Turning Two!

Emily turned 2 on Aug. 27th. There was something magic about that day. It was as if she instantly grew up. BEFORE her birthday when she would answer in the affirmative, it came out, "aah" EVERY time, but ON her birthday she began answering, "Yah". I might not have been so surprised if we had been working with her to say the word right, but we hadn't! Ah, birthday magic! Not only that, but, she also hit another milestone on that day. One of her presents was a pretty pink little potty seat, so that we could begin the dreaded potty training. She had potty success THAT evening shortly after opening it up!! Where did my baby go? :) We celebrated on Friday with just our little family. Then on Sunday evening, we had all of Jeff's family over for dinner and cake 'n ice cream. It was very nice.

Emily:

☺ Loves animals and even hangs out her tongue like a puppy to catch the wind when we cruise around on the golf cart (hehe)

☺ Has strong opinions about what she wants to wear and changes her clothes at least once a day

☺ Loves pictures of temples and of Jesus

☺ Thinks Playdoh is must on her list of daily activities (Today, I found a wet and slimey chunk of yellow playdoh on the dining room floor and was pretty certain it had spent some time in her mouth. My suspicion was confirmed when she pointed to it, made a crinkled up face and said, "Sour.")

☺ Has replaced biting with pinching and scratching as her defense of choice

☺ Knows all her ABC's until the letter 'S' when she stops singing ABC's and inserts the first line of "Itsy Bitsy Spider"

☺ Likes to buckle her own highchair seat buckle and her own shopping cart buckle

☺ Has fun playing fairy school with her sister and cousins

☺ Brightens our home and our family with her strong and beautiful personality

Still Burning!!

The garden is in full harvest right now. I both LOVE it and DREAD it! It's exciting to see what our time and effort and God's good grace yields us. It's also overwhelming to have to deal with such large quantities in the short span of a couple of days. There is just no way my family is gonna be eating all of those tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, corn . . . before it spoils, so , (sigh) the only alternative is preserve, right? Yesterday was jalapeno pepper day. In years past we've planted only 1 or 2 plants that we've used in our salsa. Jeff decided,(for reasons unknown to me), to plant 5 plants this year!! I DO have a weakness for breaded, deep fried, cream cheese stuffed jalapenos, but I've never made them at home and even then, we have WAY more peppers than we could possibly eat! I decided to freeze them. Yesterday afternoon, I assembled supplies. Knife, cutting board, seed scooper, and freezer bags. No gloves. I didn't have any and honestly, didn't think I 'd really need them anyway, after all, I EAT them without pain and suffering. All was going well, *wink, wink* , until I needed to blow my nose. I am a two tissue nose blower. No sense messin' around getting all snotty and nasty with one tissue and then havin' to clean yourself all up with another. Start with two - avoid the mess. :) Not a minute after I had blown my nose, my face began to burn! Through TWO tissues!! I severely underestimated the potency of the jalapeno!! That's also when I noticed my fingers were on FIRE! Everything continued to burn EVEN after I washed my hands 3 times. Hours later, I bathed 3 children and STILL everything was burning! I went to bed and woke up this morning to discover, my face and fingers were still burning!! LESSON LEARNED!!!

My Daughter- Nanny McPhee

Jeff has temporarily bestowed a new nickname upon our baby. NANNY MCPHEE!! How jealous are YOU? Poor girlie. It came about like this: Emily doesn't spend as much time outside as Will and Jessa do. She needs more supervision and as much as I'd like to throw responsibilities to the wind and spend all day long playing- that just can't happen. So. . . HOW she ends up with OVER 30 MOSQUITO BITES while the other kiddos sport, I dunno, maybe 2, baffles me! And THEN, she scratches and scratches and scratches them until she scratches her skin right off! Then they swell and get infected and she scratches until they bleed. Ugh! Whenever I catch her scratching and tell her to stop, she says, "I wub, mom. I wub." Telling me that she's NOT scratching, just rubbing. :) I've got my Mederma ready and waiting for any scarring-and I'm sure there'll be some. In the mean time, let's pray for a frost. That should help. I love you, dear little Nanny McPhee! (Yes, I know that's a mighty big bandaid on her face, but 1.) We weren't going anywhere public and 2.) It covered two bites that she couldn't leave alone in one lovely covering!)