Seven.

Seven months.  She's crawling...fast. She's pulling up on things. She's giggling. She's saying....MAMA!! She wasn't even seven months yet and she stated saying Mama! This is by far the most exciting thing for me because my other two sweet babies said Dada first! I love their Daddy too, and of course he was over the moon about it, meanwhile Mama had wait to hear that sweet word from other my babies! Emmalise is a very gentle little soul. She is such a happy baby and loves watching Jack and Claire. She's in a big hurry to catch up and get into the mix. She is so tiny, she has the most feminine little features, everything about her is girly. One cute thing she's actually been doing for a while is lounging on her side. I guess it started before she started crawling, and she'd kind of teeter on her side. Now she does it all the time and just hangs out.

 We did sleep training with her this month, which is my least favorite part of parenting (maybe after potty training)...but she has done really well.  With Jack we put him into his crib and let him cry around 4 months, with Claire it was 6 months, and Emmy is 7. We have very limited space at the moment and Claire is still in her crib, so Emmalise sleeps in the pack n play in our room, next to me, which makes the whole "cry it out" scenario difficult. Plus, for a while I just would feed her so she didn't wake up the other kids, but after a few nights of being up every hour with her and getting absolutely no sleep at all, I decided it was time....even if it was difficult. The first night she cried for 50 minutes, and then woke up around 4:00 am and cried for about 10 minutes. The next night she only cried for a few minutes then she was asleep! Now she only cries some nights, but only for a few minutes. She wakes up around 5:00 and I feed her and she goes back to sleep till 7 or 8. Pretty good I'd say!

This is her lounge position. She sits like this all the time. It's so cute, and its just her own little thing. 

 Her big brother adores her!

Here are a few of my phone photos from the last month...

playing with Jacky

  Emmy at her last check up!

 Happy Girl!

Bye Bye cradle...we don't want her going overboard!!

 Christmas Baby!

 Blurry loves from Claire and Jacky!

These two are going to be best friends. Claire loves crawling around with her and is always saying, "C'mon Emmy, C'mon!!" 

Jack called her his little "Sugar Cookie Girl"

We love every minute with this tiny girl.

Happy Half Birthday Emmalise!

Happy Half Birthday Emmalise!

These past 6 months have flown by! She is just the happiest baby.

So easy going and joyful. 

She loves to watch Jack and Claire play.

And they adore her.

When she smiles, her whole little person smiles. 
She is about to crawl any minute now! 
She is teething and finds her thumb to suck on- just like her Mommy :-)

She is darling and precious and although I would have never thought we would have a third baby at this point...

 I cannot even imagine life without her. 

She is such a precious blessing and we thank the Lord for her!

Our little Emmy.

Newborn

One Week

One Month

Two Months

Three Months

Four Months

Five Months

Six Months

I know the next six months will fly by too, but I'm so excited to watch her grow and learn; and so blessed to be her mommy.
xo

October-ing!

October has come and gone and while the stores are already decking their halls, I'm OK with letting fall rule just a little longer.  I mean, we havent even stuffed ourselves on turkey yet!  Even the Obummer of an election won't hinder my love of all things Autumnal! We had quite an eventful October! 

I love doing art projects with the kids so this was one that was super easy and the kids loved it! Jack is not that into long art projects so I have to make them short and sweet! Claire on the other hand loves doing art! She sits and colors or paints all time! We used our pumpkins we had gotten at Oma's pumpkin patch to paint! 

We also went to another (Yes- another) pumpkin patch called Pumpkin Station! It is one of those mall parking lot patches with the tiny carnival style rides. It was kinda cheesy but the kids had fun- despite both of them being very tired! (One of those days!)

The night before Halloween we carved our pumpkins.  Remember those pumpkins the kids painted? Well dual purpose pumpkins...the paint washed right off and they were ready to be carved! It was great! This year we wanted to do a couple fun pumpkins because usually we stick to just happy jack o lantern faces. I decided I'd do a kitty for Claire's and Sean did Spiderman for Jack's. I also did the happy face, although Sean called it Quasimodo. He was a little wonky... 

 Jack was so funny. This was really his first time carving pumpkins and he thought the guts were so gross! That face is priceless!

This little pumpkin was just so happy in her jumpy!!

The finished products! The Kitty was my personal favorite! Spiderman looked really cool in person but it was harder to photograph the fine detail :-)

And then of course it was Halloween! In the morning we had our friends over to decorate pumpkin and ghost cookies! The boys were mostly interested in eating the cookies (and the frosting by the spoonful) and the girls carefully and methodically decorated and decorated and decorated their cookies! So cute! 

We tried to no avail to get Claire to nap after our friends left. For the last 6 months or so she would transfer pretty well from the car to the couch and sleep for at least a little while.  Lately, that has gone out the window and she just determined she's done napping (muach to my dismay). Plus she really is still so tired and needs a nap. Well I knew we were going to have a hard time if we didnt get going Trick or Treating early, so we headed out around 3:30. We first went to visit all the grandparents and see some of the cuzzies before we actually went door to door.

Captain Hook, Pumpkin, and Tinkerbell!

Daddy and Mimi were the only ones that could her to smile! Poor little thing was just so tired!!

sweet boy!

We ended up back with our friends Trevor and Tayley for some pictures of the Peter Pan crew and a little Trick or Treasuring as Jack called it! He literally would said,

 "Trick or Treasure!" instead of Trick or Treat...

It was so much fun! Although there were several houses whose decorations were a little to scary for our crew. I wish people would just keep it fun for the little kids instead of all the evil, creepy stuff! Oh well!