Happy Firetruck

You know how I mentioned Emerson has just decided to learn words like crazy? He learned "happy!" the other day. It makes me laugh every time he says it. It always sounds like it has an exclamation point too. Then I asked him to do his firetruck siren because he does that every time he sees/hears an emergency vehicle.

Christmas in Columbus

That Santa is a clever guy. He knew we'd be making a trip out to Utah over Christmas and that it's hard to cart everything back in a reasonable amount of suitcases, so he so graciously came early to our house. And he brought some good stuff.

E looking a little nervous/intrigued by the presents, and Ben looking a little mischievous

?

Little E's stocking

They have the same cute tired eyes in this picture. Can you see how they're both a little puffy?

Santa brought E a choo choo! Best present ever. I don't even know how many hours he's already spent driving it around and around.

Mommy made Daddy a cornhole set (with a little help from a friend). Now we finally feel like true Ohioans.

Here is E contentedly playing after church with most of his presents. I think Christmas has been a success so far. :) I also know of some grandparents that may have a few things waiting for this little guy. Can't wait to see you!

Christmas-y Week

I don't know why it cracks me up that Emerson was invited to a friend Christmas party, but it does. Every time I look at this picture with these tiny people peering over the table at their dumb little plates of food I can barely stifle a giggle.


Emerson's best pal Tucker had a Christmas party and invited us over to play. They made the cutest little Christmas cards and had a great time playing in the same area. I would say "together" but I don't think there was much contact between any of them except when they wanted to play with the same toy. Britni (Tucker's mom) made some great food and the moms had a good time chatting. Thanks for having us over!

Making Christmas cards

My child was not compliant and refused to sit sweetly in front of the tree. He started bawling and flinging himself around right before the picture was taken. See how the other kids look kind of embarrassed for him? That's why.

On Friday our ward had their Christmas party and the theme was "A Night in Bethlehem". Ben and I both hate dressing up in costumes, but we were able to scrounge something together for this event because we wanted to be good sports. Emerson was laughing and laughing as we got dressed and even cooperated when we dressed him up in his pack n' play sheet and dish towel because he could see it was obviously the cool thing to do. He got lots of comments at the party and kept his hat on for well over an hour.

The party was very well done. Each family was given a small bag of gold coins and you had to go to each vendor to get a family's portion of food. There were dried fruits, olives, cheese cubes, baklava, hummus, pitas, and nuts. Then there was a short Nativity scene and we sang some Christmas songs to go along with it.

On Saturday night Ben and I headed to The Nutcracker at the Ohio Theatre. It was lots of fun and very well done. Ben didn't even hate it one bit. It was really fun to sit through an event like that and not have to worry about entertaining Emerson. It's so nice to know he's in good hands at our babysitting group. :)

Hat!

Emerson has had an explosion of words lately. He's been picking them up so fast and will surprise us by saying something that we had no clue he could say. He's like a little sponge and absorbs everything we talk about. (Yikes...we'd better be careful.) One morning Ben rescued him from his bed and we were pointing to the firetrucks on Daddy's jammies (yes you read that right--on DADDY'S jammies) and then E pointed to the fireman hats and said "hat!" and patted the top of his head.

The rest of the day he was obsessed with hats and got very creative at breakfast. He had a little bit of bagel with cream cheese left over and put it on top of his sippy cup and then proudly told me "hat!" What an imagination. It makes me smile. Speaking of creative meals, he also has lately enjoyed stacking the crusts from his sandwiches on top of each other and pulling them across his tray while saying "choo choo!" I'm glad I can get a little glimpse into his imagination.

Phew!

Don't you worry, we went back to the zoo with some friends and got a picture with lights in the background! I'm so relieved.

I just love this boy in his little hat with those rosy cheeks

He had a good time chasing the ducks the second time around.

Wildlights at the Zoo

This is probably the lamest post EVER in the history of the world of the Wildlights at the Zoo ever made by a young, LDS, student wife living in Columbus. I don't have any pictures of the dang thing. Not even the obligatory picture in front of the lake with the lights reflecting off the water. The one that people take every year to measure how much their kids have grown? Yeah that one.

But I guess I should attempt to document it anyway.

Emerson was really excited to go bye-bye and meet Daddy at the zoo. I'm not sure how much he understood about where we were going, but he was happy to get out of the house. We braved the rush hour traffic and arrived at the zoo just after 6:00. We called Ben and waited for him to meet us from school...and he was just leaving. So we waited in the car for him, and 45 minutes later he finally arrived and we were excited to go see the lights we'd heard so much about. I'm not sure how many times I sang "The Wheels on the Bus" to Emerson, but it was many. And it's officially his new favorite song.

We bundled him up and went inside, thankful that we have zoo passes (best money spent ever, seriously) and started walking around. I was pretty impressed. The lights weren't as good as Temple Square, but they were pretty dang cool. The little lake was surrounded by lit up trees and they had them flashing on and off to music every 1/2 hour. Emerson thought it was cool and really liked moving his head to the music. We didn't see too many animals, although we did look. We were lucky enough to see Santa's reindeer though.

We were torn about taking E to see Santa at the zoo, and decided to go for it since the line wasn't long. I think we both knew in our hearts that he would hate it, but we got him excited anyway and taught him to say "Santa" in line and "ho ho ho" although he says it "ho uh-oh!". The moment arrived, and we handed him to Santa and he promptly started screaming and crying and saying "Mamamama!" and reaching for me. We just kind of laughed and told him he was ok while they took his picture. Then when it was all over he said "Bye-bye" in his really sad voice while waving like he couldn't wait to get out of there. Of course I forgot my camera and we didn't feel like spending $13 on a picture, so we have no documentation of the traumatic event. Only Emerson's emotional scars will live on to tell the tale.

So we had a good time, and it got us all in a Christmasy mood.

Thankful for Sca and Shash

This year we were again lucky enough to have Scott and Ashley drive out from Hershey, PA to visit us for Thanksgiving. I think they were most excited to see Little E. He is a fun little guy. Plus he really liked them--especially Ashley or "Shash" as he calls her. I think sometimes he gets tired of us, so it's always nice to have a fresh face around who will talk cars with him.

Our lovely Thanksgiving guests

Our little Indian brave.
We made this little headband and a drum at our ward midweek activity. I loved watching him run around (while keeping the headband on, mind you) screaming while patting his hand on his mouth.

After dinner, we were all so full and tired that we just relaxed until we could make enough room for pie. I was quite satisfied with my homemade apple and banana cream pies. Then Ashley and I took a drive over to Best Buy to scope out all the psychos who camp out overnight. And yep, there were people in line in tents at 7:30 pm Thanksgiving evening. We decided we would venture out at 3:30 a.m. the next morning to snag some new dishes for me from JC Penney and then swing by Best Buy just to see if we could grab a computer for Ashley. We got the dishes fine, but after a bitterly un-Christmaslike shaft, we were cheated out of the computer at Best Buy by a Scrooge-like, smug, whiny man. Luckily we did not let this ruin our weekend.

After coming home around 5:30 a.m. we both went to our respective beds and had a heck of a time getting warm again. Poor Scott and Ben didn't know what to do with us. Scott likened Ashley to a turkey before it is cooked. I couldn't stop shivering and poor Ben had to endure ice-feet as I tried again and again to burrow them beneath him. The boys went out at a more reasonable hour and did their little shopping trip, and then we drove to Dayton to go to the Air Force Museum. Emerson liked it a lot this time, and couldn't stop pointing and saying "Dat! Dat! Cars! Cars!" We really liked the Imax movie there as well. As soon as we were done there, we went to Schmidt's to have some good German food.

The nice waitress brought Emerson a pickle and was surprised he'd never had one before. It never occurred to me to give him one...

But after a few shudders, he kept at it...

And loved it.

Scott and Ashley

Sca and Shash

On Saturday the boys went golfing in the morning, and the girls went to New Moon in the afternoon. Then it was the big BYU-Utah game. Benny was outnumbered by Ute fans, especially after Scott and Ashley sent E an adorable little U of U hoodie. There is not too much I can say about the game or Max Hall because I am walking a fine line anyway by even mentioning it. But we had a good time despite the outcome of the game because of this lovely fondue spread and Ashley's yummy jalapeno poppers.

Me and Ash

Thanks Scott and Ashley for making the drive out! We miss you already. Especially E with his E-I-O and "hop! hop! hop!". He just has boring old Mom to play with, and she doesn't talk cars with him as well as Shash does. :)

New Moon Madness

As a 23-year-old mom, I've noticed my body doesn't work like it used to. I know you're thinking "Ah, 23...those were the days", but being a mom kind of cancels out the 23-year-old-ness. Remember the good old days at college when you would start hanging out at like 11:00 p.m.? Those days are over, I tell you. We see 11:00 p.m. still, but only jammy-clad with waxy contacts and greasy end-of-the-day makeup surrounded by a big comfy blanket. And we're kind of in and out of consciousness as we try to finish the movie we so stupidly started at 10:00.

So what possessed me to think it was a good idea to go out to the double feature of Twilight and the midnight showing of New Moon? Pure madness. Pure need for a fun GNO and pretending I'm a teen again with squeals of delight at the shirtless werewolves. But I only like them because they remind me of Ben. :) I'm so lucky to have a ward full of cool girlfriends. It was blast. I don't regret going at all, although I was dragging a little, was a bit shorter on patience, and may or may not have used the miracle of TV more than usual today. I wasn't feeling as tired as I thought I would be though. So who's up for Eclipse next year?

C-C-C-Cars!

Emerson is such a man's man. He was born with a love of all things manly hardwired into his little brain. Since he was born, I've often wondered what he's thinking about. And now I know because he can finally communicate. He runs around all day saying "Cars! Cars! Cars!" Not singular "car" but plural "cars". This word encompasses not only cars, but trucks, trains, buses, airplanes--really anything with wheels. In fact, he has a plastic drawer set to hold his stuff in his room, and it has wheels so it is also lumped in the car category.

The other day we were driving in our "CAR!" and E was in the backseat jabbering to himself while looking out the window and Ben and I just started laughing because he was saying "Cars! C-c-c-cars! C-c-c-cars!" He loves them with all his young boy heart. He even sometimes sleeps holding a car in the hand that's wrapped around beah. (You know, he has to have that thumb accessible.)

We caught him the other day obviously playing out a huge scenario with his farm and "cars!", perfectly content. I wish I knew the storyline, because there definitely was one. It made me realize how big he is, because babies can't map out recognizable scenarios. Big boys can. :(

Mmmm!

For FHE on Monday night, we had a wonderful lesson from the Nursery manual by Daddy. I seriously love that manual. The lessons are just right for a short attention span and I love the little coloring pages that go with the lesson. It warms my heart when they're hanging up on the fridge and E goes up to them and stares like he remembers what we talked about. Or when he wears the unwieldy paper necklace around and brings me mine to wear too. I felt like I had arrived as a mother when I looked down at the pancake-sized necklace with little crayon scribbles hanging around my neck with a piece of moist, scratchy yarn.

The best part about FHE though is always the treat. We gave E his first ice cream cone. Let me assure you this is not his first time having ice cream--merely the first time we gave it to him on his own cone, and let him hold it.

Mmmm...mango sherbet

He has such a long tongue. I don't know where he gets it from. Seriously, I don't.

This picture makes it look like we held him down and MADE him eat his ice cream. We're such mean parents. We threatened him with time out if he didn't finish. :) (Ok really though, my camera sometimes catches weird expressions because the shutter speed is a little slow. So I caught him mid-blink this time, but I can't manage to catch a smile when I want to.)

Some Visitors from Up North

We had our fun friends, Jared and Liesl (and cute baby Bailey) come for a visit on Saturday. They used to be our friends in Logan and now they are living in Cleveland (and we get to resume our friendship now...:) ) while Jared attends dental school. Ben and Jared were on the A-team together at Utah State, and people used to get them mixed up all the time so they learned to answer to both names. They are practically the same person though. They even have the same calling in their respective wards.

Ben just happened to win tickets through the med school to the OSU hockey game. So we went to dinner at Caffe DaVinci and headed out while finishing our delicious gelato. And the girls totally finished first. Favorite quote of the night by Jared: "Oh, are you finished ALREADY!?" as he was trying to juggle his 3/4 full dish. Yes, we are pigs. Actually, I think we just learn to eat fast because it's only a matter of time before the children need something.

Us at the game

We weren't sure how Emerson would do since the game went past his bedtime, but he did great as long as he was sitting on either Jared or Liesl's lap with his arms flapping around.

Cute little Bailey. Isn't she the perfect mix of the two of them? She was such a sweetie. She lured Ben into holding her and then had a blowout on his lap. He forgave her quickly though, especially since none of the mustard poop got on him.

Thanks for the visit! We'd love to see you again soon. Oh, and if you ever find out whether those elephants were poisoned or struck by lightning, let us know. ;)

A Few of My Favorite Things...

These are a few of Emerson's favorite things lately. Sometimes he'll just decide to lay down on our kitchen floor in the middle of playing like it's the most comfortable thing in the world. Apparently he loves this floor a lot compared to the old linoleum.

I admit that I let him watch shows. You can think that I'm letting him rot his brain or whatever, and no, I'm not one of those moms who thinks that Baby Einstein is teaching my child everything he needs to know, but I use it for entertainment value so I can get things done sometimes. And honestly, when he wakes up from his nap sometimes he just needs to sit with me, watch a show, and re-orient himself before he's ready to play by himself again. Plus it's not like I'm letting him watch Jerry Springer or anything, it's just Sesame Street. There is educational value there.

I realize he looks like he's praying here, but he's actually just fascinated with this show called John Deere Heaven that I got from the library. I wish I could've gotten a picture of both he and Ben completely lost in the show because you can bet they both were. There's everything from cars, animals, tractors, and trains and they're all yellow and green. It was pretty heavenly for both of my boys.

Ooooh!

There are just so many things I could say about why this picture makes me smile, laugh, and grit my teeth all at the same time. But I won't. I'll just let it speak for itself. Ok, the one thing I'll say is that the title of this post comes from Emerson's lips saying "oooh!" which he learned yesterday.

Good Head

I've always liked the shape of Emerson's head. Who knew that a Cool Whip container could fit on it so perfectly? I know what you're thinking...and yes, he put it on himself and then nonchalantly wandered into the kitchen. Not even with an expression like "Look how clever I am, Mom!" like he so often does, but just like "Oh hey Mom" and then went about his Emersonian business.

Handsome Boy

He's such a funny boy. I asked him to "go stand over there" and I guess he thought he was supposed to kneel like when we say prayers before bedtime? I just think it's funny to see such a small boy kneeling.

I took these pictures of Emerson in his new outfit for church. The only thing is he won't smile anymore and kind of gives me these blank stares. They make him look very intelligent.

He's such a big boy in nursery. The report from the singing leader was that he got to be a helper yesterday because he was being the most reverent. That was news to me. :) I peeked at him through the little window and he was having a great time and being a good boy, sitting still on his chair. I think he's still intimidated by the older kids, so I'm sure the reverence/submission will subside before too long.

A Note About E's Costume

Apparently bears run in the family.

This is me trying to be brave in my bear costume. It terrified me to put it over my head but I was ok once it was on. I'm glad my son is braver than I am.

(This picture is from our midweek Halloween activity. One of the girls in our ward is a professional photographer and was so nice to take pictures of all the kids!)

Trick-Or-Treat

As I mentioned last year, Ohio does trick-or-treating a little weird. Each city has a designated day to go trick-or-treating as well as a specific time. Our "Beggar's Night" was Thursday from 6-8pm. Apparently they do this to make it safer for the kiddos as well as to avoid interference with the OSU games. We went around our neighborhood with the Richards, our adopted cousins.

Our little Emerson bear had a good time going around from house to house and Ben did a good job with his fatherly duty. He kept his little son's tired legs moving and then carried him a lot so that we hit every single house. I'll admit that it brought out the competitive side in me as well and took me back to the days of trick or treating with my Daddy-o and how we had to win.

Emerson's favorite item was the mini tube of toothpaste from the Nydeggers. He was holding a piece of candy when they handed it to him and he threw it down and grabbed the toothpaste. He wouldn't even drop it in his pumpkin for fear of losing it forever. He also got more aggressive at the last 2 or 3 houses. The nice people were holding candy out for him and he smacked their hands away and picked what he wanted out of the bowl. (Yikes...a little embarrassment for us.) At least they thought he was cute...but I can see we need to work on manners. E wouldn't say "trick-or-treat" to anyone, but he faithfully said "bye" and waved and sometimes even said "oh yeah" when prompted by Daddy. All in all, a very successful night.

Our little beah with his jack-e-lantern and dots

The trick-or-treaters

Ariel Taylee, Emerson Beah, and Peapod Mathis

Emerson Beah

E and Daddy

Our ward had a trunk-or-treat on Saturday morning, so we went to try to get rid of our candy, but so did everyone else. So we just really ended up trading.

E in the backseat on the way to the ward Trunk-or-Treat

We also had our little spooky Halloween dinner. A few things have changed since last year.
1. The kids are of course bigger.
2. There was an extra big eater present this year...Mathis sure can pound some serious chili.
3. Rocky and Joni are expecting a "little beast" in March, so he/she counted as a half person at dinner.
But the coolness factor remained the same. :)

I promise there was actual food...I just forgot to take a picture until we were at the marshmallow-roasting portion of the night.