The Banes Bunch: January 2015

Happy New Year everyone! I hope that the start of 2015 is going well for everyone. We've been enjoying some much needed down time along with a lot of football watching. But now that Kevin's back to work and Emma's back at school, I have a few minutes to myself to collect my thoughts and update you all about the end of 2014. Bear with me - this might be a long post.

Emma loves...

Taking selfies/pictures. Well let's clarify that, she loves taking pictures that are not posed and do not require her to be still. She's pretty much a ham all of the time, camera or not, but if she knows that I'm purposely taking a picture of her, she has to see it immediately! And just like most kiddos, when you ask her to say "cheese," you get some silly, toothy smile. Although with Emma, you also usually get a little wrinkled nose to go along with it, which is a trait passed down from myself and my grandfather Elmo. We're both notorious nose-wrinklers. Sometimes though, we get nice, normal pictures, and sometimes after I've left my iPhone unattended, I find a series of selfies left by her and Kevin.

A flower!!!!!

The great outdoors. I cannot emphasize enough how much Emma loves to be outside. Seeing that "outside" was one of her first clearly identifiable and most often repeated words, it should be no surprise. She got the chance to go after Thanksgiving with her grandparents to cut down a Christmas tree for her cousins, and she loved it. Unfortunately, the weather here in Houston hasn't been the best, so we've been keeping indoors a lot (also, mommy's had pneumonia). But on days when we can catch a few minutes of sun and some dry weather, Emma's outside running around screaming with delight. Her favorite thing to do is to search for flowers (a.k.a. weeds) to pick. She always shares her findings with me and Kevin.

Spinning in circles and jumping. These are her newest tricks/motor skills. I'm not sure where or when the need to spin exactly clicked, but sometimes she just stops in the middle of what she's doing and decides she needs to spin. Maybe this is something they've been doing a lot in her PE-type class at school; I keep forgetting to ask. Either way, little bit has got this whole spinning thing down and has upped the ante by spinning with things. It's fun to watch her get all dizzy and try not to run into things afterwards. Her other new found love is jumping. She's always asking to "schjump" (that's my best approximation of how it sounds). It's not like she's getting any serious air when she jumps, but it's thrilling nonetheless. She has two favorite places to jump: our bed and in her baby bouncer. One night while Kevin was getting her bath ready, she managed to climb into the baby bouncer she had gotten too tall for that we had tucked away in the spare room, and she just started jumping away. Now, it's a regular thing, and she particularly likes to jump to the "Will Tell Overture" song that the bouncer plays.

Video: Spinning in the crib

(Don't worry, she really didn't hit her head!)

Hiding in and under things. Emma is what we'd call a "sneaky snook" (or maybe we just watch too much of Jake and the Neverland Pirates). She loves to play chase or to hide. Or even better, to be chased until she hides. Her favorite places to hide include the curtains, under her play fort, in the toy cabinets, on the opposite side of the kitchen island, and under the kitchen table. It tickles us that Emma thinks she's hiding so well even when we can totally she her and how she is so proud of herself for outsmarting us. We've tried a few times to build her a fort out of blankets to hide in, but she hasn't quite caught on that you can't go all Godzilla on it if you expect it to stay up. Oh well.

PJs, paci, and hat - so stylin'

Accessories, especially hats. Emma is slowly getting into playing dress up. Right now, it's just been limited to accessorizing though. I make a lot of necklaces, crowns, and bracelets out of the "Lots of Links" that we have. She's also discovered that I wear earrings sometimes and has to check out both sides of my head to make sure that I have one on each side and that they don't disappear. The biggest change in our household though has been her attitude towards hats. It used to be you couldn't get her to wear a hat for anything. But now, hats are cool. Daddy wears hats, Uncle Philip wears hats, and so, Emma must wear a hat too. She has a few that we've tossed into her play bins, but she's always on the lookout for one she can swipe and claim as her own.

Using her dot-dots

Art. Her teacher Ms. Jennifer told me that one of Emma's favorite things to do at school is art. Whether it's using crayons, paint, shaving, or whatever other crafty things her teachers come up with Emma enjoys every minute of it. And even though I've had to purchase Shout a little bit more often since school started, I am glad that Ms. Jennifer likes to do art with Emma because it does make for less mess at home! We do take some time to color every now and then though, and recently, we even invested in some dot-dot markers to have fun with here at home. I got these at the teacher supply store, but I'm told bingo dobbers from the dollar store work just as well too.

Click here to view more photos from the end of 2014

This Christmas, we...

Got crafty. This year the crafting bug hit me hard for Christmas (thanks Pinterest!), which was both good and bad. Good, because Emma was at the right age/size to be able to do cute things with handprints and footprints still, but bad, because I'm too much of a type A person to do craft projects. I'm great with coming up with the ideas and figuring out the steps of how to do something, but I just don't like to make decisions that might mess things up, so I think I spent just as much time trying out techniques than it took to actually complete the final version of the projects. Kevin can attest to the fact that our kitchen table became painting project central for about two weeks. In the end though, everything came out really cute!

What we made for my grandmother

We made one of these for each of Emma's grandmothers

Canvas paintings I made for Emily (top) and Ashley (bottom)

Wore a lot of Christmas jammies. Emma's uncle, Philip, is notorious for spoiling her. She gets lots of "just because" gifts from him through out the year, and this Christmas was no exception. About a week before Christmas, Philip and his girlfriend Ashley came by with early presents, and it turned out to be lots and lots of Christmas jammies! Emma got to wear "big girl" jammies (a.k.a. non-footie ones) for the first time, and we had fun sending Uncle Philip nightly pictures of Emma modeling her new wardrobe.

Spent time with a lot of family. By the end of the Christmas holidays, I think we made the rounds to four different Christmas celebrations. It was nice because they were all spaced out over the course of a week, so we didn't get too stuffed with food or overtired from too much running around! Emma loved getting to see everyone, especially her cousins, Christian and Andrew. Those three are a hoot every time they get together.

Video: Playing with cousins

Opened some really good presents. Since last year, Emma was only 8 months old at Christmas, she really didn't understand the whole idea of how to open presents. However, this year she did not have a problem. She was ready to tear into the presents, even if they weren't necessarily hers to open. The only downside was that she was meticulous about opening her presents. All the paper needed to be completely off. Then, the boxes needed to be opened so the toys could be assembled! Emma's big present this year was her baby doll, Abby, and the accessories to go with her.

Video: Opening presents Christmas morning