As summer packs itself away...

 It's cooling off. 

The hottest days are well behind us and already we are wearing sweaters some mornings and pants. I'm looking forward to the change of season and all the new things it will bring. Fall with Emma as a two-year-old will be a wonderful thing! 

I can't get enough of our matching lunches each week day, hers in a half size. This is an egg salad sandwich with cucumber on the side and plain yogurt for dipping. We always have the same or similar plates (easier than two different dishes every meal) but Emma still wants to sample from my plate. I didn't get to eat my tomatoes for example. 

Ready for lift off! at our friends Helen and Millie's house(tomato from their garden in hand!) Emma and Millie are very compatible friends. Emma often talks about about how Millie *loves* blue, and how she's going to go visit her or join her on her trips. Play with all her friends is taking new forms as the girls grow and their relationships deepen, they are getting new ideas for play, joining in more and definitely being inspired by one another. Watching them is an inspiration to me!

Mr. Bean

On Monday after putting down I came out of her room to discover we have a new resident. Patrick found a kitten while on a walk with Timber and brought home the little ball of dusty fur and fleas which was in his lap and growling at Timbers huge excited face. He's been cleaned up and handled often and is turning into a very sweet little cat. Emma loves her new kitten! We're had a couple heated moments though when we are not being gentle enough with kitten and have to put him away for a while, or just saying goodbye to him at all those first couple days would be difficult. Now she knows she can see him again later or the next day, so there's no reason to fret! 

 Everyone, meet Bean!

Favorite books at two(-wenty five months)

Emma loves reading books together and flipping through her favorites on her own. Our favorite stories and daily reads are any of the Little Bear stories, Poems to Read to the Very Young and Jamberry were both favorites of mine as a child, many golden books such as The Color Kittens, any farm related book, and Lost and Found. 

Little Bear was something I enjoyed when I was little but I had the televised version. The familiar characters and stories are especially dear to me and the relatable subjects get Emma's attention. Emma's favorite story from our Little Bear book is Birthday Soup where he makes soup and serves his three friends, believing his mother forgot it was his birthday. Of course she surprises him with a cake! 

 Like in this story, a game Emma plays is serving three friends (also Hen, Goose, and Cat) but she makes pizza. In a similar way to Patrick creating our Sunday pizza Emma stretches out some play dough, puts it on a pan made from a jar lid and rushes it to her oven. She turns all the knobs around, darts back to the table and sits with her friends. 

Waits a while. Then bursts out, "it's READY!!" And runs back to her kitchen to take out a fresh pizza. Sometimes she asks me to make party hats for her guests! This is another thing she sees in one the Little Bear stories. 

I'm in love with illustrations by Eloise Wilkin, especially her angelic children. This is such a wonderful collection of poems to read aloud and recite through the day- all about animals, events or the bits of magic childhood has in store. I love that Emma can fill in any blank I throw her way as I read her the lines. She really has them all memorized, as do I. 

An easy beat to repeat, I hear Emma mumbling lines while she plays. The pictures are so colorful and imaginative, it would be hard not to love this book! Although, it did get Emma worried that a bear was going to eat all of our delicious berries mentioned in that earlier post.

The Color kittens get Emma thinking about colors, or sometimes colors gets her thinking about these two color kittens, Brush and Hush. They have buckets and buckets and buckets of color to splash around with; with these colors they would make all the colors in the world. Those are a couple of her favorite lines to recite but her favorite part about this book is when the excited kittens begin pouncing. This is where Emma learned to jump and lift both her feet, landing on her bum. 

When starting Lost and Found, Emma dashes off to her stuffy basket and digs through until she find her Penguin, which is actually a pelican. She shows the toy pictures as we read through the book.  

Emma also received a subscription to Ranger Rick Jr. magazine and she already loves it! We must have read one story about a turtle 100 times and it became the subject of her play for three days. Getting new magazines in he mail is going to be exciting for her, and I'm looking forward to what the next one will bring to us. Thanks to Emma's MiMi for this great gift! 

One terrific Two!

[from 7-24]

Wow! How amazing is it that we have a two year old now. And at two Emma can do so many amazing things, more every day. But first off....

Let's talk about Emma's birthday. What a full, busy, eventful day. Both sets of grandparents were there, many others from Patricks family, most of Emma's friends, new friends from our neighborhood plus a friend from Winnipeg who happened to be a few hours away for work. We got all the food done but not all of it out, it was much less organized than I hoped it would be and it was missing a few things I was looking forward to, BUT. It was a very special day bringing everyone together to wish Emma a happy birthday. She got her own slice of the cake (we usually share one) made a new friend, and felt the love from all around her. Thanks to everyone, near and far, who was a part of it!

And now some stuff as a Two or just-about-two year-old.

Picking berries! We have dozens of wild berry bushes in our yard. 

Emma's new make-believe game that she brings everywhere is to have a bug in her hand. I was surprised by how in depth her imagination was this weekend, at the poolside of my parents hotel in Tarrytown. Emma scooped up a bee from the water then laid it down on a towel. She said the bee was shaking off the water! Then she scooped up a worm.

..which was wiggling, see? She also brings over imaginary ants to read Effie, a story about an ant with a thunderous voice. She shows me bugs and lizards and turtles she has in her cupped hand pretty often. Very cute

Emma received a rocking chair from a very thoughtful 9 year old boy from our neighborhood. 

Meeting a neighbors cat at a friends house. Not our friends cat but potential friends for Emma, as all animals are. 

Testing out her new tempera paint sticks from our friends Helen and Millie. They're so smooth on paper, easy for her to open and close without assistance and virtually mess-free. So this mama is sold! 

More of these delicious berries. We can't stop!

Running through the garden hose!

And from this morning, Emma sitting in 'meadow flowers' trying to eat them like the friendly cow in a poem we read often. Emma recalls what must be hundreds of poems and stories in her play and has a deep interest in new vocabulary, characters, themes, and the all sorts of ideas portrayed through writing. Reading and recreating books is one of our favorite things to do. I will post next about her favorite books and the ways she lives them.

One last thing before signing off here and getting to work during Emma's nap.. Yesterday I was able to make a very special duvet and cover for Emma, as she has a new room and needed her own blanket to go with it. The fabric we picked out at Joanne's, it took a few simple stitches and some snaps and it was completed in two hours. 

And here it is in use:

I think it did the trick, because Emma slept through the night in her new room until I woke her the next morning, for the first time. My big girl!

(And I slept pretty well, too ;-))

Making lemonade

New room and new discoveries

Emma's room all set up. This is during naptime, see little Emma in her bed? The shades for the other windows are on the way, hopefully it will make it a little darker in there for naps.

Where's the fireworks? 

Our first cherry tomato was just ripe enough to be plucked off and sampled

Approved!

Found stars in an apple core

View of Emma's wonderful, wonderful room from her bed. So much room to grow!

Emma's Castle

Emma's room is DONE besides minor things we can work in while the room is filled with all her belongings. She has a few new pieces of furniture which came with the house, I changed them up a little to better fit the room. My favorite is this low table (or is this a bench?) that I sanded the top of to the bare pine wood. It's light and natural but the dark stained legs give it a nice contrast. Emma uses this table for cutting her fruit and making food for her animals. 

This fruit cutting set was given to Emma by CoCo, and the fruit for the most part were packed away until now. They were too comfortable for Emma to throw so we thought we'd reintroduce them a little later. 

Today it is the first thing Emma went for when we went to her room after breakfast. She cut all the fruit into pieces then exclaimed, "Emma work hard, like Daddy!"

So right, little girl! 

Emma zips about her room to wherever inspiration takes her.

These shelves in the last two pictures came with the house, they were dark wood and mounted on the livingroom wall. I sanded them and painted them to match the wall color.

Emma raining animals down on sandwich toppings- of course!

Her table has five wooden toddler sized chairs I found on craigslist for $2 each which will be perfect for when we host play dates. That open wall between the windows could house a couple shelves for art supplies but I have to be sure this is where the table and chairs are staying before we start drilling into these walls- we had so many to fill when we were prepping for paint!

Putting her babies down for naptime c:

So that's is so far! We think Emma's bed will be moved in this weekend and the transformation will be complete. Very excited!!