10 months

Dear Emery,

Happy 10 months + 2 days! I often think about all the fun things I should be recording about you and hope to do better at it this year. For the past month of your life, we’ve been traveling and visiting family members. You’ve been a gem through all of it---plane rides, lots of new faces, and even the bumpy, off-roading trip to the desert (in fact, you didn’t complain nearly as much as I did about that one).

Here’s just a few quick things I want to remember about you:

4 teeth at 8 months

Pushing yourself up to sitting position at 9 months

Crawling (finally!) at 9.5 months

Pulling yourself up on furniture and cruising at 9.5 months

Eating solids like cheerios and bread (without choking) at 9.5 months

Drinking water from a bottle at 9.5 months

10 month stats: 17 in head circumference,17.2 lbs, and 27 in. long

You have quite the array of little tricks these days. My favorite is probably waving. You started consciously waving to people around 8 months and have since been perfecting your wave. You used to just wave by folding at the wrist, then you started folding your fingers down with your palm facing you (it was so cute how you waved to yourself!), and now you’ve put it all together to fold your fingers down and face them toward the person you are waving at. Basically, anything moving gets a nice hand wave from you these days (including animals, the flames of a fire, trees, etc.) It’s so cute and fun to watch how social and aware you are of the people and things around you.

At about 9.5 months, you started doing a funny little bear crawl in addition to your normal crawling. While all this moving around makes more work for me, I honestly don’t mind, because it’s so neat to see you gaining more skills and more control over your tiny little body. Another trick is what we call “crazy face,” where you either smile or open your mouth wide and then shake your head all over the place. It evolved while we were on a long car ride. I think you wanted out of your car seat, so you started flopping your head around. Your dad copied you, you thought it was funny, and what could’ve been a meltdown turned into a game. Now you do crazy face just for fun, or to music.

You recently started doing the actions for your favorite “Popcorn Popping” song, and you love to clap your hands together. During our stay at the Hoyts, all the boys were up in the loft watching a football game and even though you couldn’t see them, you heard their occasional bursts of yelling and clapping and would face the direction all the racket was coming from and add your own clapping to it. So funny! You’re also really fascinated by books these days...you love looking at them, playing with them, and turning the pages.

Reading with Aunt Hailey.
She was your best friend while we were at the Hoyt's!

In other news, you’re still not sleeping through the night (vacation didn’t help that), but I’m not too worried about it at the moment. It’ll happen someday. Eating and everything else is going great. You recently decided that sneezing or watching people sneeze is pretty funny and you are constantly “ga-ga”-ing and “ma-ma”-ing and “da-da”-ing. You took a particular liking to the Hoyt’s dog at Chrismas time and I’m pretty sure you try to say the word “dog.” Most times it comes out like “gog,” but pretty exciting nonetheless. Since your dad and I hate dogs, I’m not counting it as your official first word yet. J Everytime you see a dog (they're quite prevalent in our apartment complex) your whole body goes rigid and you flap your arms around excitedly saying "gog, gog."

Just playing :)

You got spoiled with all kinds of attention over the break from family members, it was so neat to watch you get acquainted with all your extended family and so sad to have to leave them all behind. You seem to gather smiles from everyone: great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, teenage uncles, young cousins, etc. I’m constantly amazed at how many smiles and how much laughter a sweet baby like you can bring to all and especially to me.

With the Hoyt fam

With the Jensen fam

Sometimes your dad and I jokingly debate about who loves you more, me or him. The funny thing is, each of us is pretty sure that we’re winning. Thanks for being such a sweet, happy baby. While I want you to be little forever, I can’t wait to watch you grow up!

Love,

Mom   

My kind of pretty

Often when I tell people that I'm from Oregon, I get comments such as, "Ohhh, it's beautiful over there," and "I love how green and pretty Oregon is." And then I proceed to tell them that I'm actually from the other part of Oregon. The desert part.  But you know what? I still think it's pretty, and while it's not green and rhododendron-scented, I think sage brush smells great too.

Over Christmas break, my dad convinced us to go for a drive out in the desert. 

It was long. 

It was cold.

And the dirt road had pot-holes the size of  the suburban we were piled into.

(well, that may be exaggerating just a wee bit) 

But...

Nate thought he was the coolest person ever because he got to stand on top of this rock.

And Wyatt got to shoot guns with his dad and Pete

And we trekked up a frozen river to find...

A frozen waterfall.

 Which was actually pretty cool.

So it turned out alright after all. It was great fun to be in the car complaining and getting lost together. Ahem, I mean, spending time together. 

Okay, all joking aside, thanks Dad! Even Emery had a good time---she doesn't give out her full, four-toothed smiles for just anything.

My Favorite Gift

I'm feeling oober overwhelmed with the amount of blog-age I want to do about our vacation. I reeeeeeally want to get it recorded, because we made such good memories, but I think it's going to take a little while. For now, here's a little spur of the moment photoshoot I did with Emery amongst the leftover wrappings on Christmas Day.  

Two Seven

I don’t remember how I happened upon this song, but I've loved it ever since. It reminds me of my sweet Peter and my little Emery. At the same time. Kind of weird, but whatever. 

Anyway...speaking of Peter...today is his 27th birthday! His birthday parties have a history in our marriage of being pretty lame. I’ve usually exhausted all my gift ideas and given him all his favorite treats for Christmas, so once January 8^th rolls around, there just isn’t a lot of life left in our celebration. I keep telling him we should celebrate his half birthday, in July; that way I’d have 6 months to think of fun ideas.

Anyhow, this year, like most years, was pretty low key. We had a couple friends over for dinner, apple crisp, and ice cream. Pete’s back to school again tomorrow morning, so it is kind of nice to have this last day of celebration before he hits the books again.

Pete was really worried about the candles melting and getting wax in his beloved apple crisp...so into the ice cream carton they went.  (I believe Emery is practicing opening wide for the day she goes to the dentist)

Eating with our friends, ChrisP and Dan-Ness (those are Pete's nicknames for them, anyway). They are currently wife-less as their other halves are still in Utah for a few more days.

blowing out our creative "27" candles

Happy Birthday Peter! Hope your 27^th year is as wonderful as you are! 

that's REALLY wonderful...in case you were wondering :)

Vacation

{Pete working outside at the "Tree Farm" as his home is affectionately called.}

{All the Hoyt brothers}

{Me and one of my wonderful sis-in-laws, Ashley}

{Emery watching the football game with cousin Hannah Z and Aunt Hailey}

The holidays have been good to us. 

Verrrrry good to us.

2 weeks in Nyssa with my family, 2 weeks in Washington with Pete's family, and in 2 days it will all be over and we'll be home.

I wish I would have kept up with the blog posts, but, quite honestly, I was having waaaay too much fun. 

I'll try to catch up once I'm home :)