Road Trip

Last Saturday we embarked on a crazy road trip. We left here Saturday morning and drove to LA to visit my Grandma with my brother and his family. It was great to see her and she loved seeing all of her great grandkids. The next day we drove to my dads in Gulf Shores and spent two nights there before heading back to Atlanta. It was a total of about 20 hours in the car over 4 days but all the kids did so great. Emma didn't melt down until we got to my car and she screamed the entire 45 minutes home. I felt awful for her, at that point she was just done. So the trip was def. short and sweet but we did get to the beach and Emma had a blast. She was scared of the water at first but once we got over the hump she couldn't get enough of it. She loved the waves and loved playing in the sand as you can tell. My favorite new Emma story is this. We got home from our trip and we were playing and she again smacked me in the face so I sent her to time out. She came back around the corner with her head down, her lip poking out and walked up to me looked at me and smiled and said "Thanks for all you do mom" It was so freaking sweet. How can you stay mad after that?

The terribly fun twos

Well you have to start on a funny note and this video cracks me up. I love this stage with Emma. It is terrible and it is fun. The terrible twos are definitely here but at the same time she is so much fun and she is such a chatter box. I just love talking with her and having conversations. They mean the world to me. And she has the sweetest soul ever. Nothing is better than having your child walk up to you and ask for a hug and a kiss. Or to pick her up from school today to hear that she made her teacher cry. Why? Was she being mean? No, it was because she was so sweet it made her teacher tear up. It makes me so proud. On the other end of the spectrum is Emma's fun desire to throw hard objects after repeatedly being told NO and to hit mommy in the face. There have been frequent time outs lately. Last night she actually role played one of our time out situations with her "babies" about hitting and I couldn't help but laugh and hoped that it was all sinking in. Don't ever hope too much. Tonight she smacked at me 3 different times and lost her stories for the night. So hard to do because I cherish the time but at the same time she has to learn. This mama stuff is hard work!
I also think we are finally turning the corner on potty training. She has done excellent at school for a long time now but it has been a struggle at home. In the last week we have had very few accidents at home. Yay. I hope we are on to something.
We are getting ready for a mini vacay to go see my Grandma and to then go to my dad's who lives in Gulf Shores, a mile from the beach. I can't wait to get Emma to the beach and in the Ocean and Grandpa has a pool so we can practice our swim lesson skills. It will be a quick but hopefully very fun trip!

The Hungry Caterpillar

Emma loves her books. This is the Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. The caterpillar is very hungry but by Saturday he sure eats a whole lot. :) Emma has always loved his books and I just think this is so cute. We are doing well, A/C is working and it is almost the weekend. YAY! We are hoping to go to the pool tomorrow after I get her from school to practice our swim stuff. We have a birthday party on Saturday and then she will be with daddy the rest of the weekend for Father's day. Not sure what mama will do but she'll come up with something.

I'm a slacker

I knew I would be bad at keeping this thing up to date. Well we have been crazy busy and have lots of hurdles we have been dealing with. One was that our AC went out on Friday. So not pleasant when it is a 100 million degrees outside. With the help of some good friends we had a place to stay and a hook up with someone that could get us a new unit and get it installed for us. We were able to finally go back home last night and I think Emma and I both had the best nights sleep we had had in a while.
We had swim lesson number two on Monday which was sort of similar to swim lesson number one. I am hoping to start getting to the pool a couple days a week and on the weekends that I have her so we can practice what we are learning. She seems to enjoy it for the most part though so I am glad she is having fun. :)

Swim Lessons

Not so gifted. haha. So we started our swim lessons on Monday. Since Emma loves to swim with us I thought she would be a super star. While overall she did pretty well she did have one moment where the instructor scared her and she just started screaming "Car ride mama, CAR RIDE" which basically meant get me out of here right now. :) Within minutes she had bounced back though and she seemed to enjoy the rest of the lesson. I am sure the more comfortable she gets with the instructor the more progress she will make. I had fun doing it and hopefully her daddy is going to come and make a lesson or two as well. It made me excited for all the things that may come in the future, soccer, ballet, tee ball. Whatever it is she may want to do as she gets older. Although my mother has strictly forbid me enrolling her in gymnastics (sorry Britt) because it is "just a waste of money" Apparently she must know this from experience with me or something? I cannot help it if I did not turn into Mary Lou Retton!
In other news, Emma melted my heart this morning. On the way to school out of the blue she said "Hey mom, I love you" and it was just so sweet. It was a great way to start my day!

Take time to stop and smell the roses

Or in Emma's case a dandelion. She came up with all of this yellow stuff on her nose after planting her face in the flower. It was pretty cute. She had a nice weekend with her daddy and I tried to get some stuff done around the house so that we can get ready to put it on the market. Went and saw Sex in the City on Friday night. My god. That was like nothing I have ever seen before. Crazy freaking women everywhere that were willing to run you over in a New York minute. I'm not sure I would do that again but overall the movie was pretty good. There were some scenes that were tough to watch but oh well. Emma starts swim lesson's tonight. I'm so excited. I love the water and am so anxious for her to be able to swim. I will definitely report back as to how it went.