Today is Emma’s 4th birthday party, so we won’t be around much. In celebration of her upcoming BIG DAY, I thought I’d post some vintage Emma videos.

Emma’s first Halloween … the elephant head was a teeeensy bit too heavy

Crawling for the one of the first times! [7.5 months]

Playing in the backyard & babbling a little bit [16 months]

One of my favorites … she had to pet every single sheep at the petting zoo [20 months]

I hope everyone had a great day and has a great rest of their weekend!

It’s no secret that I’m on Twitter and Facebook.

It’s also no secret that I upload a ton of images of my girls.

And even though I have the geolocation turned off on my phone, and even though I do not upload/share pictures of them unless they are clothed, I do sometimes use FourSquare to say where we are. I also haven’t done a very good job of hiding the name of the city we live. I don’t know if I’ve ever come out and said the name of the city, but a true stalker could easily figure it out.

But this video? Made me think twice. Maybe it’s because I have two girls, but I have suddenly become very aware of what I’ve shared about them. For instance, although I have never come out and said the name of the school Emma goes to, I think it could be figured out based on other things I’ve talked about.

Anyway, I don’t want to scare you into going offline, because then I would really miss you!! And I don’t want this video to scare us into not sharing pictures of our kids, because … well, frankly, I’m not doing that. I’ve had pictures of Emma stolen off of Flickr before, so I have gone “friends and family” on there, meaning that I have to add you as a friend for you to see my pictures of the girls on Flickr. But then I turn around and share them publicly here. So … I don’t know if I’m doing the “right” thing, but I just think we, as mothers and fathers, should be aware of what CAN happen out there.

And then go from there.

I do need to figure out how to protect the images here, though. I’ve yet to figure out how to disable right-clicking. Anyone?

In the meantime, here’s a much more light-hearted video …

Man, this is from WAY back in November or December … when Emma had long hair and when Lucy whined all the time, lol. Good times!

I’ve never understood the show on TLC called I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant. I’ve honestly never even sat and watched an entire episode because the re-enactments are so silly. Plus, I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that there are people out there who have no idea they are pregnant. I’m sure one of my readers is going to tell me how they or a friend / cousin / sister / aunt  / mom didn’t know they were pregnant until they delivered a baby on the toilet, but it’s still totally mind-boggling to me.

Needless to say, I am not a front runner for this show …

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*ahem* She moves A LOT.

Sorry about the quality. And the crazy loud buzzing 12 seconds in … I was recording with my Blackberry, and it was notifying me of an email at the same time.

Get Simon on the phone immediately.

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I see a huge record deal in our future.

I really don’t know why she sings that song, because it is clear that she loves rain. Or rather, the puddles.

But today is nice and sunny, albeit a lot windy, so I guess her singing worked.

Twenty-four months ago, I looked like this …

27 weeks along

I loved being pregnant. Now, I was one of the lucky ones – no morning sickness, no obscene weight gain (34lbs), no stretch marks, light heartburn, little to no discomfort (other than my ribs). The only downside of being pregnant was that it couldn’t last longer. Oh, and the restless leg syndrome that had me putting bars of soap at the foot of our bed and doing crazy stretches at 3am.

on our babymoon to disney world

I understand if some of you now hate me and never want to read anything I write ever again.

And that’s okay. I understand.

I mean, you can hope that whenever I have baby #2, I’ll be sick as a dog 24 hours a day.

But please don’t.

Being pregnant for the first time was really amazing. In fact, it was so wonderful that I often think about trying for baby #2 JUST to be pregnant again. But then reality sets in, and I realize that we are paying our bills and that’s about it. Babies just don’t fit into the equation at this point in our lives. We’re okay with what starting our own business has done to our bank account, but we also know that having a baby right now just wouldn’t be smart.

But the actual point of this post was to say that twenty ONE months ago, I looked like this …

And then like this …

And then like this.

Even labor and delivery was a piece of cake …

6:15pm – water broke at our house
7:15pm – arrived at the hospital
11:45pm – got epidural
5:00am – started pushing
5:59am – Emma Grace arrived

Ever since then, life has been anything but easy.

But just as my pregnancy and then delivery was wonderful and amazing, so is our life with Emma.

She’s not the kid that’s going to entertain guests and make everyone laugh. She’s not going to be the kid who screams and yells to get attention. She won’t strive to be the center of attention or the class clown.

Instead, she will be the kid that everyone is drawn to because she’s so quiet. She’ll be the old soul that everyone falls in love with. She’ll be a listening ear and a strong shoulder for her friends. She’ll love everyone, no matter their faults or shortcomings. And she’ll be generous and kind.

Happy 21 months on this earth, my sweet soulful child.

You have brought us more joy and peace than we ever thought possible.

There are nearly ten thousand man-made objects larger than a softball in Earth orbit. Of these, only seven percent are operational satellites. The remaining ninety-three percent consists of dead satellites, rocket fragments and debris.

So there are 905 operational artificial satellites orbiting around the Earth …

and there are a couple thousand* non-operational artificial satellites floating around out there …

… and now they’re crashing into each other!

Oh yeah, and don’t forget about the TONS of space debris that’s just floating around, including an astronaut’s tool bag that is visible from Earth!

“Oh, great”

And there it goes!

I guess I might be the last person on Earth to know about all of this, but I find it extremely fascinating.

And if you’re like me and are just now learning about all of this, don’t worry — when they lose altitude, they end up burning up before they ever hit the Earth. So you won’t be hit by an old satellite while you’re walking your dog around the neighborhood.

Hopefully.

*I can’t find an accurate number, so that’s just a round figure.

You know how they say that your kids will pay you back for everything you put your parents through?

Enter Emma with her endless questions …

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Seriously.

All morning long.

Hey mom, sound familiar!?

by the way, that ADORABLE personalized felt book in the video was handsewn by Reuben Christopher ♥

she’s all mine!!!

oh yeah …
bo = grandma
pappa = grandpa

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My little Acer netbook has a webcam built into it, and Emma is completely addicted to it. She wants to watch herself on the webcam 24/7. If I go to my Facebook, there is a way I can record videos, so I let her record herself the other day. Twice. Actually, I let her record herself about 318 times, but I only put 2 on Facebook. I mean, we think it’s cute, but I’m not sure everyone wants to see 318 videos of Emma. Besides her great-grandparents and grandparents.

ANYWAY, she pretty much wants to “watch Emma?” all day long. So I let her.

And if you want to watch Emma, here you go …

video 1

video 2

Some notes of interest for the 2nd video: when she’s reading the book, she says what sounds like “prize” — it’s the part of the book where you lift a flap, and it says “surprise!”

Also, she is not saying “the B word” — she’s saying “Boots” as in, the monkey on Dora. I didn’t realize it sounded like “the B word” until her cousin pointed it out. I guess we need to work on her diction, lol.

And sorry about her frazzy hair. I don’t really “fix it” when we’re just bumming around at home, so that’s why it looks like a rat’s nest 98% of the time.

her first three-syllable word @ 19 months old

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