The good fight

Emerson was not too happy about taking a nap the other day.  She screamed and kicked, pulled and tugged.  She put up a good fight, but in the end, she tuckered out and sleep came out on top. 

Copycat

 I knew these pictures looked all to familiar. 



Here is a sweet boy doing the same exact thing.

Add caption

Cruisin' for a bruisin'

Emerson has now mastered a few more things!

 Crawling...

The walker....

Climbing the stairs...

Putting puffs in her mouth...

And her "I am looking for trouble" face

8 months old

Oh Emerson, this past month has been you have completely come into your own.  Really, this month you have started doing so many new things and your personality is really shining through.  You are officially crawling everywhere and keeping me on my toes.  You are feisty and relentless, you crawl straight to things you should not like electric sockets, wires, the fireplace and have already crawled up the stairs.  You have a radar for any small object lying on the floor.  Everything goes straight into your mouth and you scream and protest if anyone takes it from you, especially Hayden.  He is such a good brother.  He watches over you like a hawk and makes sure you are not eating small object or touching the electric sockets.  The one small object you are allowed to eat are puffs and you love them.  You crunch them with your two little bottom teeth that have come in.  We call you magnet hands, because you grab everything and are stealthy fast.  In fact, the other night you grabbed a handful of cheese off of a friends pizza at dinner and it was scalding hot, you screamed bloody murder and your poor finger has a blister.  It was horrible, you really are so quick.

 Not only are you on the move, but you immediately learned to pull up.   You try and pull up on everything, the fireplace, the coffee table, the bar stools.  We had to lower the crib mattress because you already stood up and were leaning over the rail at 4:30am.  I don't know what happened, but you seem so happy to be moving on your own.  You have always been a happy baby, but you laugh and smile and talk all the time now.  The one person who gets the most smiles is Daddy.  He walks into a room and you light up.  He is a lucky man!!  Actually, we are all lucky to have you in our life.

Knee deep in the water

It has become a tradition to spend the 4th of July in Destin.  We so look forward to this trip every year, as we can't wait to stick our toes in the sand and relax.  Well, there is really not to much relaxing when you have a brave, four year old who likes to get out in the water and an eight month old who likes to eat sand.  Luckily, we had the grandparents around to help. 

Hayden loved the water the first few days, he loved to body surf and throw sand at the waves.  Then, the seaweed came in and the water was just gross.  Once the seaweed came in, Hayden went downhill.  He complained that he didn't like the sand and walked around like a monster because he said he had sand in his pants.  I believe he was just bored and needed a friend to plays with.  Luckily, our friends happened to be in Destin and came over two days and Hayden was back to himself.  He swam, built sandcastles and got buried in the sand with the girls.  I am so glad he had friends to play with.  I think he had a blast!!

This was Emerson's first trip to the beach, first time for her touch the sand and ocean.  She is definitely a beach girl!  She loved the sand and probably even ate a few handfuls.  This is completely different from Hayden, as her never liked the sand and still doesn't to this day.  I thought it was going to be tough with her on the beach, but thanks to David's brilliant idea it worked out great.  She sat in Hayden's boat (he was not down with the boat after he got 'slammed' by a wave) and had a great time.  Sometimes she just played with toys and other times we would fill it up with a little water and would let her splash around.  She is now pulling up so she would try her hardest to lean over the boat and grab handfuls of sand.  She even took a few naps out on the chairs when she was worn out.  I am so looking forward to next year to see her run up and down the beach chasing after Hayden.

I loved growing up going to the beach with my family.  There are so many special memories I have from those days. I know David feels the same way. We are blessed to have the opportunity to take Hayden and Emerson to the beach and I hope they will have happy memories of our times spent in Destin.  I know I will!!