that she will really like something and then hate it the next.
*She LOVES her sippy cup. We just started transitioning her to a straw, but she hasn't quite got it yet. She LOVES her water. We are not giving juice for a while. There is just no nutritional value in it and she doesn't need the sugar.
*She has a thing for stuffed animals these days. There is a lamb at daycare that she is obessed with and will apparently throw a fit if anyone tries to take it away.
*She definitely has developed a personality and at times a little attitude. She is "sassy," according to daycare, sometimes and likes to test your limits. She usually follows it up with a cheesy grin. She likes to see what she can get away with.
*As of 2 weeks ago, she and James are the "big" kids in the infant room and they like to boss the babies around.
*She chats up a storm, loves saying dada, but still no mama.
*Taking posed pictures of her is impossible.

Really Emily is just so much fun. She always has a smile on her face, with the exception of last Saturday (sorry Shannon and Jodie, she is usually really happy, I promise. Damn teeth!). She is just a great kid. We love her so much and are truly amazed at how fast time is flying by. We love every minute we spend with her and and watching the little lady she is growing to be.

Emily, you are such a special gift. Thank you for being you and for bringing so much joy to our lives. Your dad and I cannot imagine our lives without you in it and look forward to many years of happiness to come!

Let the weaning begin...

From the pump that is. I made it 9 months, that is 3 months longer than my initial goal. I wish I could have made it to a year, but I am just done. I am so proud of myself because it was tough, it was time consuming, and sometimes it was just not fun at all, but I made it and I am so so glad that I did it. I feel good knowing that I gave my daughter the best (and cheapest) form of nutrition for the first 9 months of her life, and hopefully with the milk that I have stashed in my freezer, for the next month or so too. Depending on when Emily starts eating more solids and drinking less milk, we may even make it till 11 months. There is a lot of milk i my freezer y'all. So the weaning officially begins. I dropped to one pumping session a day last week and was down to only getting 7 oz a day. Yesterday, I stopped pumping all together. I am not going to lie. I am totally worried about the pain associated with drying up. I have heard horror stories, but I haven't pumped in almost 2 days and I feel OK so far. We will see how the next week or so goes though.

On another note, my baby is 9 months old today. HOLY CRAP! She has been an outside baby as long as she was an inside baby. How crazy is that! We will take some pictures and post them in the next few days. Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Belly Laughs

Emmy has a very sarcastic sense of humor (hmm..wonder where she gets that from) and it is really hard to make her laugh. When you do make her laugh, don't expect what your are doing to always make her laugh. She usually gives you the look like "seen that before." We are always coming up with new material. Tonight I was vrawling around chasing her while she was crawling around and she just thought it was hysterical. Here is a video of the nights events. Keep in mind, it was just Em and I, so crawling and filming is not easy. Just thought I would throw it out there is you suffer from motion sickness ;)

PS, the blue tape is where our new ottoman is going. I am a freak like that and have to see how everything is going to look in the room. And I also just noticed that Abby is attacking Emmy's stuffed lamb towards the end of the clip.

Trip to Dallas

When the Kaase family was in town last month, we made plans to head out to Dallas for Ryan's birthday and spend time there while Jenn was still on maternity leave with Olivia. We left bright and early on Wednesday morning, and don't regret it for a second. We left the house around 3:00am. We preloaded the car and showered the night before, all we had to do was make coffee, brush our teeth, pack Em's milk, load her up and hit the road. She was awake for about 15 mins chatting away in the back seat and then was out for a few hours till we hit the Texas state line. I climbed in back, gave her a bottle, played with her a bit and we stopped in Amarillo for a break. We had some breakfast, changed Em and let her jump around for a bit before getting back on the road. The drive out went very smoothly. We even took a wrong turn that delayed us almost and hour, but Em did great. We played with her toys, violet was God sent, we snacked, she had her bottles and she napped. She did AWESOME. I say it again, we are so so blessed to have such a good baby. She is so even tempered and always smiling.

We got into Dallas around 2:30 and go unpacked. We really had an uneventful week, but that is exactly what we wanted. We just wanted to spend time with our family and relax. We played with Ryan, I held Olivia, we helped Jenn around the house and to prepare for Ryan's 3rd birthday. It was just a perfect week. Emily adjusted pretty well for the most part to a new schedule and slept good the first night. She was in great spirits, but then got REALLY fussy on Thursday. She was drooling like crazy and her nose was running. I am pretty sure it was because her tooth keeps popping in and out, but she was a crazy baby all night that night, but was back to normal again the next day. She had a runny nose pretty much the whole trip.

We found out on Saturday that she is allergic to cats. We were sleeping in the room where Jenn's cat usually spends most of her time. Zig went upstairs to change his shoes and found the cat in the pack and play with Emily while she was napping. When Emily got up her eye was really puffy and it just went down hill from there. Her hands and feet puffed up, then her lips, eyes and cheeks. I am not going to lie, I was totally freaked out at first. I thought maybe something had bit her, but we checked her whole body and found nothing. We figured it must be the cat. Their neighbor is a general practioner and a life safer. She came over, took a look at Em and told us to give her benadryl every 6 hours for the rest of the trip, so we did. We washed all the sheets and we kept her upstairs with us that night, but she was still puffy the next day. We finally decided it was best to wash EVERYTHING and we moved her downstairs to Olivia's rooms to nap and sleep. She did much better and all the puffiness was gone.

Ryan's birthday was on Sunday. If you know my sister in law, you know that she is the most creative person on earth. She is seriously amazing and has the best ideas. He had a Buzz Light Year themed party, complete with adorable Buzz Light Year cupcakes and a amazing cake with a spaceship on it that she made all by herself. Keep in mind, this was all done while her 3 year old was running around and inbetween feeding and holding her 2 month old baby. She is seriously awesome and such a great mom. The day of the part Emily flat out REFUSED to nap. Now my kid is as scheduled as they come. She drinks 4 six ounce bottles a day at 7, 10, 3, and 7:30 and she takes 2-3 naps a day at 8:30, 12ish and sometimes around 3after her bottle. She took her morning nap and her first two bottles great, but then she didn't nap at all for the rest of the day. We tried for 2 hours! Then around 2 we decided to give her a bottle and she sucked down 8 oz! and then still had her other 2 bottles that day. I was sure she was going to be a MESS at the party, but she just sat there and took it all in. She was a gem. She went to bed around 7 and slept without any problems for the whole night.

We left Sunday morning around 10 after Em's first nap of the day. She did really good. She took 2 1 hour naps and was up the rest of the time. She started to get a little crazy around Tucumcarri and I was worried we were in for a long 3 hour trip from there, but she settled down and played and finally fell asleep about a half hour from town. Overall it went really smooth!

I will post some pictures later this week!

Sunday morning sweetness

I do have a picture to share actually. There is nothing sweeter than a snuggly little baby in their jammies. We brought Em to bed yesterday morning to watch some morning cartoons. This is how she wanted to lay and watch them. She looks so old like this, but it is really cute. Just thought I would share.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

A little update

Not a whole lot is going on in the Ziegler world. Em had a bit of a stomach bug all week last week, so we laid low. She seems to be feeling much better now and is pretty much back to her old self. Her other lateral incisor broke through this weekend, so we are up to 3.25 teeth. I say .25 because it is just barely there. If you think I have pictures, you are sadly mistaken. This baby will let me NOWHERE near her mouth. Now I hope the other two top teeth come through really quick and we can be done with teething for a bit. She has actually done really good. She has had really one 2 rough nights and by rough I mean she woke up crying for a few minutes before soothing herself back to bed. She is quite the crawling machine and has been a lot more generous with her laughs lately, which I love.

She starts sleeping on the mat this week at daycare, which means she is officially on her way to being a big girl. ::tear:: And she is now one of the oldest in her class. There is only one little boy who is a month older. Everything is going so fast! 3 new babies start this week, bringing the class total back up to 6. Emily is excited to meet new friends, including a friend from work's daughter Avery who is about 2 1/2 months younger than Em.

In other news, we are driving, yes driving, to Dallas on Wednesday morning. Say a little prayer for safe travels and a well behaved baby. We are going to leave super early in the morning in hopes to take advantage of a sleepy baby. She usually gets up around 7 and will take 2 naps in the morning/afternoon. She is usually really good in the car, but we have never tested her limits for that long. If anything, we will take lots of breaks. We are in no hurry to get there by a specific time. We can't wait to see our family out there and celebrate my nephews third birthday.

::Dies from cuteness::

Wanna see something SUPER cute! Go here. It's worth it I promise. :)

We had a FANATASTIC morning spending time with a good friend and photographer, Nancy Newell. She was the head honcho of the Run for the Zoo, which is a local race that my mom, Zig and I help organize every year. She has been asking for months to take pictures of Emily, and honestly, life got the best of me and we really didn't get around to it till now. I am SO glad we did. It was a gorgeous day and with the Botanical Gardens as our back drop, we could not go wrong. I can't wait to see what the rest of the pictures look like! As soon as I get more to share, I will post them! Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

8 months

These months are just flying by way to fast. I just can't believe it. Here are some things that Emily is up to this month.

*Emily is crawling everywhere and pulling up onto everything. She is all over the place and into everything, but is still so much fun (Plus it is good exercise for Mommy).

*We are down to 4 6 oz bottles of milk plus solids. She was slowly cutting back the number of oz she would take per bottle at daycare and they were struggling to get 3 3oz bottles in her during the day, so we switched it over to 2 6oz bottles instead. She is doing well drinking more at each sitting now and it isn't such a struggle.

* She is on a pretty good eating schedule. She has a bottle at 7, 10, 3, and 7-7:30. She has yogurt around 10, lunch around 1, and dinner about 6:30.

*Bedtime is 7:30. She is exhausted by this point.

*She added a couple more letter sounds to her vocab this month including T and B. So no she says Dada, Duh, Teh, and baba, or any other random sounds that include these letters. Obviously these aren't words, but they are the beginning of them. Still no M ::sad face::, but she also doesn't seem to be associating baba or dada with her bottle or daddy. Sorry babe.

*We are doing good on the solid front. We have just come to the realization the Emily is not a big eater, but she is still growing fine. She really likes little diced cubes of cheese, puffs, and gold fish. She doesn't seem to mind ground up meats and will pretty much try anything we put in from of her. She is having a good time eating which is what our goal was anyway. She has eaten a whole lot of different things this month too. We really pretty much give her a little bit of what we eat. She has had taco meat with potatoes, some ziti, cheese spaghetti, scrambled egg yolks, toast, plums, pineapple, little bits of lunch meat, zucchini, corn, rice, tortilla. Really a lot of different things. She hates purees, unless it is apple sauce.

* Emily sleeps from 7:30- about 6:45 everyday. Since she has been teething she has been waking up at night a little bit. Her other lateral incisor hasn't broken through yet, but it is looking a little inflamed. She seems most fussy and waking up right around the time teeth are breaking through. We are really hoping to knock the top 4 teeth out at once. Say a little prayer.

*That being said, we have 3 teeth broken through the gums.

*She is in 9 month clothes (6-9), but they are still pretty big on her. I have a feeling she will be in this size for a while.

*We moved her up to size 3 diapers. Size 2 still fit, but we had several boxes of 3 and theyfit her well too, so we just moved up.

*I have no clue how much she weighs. My guess would be about 16-17lbs.

*This child has laser accurate vision. She spied a sugar ant on the carpet across the room and it became her life mission to crawl to it and put in her her mouth.

*EVERYTHING goes in her mouth. Everything. Little pieces of lint you wouldn't imagine she would even see or want to pick up will go in her mouth. Dog toys go in her mouth. SHOES go in her mouth. EVERYTHING goes in her mouth.

*She is developing quite the personality and really testing her limits. She will dangle her sippy cup over the side of her highchair and smile and just wait to see what you are going to do. It's funny because if she starts to get a reaction, she will pull it back up and smile like 'just kidding." It has become a little game at dinner time.

*She shakes her head no all the time, but she does it when she is excited. I think it is hysterical.

*She loves to sleep in a stink bug pose with her little booty in the air.

*She lifts her arms up to you to pick her up and she holds on now when you carry her around. I LOVE this. At daycare, the second I walk in the room, I have to go pick her up or she will get upset. Sometimes I will pick her up and love on her, then try to put her down so I can gather her things. She will hold on to my neck or shirt for dear life. It is really sweet.

*Sometimes, if you are lucky she will give you big wet, slobbery, open mouthed kisses. Sweet and gross at the same time. She loves to give herself kisses though and will do so anytime you put her in front of a mirror, or my mom's fridge. She a little vain.

And here are some pictures of Emily. Her hair is getting long. I need to cut her bangs, becuase I have tried and failed to train them to go off to the side. Maybe if I just let them get a little longer they will.... :)


Who's that hot little mama?









Duh, obviously it is me..


This is boring.
Seriously lady, enough with the pictures or I am going to lose it!
I mean it! Did you think I was joking?!
Cheese!

I am such an angel.

That Abby is one funny chick.
Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy

Look, it's a block.