emma: 12 months

even though emma turned one a week and a half ago, i am still in denial. how is my baby already one?! i remember thinking logan's first year flew by, but it was nothing compared to emma's. hers moved at warp speed. maybe it's just the way things go with each additional child (so i'm not even going to think about it, it makes me sad). when i asked dave what i should write about emma at 1 year he said, "she's cuter than crap and i'm going to have to invest in a good gun!" although crap usually isn't cute (so it's not hard to be cuter than it), the sentiment is right on. just yesterday while we were driving in the car, logan said out of nowhere, "emma is cute!" this girl is a cutie and she's pretty much got all 3 of us wrapped around her finger (unless she is messing with logan's trains and then his love for her wanes). 

 she's working on her plank in the picture on the right. 

emma's one year stats:
21 pounds, 3.5 ounces - 50th percentile
28.5 inches - 25th percentile
head - 45cm

just after midnight, when it had officially become her birthday, she woke up (blast you, poopy diaper) and i had a chance to just rock and snuggle her (i guess thank you, poopy diaper). i told her her birth story (a wessler family tradition i love. kathy still tells her kids their birth stories each year on their birthday) and what i was doing at that very moment a year before (probably trying to sleep since the alarm clock was set for 5:30 am). it seemed surreal that it had already been a year. and what a great year it's been! while i love snuggly newborns, i love it even more as they get older, more interactive and their little personalities really start to bloom! and this little girl has a darling personality!

 here's what miss emma is up to these days:

• she is so vocal. she is constantly babbling and squealing. and even though she doesn't really say any words (besides ma-ma and da-da), she seems to get her point across to us! today i said to dave, "i have the feeling she is going to be loud and opinionated." his response, "really?! your daughter, loud and opinionated?!" yes, it was dripping with sarcasm. point taken!
• she loves to tunnel under things: the kitchen chairs, the table, our desk, people's legs. whatever she can get through.
• she loves to play in our toy corner and lately she loves looking at books. i love finding her surrounded by books (most likely that she has pulled off the bookshelf in logan's room), just flipping through one.
• she loves to push the shampoo bottle into the bathtub
• she is a pro at drinking out of a sippy cup
• she likes to drop things like crayons into buckets
• she usually sleeps with her bum in the air and pushed up against the side of her crib or crammed into a corner. and without fail, the blanket we laid over her is balled up and she is sleeping on it (which makes it impossible to cover her back up with it).

• she is usually standing up in her crib waiting for us to come in and get her after she's woken up
• she loves pens and cell phones. i'm a little concerned about how much she already wants and tries to get my phone.
• playing with the recycling. i put cardboard boxes and cans on the floor in the kitchen next to the garbage can until i have time to take them out to the recycling bin. she loves to throw around whatever is there (same as logan at this age)
• she smacks her lips together and clicks her tongue, especially when she is hungry and sees food
• she waves (starting on march 19) and it melts my heart when she does it
• she laughs to herself all the time. it is hilarious and we can't help but laugh when she does
• she has started crawling faster (she's usually been pretty pokey, but has started to pick up the pace). when dave comes home from work and she sees him she will drop her head and crawl as fast as she can to get to him, which usually results in her panting!
• she blows raspberries
• she loves to open the flaps on books and turn pages

•  she'll clap when we ask her to
• she is a big snuggler (and boy do we love it)
• she loves to stand and pulls herself up on everything. she walks along furniture, will stand and hold on with one hand and will walk with us holding on to her hands. but isn't ready to try walking on her own yet. as soon as we try, she plops down on her bum.
• she loves to sit and bounce. and man does she love to dance. as soon as she hears music she begins bouncing to the beat.
• she loves to play around/with the dvd player, x-box, remotes, phone and computer cords. when we say no she just looks at us and smiles! ;) same with the bathroom trashcan that she loves to get into (yuck!). i'm trying to remember to close the bathroom door more.
• she loves to play peek-a-boo with a blanket, either covering her head and face or just held in front of her face. 
• when she is hungry she means business. she wants her food right away and will scream and flap her arms until we set the food down in front of her. it's torture if her food has to cool down. that little bit of time seems like an eternity (to her and us)
• she will still eat anything and everything. i think she has only tried 2 things she didn't like. we also discovered that she has a peanut allergy :( that is another story for another post. 

 sadly we didn't really do anything for emma on her birthday. good thing she's too young to know or care. in fact, i wasn't even with her for almost the entire day. we did sing happy birthday to her in the morning, which she loved and late that night she had her birthday cupcake, thanks to the kind senior missionaries in our ward who dropped one by. we sang to her again and after some hesitation and dave feeding her a few tastes of the cake and especially the frosting, she got down to business. since she is such a good eater i was sure she would just devour it and i wanted to get the "baby with cake all over their face" pictures that we didn't get with logan (since he wanted nothing to do with his birthday cupcake). and i'm so glad we got them this night because she was not into it at her birthday party.

 post birthday cupcake bath

 we love you emma leigh and we're so happy you joined our family!