Just a spoon full of sugar...

Emma is recovering from a horrible intestinal infection called Clostridium difficile colitis. We are not sure how she got it. The spores are only passed through the stool, and even then your body should take care of it, but in Emma's body it took over. I think she got it at the water park we went to 3 weeks ago. (Which was tons of fun at the time) At first we thought it was just a virus, but it just kept hanging on. Finally we had to take stool samples to the hospital and that is when they found this thing that I can't even pronounce. The dr. prescribed an antibiotic that is the best antibiotic to heal her, but is SUPER expensive. I about had a heart attack at the pharmacy. It was $744 without insurance. Thank goodness for insurance! But even then, I still had a heart attack. It is a brand drug and does not come in generic, so we have to pay 30%. But we didn't have a choice, our baby girl has to take this medicine to get better! And guess what? It doesn't come in liquid form! They suggested that we dissolve the pill in hot water and add orange or apple juice. Yeah Right! That didn't go over well. It was still really yucky and we were fighting her to take it. So, we tried crushing it up and putting it in jelly. It worked and is still working. Praise Jesus! A spoon full of sugar does help the medicine go down! She is doing much better now, her fever is gone and she only has 1 or 2 dirty diapers a day. And her mood is much better! She's stayed home from day care for 2 weeks now, hopefully next week she'll get to go back to school.

Summer is almost over already??

It is already time to head back to school next week! Emma will be among the many attending "school" this year. Last night we went to an open house at her daycare. It think she is really going to have a great time! It's a little bitter-sweet because we have to say goodbye to Brittany who has been watching her all summer. It is time for Brittany also to return to school next week. She will be a senior! Her and Emma had a super great time this summer playing together. Emma just adores Brittany. Here is a video that Brittany took of Emma. We thank God for Brittany, she is such an awesome babysitter and a wonderful young lady!



Last week we got to get together with the Merrill's and the Zile's. We had a great time catching up. We have so many kids now! And there is two more on the way! It's just crazy! Here's a picture of all of our kids.



We also went recently to the fair. We saw all of the animals, but I think Emma's favorite was the horses. Here's a picture of her riding the pony ride. She had a great time! She's such the dare devil, she wouldn't hold on with both hands, she had to wave!

Emma is Two!

Wow! What another jam packed month! It's so hard to keep up sometimes! We now have a two year old on our hands. Emma turned two last week. She got to have two birthday parties, one on her birthday and one on Saturday with my family. She got lots of cool stuff. Today we went to the Dr. for her two year appointment and all is well. She is in the 50% percentile for weight, 40% percentile for head circumference, and 85% for height. So her height has slowed down a bit from her 18 months checkup. I guess if you double the height at age two, then you will get their height as an adult. So, if this is true, then she will end up being 5'10" So I guess that isn't super tall (I was hoping for under 6'!)

Emma took her first trip to California this month. We flew out for Kyle and Sarah's wedding. We are super glad that we decided to do this last minute. The wedding was beautiful and we had so much fun hanging out with everyone. It almost felt as if we had never left. It was great to have some extra time to hang out with Kyle and Sarah on Sunday after the wedding. Emma did great with the time change and it didn't take long at all to get her back on schedule after we came back.

In other news, Emma is going to be a big sister! I am 8 weeks pregnant and due March 1st. We are praying all goes well this time. I am feeling a little sick, but not horribly bad. Everytime I feel bad, I just think: This is good and healthy for the baby! There are several other friends that are pregnant the same time I am, so it's great to have partners in pregnancy!

Fun weekend at the Zile's

We went to see the Zile family this last weekend. We had a great time. We went to the Indy zoo on Saturday. It was really fun to see Emma’s reaction to all the animals. I think she spent more time out of her stroller than in her stroller. She wanted to get as close as she could to see everything. They have a great dolphin show and it was pretty cool to go down under the dolphin tank and see them swimming around us.
I think that seeing the giraffes or the elephants was Emma’s favorite part. She picked out a stuffed elephant to take home with her as a souvenir. Emma had lots of fun playing with Kate and Micah. They all shared the toys very well. The kids swam in the baby pool after we got back from the zoo. The water was freezing cold, but they didn’t seem to mind. Emma and Kate loved scooping the water up and putting it into cups. Micah loved jumping in and splashing. Afterwards, Emma was pretty cold for the rest of the night. She was bundled up in a sweater and jeans while Kate ran around with just her diaper on. It’s always nice to go there and be able to let Emma play with the kids without worrying that she will get into something she’s not suppose to. It was really nice to be able to hang out with Jamie and Betsy. We had a great time.

Emma did great on the potty this weekend too. Potty training is going a lot better than I expected it to. On Saturday night she wouldn’t go to sleep, she just kept yelling “potty, potty”. I didn’t realize what she was yelling until I went upstairs to check on her. So we went downstairs to go potty and she did have to go! So now she’s telling us when she needs to go. Yay! She prefers to just go on the toilet rather than on the potty seat or the potty chair. I guess this is good, because it makes it easier when we go places. I came home this afternoon and found out that she went for Grandma and stayed dry all morning! Yay Emma!

An answer to the daycare question

Here’s an answer Sharon’s daycare question in the comment on the previous blog. I think she will do great in this particular daycare. We’ve been to several churches in the last couple of months and she seems to do really well when there are fun things in sight to play with. Sometimes I have had to go in and play with her awhile until she gets acclimated. I am completely against leaving her crying. I just can’t do that! There was a time that she didn’t want to go into the nursery at church, but she has gotten over that for the most part. This daycare is so awesome, they will let us come play a couple of days this summer so she will get use to it. There are tons of fun toys in site that she will love to play with. And the teachers and staff seem like they care for the children as much as their parents do. We have toured several daycares in the past couple of months and none of them seemed like Emma would fit in very well (and some were completely horrible and terrifying that anyone would place their child in that kind of care). It is important to us that it is not just a place that can look after Emma while we work, but a place that she will enjoy and have fun at and learn all kinds of new things. We realize she will also learn some bad behaviors that we have to correct, but I think overall it is good for her to start learning and socializing in a place that she will enjoy. Another important aspect of this daycare is that it is in a church that will teach her about Jesus, they have chapel 3 days a week (which might be the 3 days we choose for her to be there). I think since it is in a church, they do care a little more about the children because they have the love of Jesus shining through them. So, needless to say we are very excited and we think that she will love it. But for some reason that she does not like it, we will not continue to force her to go there. It is very important to us that she is happy.

Yay Emma! She's such a big girl!

This month we have officially started to Potty train. She's been sitting on the potty chair off and on for a couple of months now with no successes at all. So, I decided we would start on Memorial Day weekend. I read all of the articles online and had all kinds of different philosophies floating around in my head. Do I start with letting her run around bare bottom and clean up the mess? Do we just try to go ever so often? How do I start this potty training thing? I started with high hopes that I could get her trained in one weekend. I soon learned that this was going to be a process that takes time. Well, on Saturday morning I tried the bare bottom thing and kept her on the tile. That went pretty well and we had two successes and about 4 accidents. So then I decided that I didn't want to clean up any more accidents and left a diaper on her. So, then lately I have been trying to put her on the potty every hour and that seems to work REALLY well. We were very successsful yesterday afternoon. I think that it is starting to click in her brain what she needs to do when she sits on the potty. She gets really excited afterwards and is so proud of herself. Since pull ups are so expensive,we have been keeping her in the diaper and putting it back on after she goes. A little inconvenient, but much cheaper. Yesterday I put a pull up on her after she pooped for the first time in the toilet and told her that she gets big girl underwear with princesses on it when she goes in the potty. She really seemed to like that!

In other news, we went and toured another day care today. We were very impressed. It's been VERY difficult to find a good daycare around Goshen. It looks like Emma will be starting "school" on August 13th. We get to choose what three days she goes per week, we are not stuck to one schedule. The director was way cool! It really feels like this is where God is pointing to, it feels so right! We are really excited to find a competent, reliable, and loving place to take Emma to.

The other day I was painting my toe nails. Emma said "I too!" (One of her favorite things to say now) So she got her toe nails painted just like Mommy.

When we go to Meijer, we always get to ride the horsey and the dinosaur for a penney. The last couple of times we have went, they have not had the horsey. So this may be the last time we see the horsey!

Wow! What a month!

We started out this month praying very heavily for a job that Jerrod was interviewing for at MMA (where I work). We ended up the month on vacation in Florida. Jerrod did get the job and started a week before we left on vacation. We are now co-workers. God is so good! We have been in constant prayer for about 6 months now. Even though we did not have a study stream of second income, God definately provided for us. And we are super happy now that we will once again be a double income family :) The popular question seems to be: "What are you doing with Emma?" Grandma will be watching her mostly for the month of May and then Brittany, one of our super cool chics in the youth group, will be watching her some in the summer to give Grandma a break. Brittany watched Emma when she was really small and Emma has a special relationship with her because of that. I'm going to work at 5:30 am and coming home at 12:30 pm and then working one hour at home in the afternooons. Grandma has to go to work at 1:30pm, so I had to change my hours, plus I wanted to be able to put Emma down for a nap. I am sooo thankful for such a cool workplace that is so flexible and lets me work whatever hours I want.

We were super blessed by friends of Jerrod's mom and were offered a condo on Siesta Key Beach (Sarasota, FL) for FREE! Plane tickets were super cheap and it actually was cheaper to fly than to drive. Grandma and Grandpa went along with us and we all had a super great time! Here's a video of her playing with the shells.

Emma loved playing in the sand on the beach and swimming in the pool. I think she learned to talk better this week. She is saying tons of words and for the most part, we can understand her. She even is saying some sentences. This morning Jerrod heard her on the monitor saying: "Mommmy, Daddy, I'm up!" We took so many cute pictures and videos. I wanted to post all of them, but there just isn't enough space! You can check out our pictures on our shutterfly link over on the left though. We went to a place called Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger and Jerrod and his brother Chris ate the pounder. If you eat the pounder, you get your picture on the wall with this huge cheeseburger!

Here's a video of Emma and Daddy in the swimming pool.


This was before vacation, but I thought it was really a cute video of her dancing with her baby.

Grandma's 90!

This weekend we celebrated my Grandmother's 90th birthday! It was a surprise party/weekend at Spring Mill Inn in the state park in southern Indiana. She was super suprised and we all had a great time! It was a perfect place to just hang out and relax (as much as you can with a 20 month old). It was good to spend some time with family. It was pretty cold outside, so for the most part we stayed indoors. We got to go swimming, which Emma hated at first, but she finally had fun towards the end. She was shivering the whole time, even though the water was quite warm. The only mishap we had was that Emma got her finger slammed in the bathroom door. It was pretty bad, half the morning was dedicated to tending to her ouchy finger. Poor little girl! I think it still hurts a little bit. Emma befriended a stuffed wolf that was at the gift shop, it looked really scary to me as it howled in the air, but she loved it and kept hugging it and saying "doggie, doggie". She also liked the huge life like stuffed Smoky the Bear, he was pretty cool! Emma had a great time hanging out with her cousins, especially Sammy. She really liked being around him, and tended to mimik everything he was doing, including sticking her hand down Smoky the Bear's pants! :) They were very cute together! For Easter, Emma got an Elmo Easter basket with lots of eggs in it that she loved playing with. She also got a mini Elmo see and say and a mini doodle pro pad. We stopped at the Cheesecake Factory in Indianapolis on the way back home. It was yummy as usual!

Video! I know, I'm behind the times!

This is a couple of months old, but I finally had time to figure out how to add video to our blog.

Emma's 20 months old

Wow! I can't believe a whole month has gone by since I posted anything! Time just gets away from me! We are really enjoying the spring weather. The last week has been super nice and we have been able to go outside and play everyday. Emma loves to be outside. When she wakes up from her nap she usually grabs our shoes and her shoes and wants us all to put them on so we can go outside. Today it got colder and was rainy, so we didn't get to go out today. I think it's suppose to be cooler now for a couple of weeks. Bummer. The weather has been super crazy, a couple of weeks ago we went to the park and it was 74 degrees. Then the next day it is 30 degrees and we woke up with snow on the ground. What kind of psycho state is this??? OK, maybe it not so psycho after all, it's just typical Indiana spring weather. Emma really enjoyed the swing and the slides. She went down the really tall slide with bumps in it all by herself. She cracks me up, she's very much a girl, she HATES getting her hands dirty, so she would climb up the playground steps using her wrists with her hands up in the air so she wouldn't get them dirty. And if by chance she does get her hands dirty, she will wipe them off on her jeans immediately.
She's saying all kinds of words now, and we can almost understand all of her "babbling". I have finally found the secret on how to get her to eat broccoli and peas (frozen, not canned): add salt! She loves them now. One of her favorite things right now is washing her hands. Everytime I lift her up to wash them she says hi to herself in the mirror. It's so cute! Another favorite thing is playing with any kind of phone. As you can see in the picture, she likes them!

She is doing great in her new bed. I was worried at first. The first week or so she would get out of it at night and play but then end up in it to sleep. There was one night that she didn't want to go "night, night" and cried when I left. She ended up settling down and when I went to check on her she was in the rocking chair asleep. It broke my heart! But now she stays in her bed and goes to sleep with Tiger. I think Tiger has helped alot! The mornings are great because when she wakes up, she just gets up and plays in her room, mostly sitting in the rocking chair reading books. It seems to have been a very easy transition.

She has also decided that she's too big of a girl for her high chair and would rather sit in the booster seat that we had borrowed from friends. She's so excited to sit at the table now in her "big girl chair". It really is amazing how much they learn and change in the first two years. Our little girl is now officially no longer a baby. She has went though a growth spurt in the last month, her 18 month pants no longer fit and are way too short all of the sudden. So we had to go to the mall and get her new jeans--really cute and really inexpensive at Children's Place and they are an expandable waist, so as long as she doesn't get too tall they will fit for awhile.

She is starting to go through the terrible twos, but they are a little more managable when she's well instead of sick. She's also starting to get her two year molars. I think they hurt her alot because she is constantly chewing on her fingers.

Big Girl!

Emma is already 19 months old and getting to be such a "big girl"! Just last week she climbed out of her crib and went thump on the floor during her afternoon nap. Daddy came running upstairs and found her on the floor crying, probably more out of surprise that she did it rather than being hurt. Then this Saturday morning, she did it again, except this time she was really quiet about it and we didn't realize she was out of her bed until we heard her playing with the monitor that was on the floor. So we had to take drastic action, we didn't want her to get hurt trying to climb out of her crib. Her crib converts to a day bed, so we took the crib rail off and had to make a trek to Babies R Us in Mishawaka on Saturday night to get a bed rail. Then we had to make sure her room was super baby proof, we don't want our precious little girl to get hurt when she crawls out of her bed in the morning and starts playing with the fan! So everything is now up out of reach that can hurt her. And she loves her "new" bed! She loves the new found freedom of getting in and out of bed all by herself. She'll get in her bed and say "night, night" everytime we're in her room.

It's so cool to look back and think about what she can do now compared to even what she could do just a month ago. She runs really fast through the house now (without falling). I see her catching herself alot now, instead of falling. She's starting to have super good balance. One of her favorite things now is taking a bowl and putting her megablocks in it to put them away in her toybox. She's really good about cleaning up and loves to help us clean up all of the toys and books. She's starting to recognize colors. She can say how old she is (sortof--she actually says two, but holds up 1 finger) She has never said one, when she counts, she says "Two, Two, Three"! By the time we get her to say one, she'll be two! She can say a whole bunch of words, but hardly any are really complete, but we still know what she means! Daddy had to figure out today that "she" meant "fishie" (she wanted a fishie cracker--aka goldfish cracker)

There's still snow on the ground, in fact we're having another winter storm tonight. Look at that super duper snow drift! It was all the way up the side of the car door! And the jeep even had trouble getting out of the driveway. Needless to say, Jerrod had to shovel the driveway, but he left that snowdrift because it wasn't in the way of any cars getting out of the driveway. But my dad decided to shovel it when he came and visited, I guess he was bored :) A couple of weeks ago we went outside to play the one day that it actually was around 30, rather than -10. She had a lot of fun in her sled and making a snowman.

Go Colts!

We were so excited that the Colts even made it to the Super bowl, and then they won! What an awesome game! We've been waiting for them to go to the Superbowl for a long time. It's so cool how the Colt's gave all the glory to God. We taught Emma to say "Go Colts!" It's soo cute! It's more like Go Col! She loves to watch football and got really excited when it came on on Sunday. She dances and shouts "Football"!


In other news, Emma went for her 18 month appointment last week. She is very healthy. She only had to get one shot and she didn't even cry! She's such a tough girl! Her head circumference is in the 50th percentile. Her weight is in the 35th percentile, she weighs 24 lbs. And her height has finally caught up and she's in the 95th percentile. It looks like she's going to be tall and skinny. What a shock! :) She is becoming so independent, yesterday we went out to eat and she insisted on holding her own kid's cup (I always hold it for her because I'm afraid that she'll squeeze it really hard or take the straw out). She did great and there weren't any major messes. Her new thing now is if she needs help with something she'll come over and grab our hand and pull until we get up and figure out what she wants. She is way smart and becoming very inventive, there has been a couple of times I have caught her trying to stand on her tricycle and reach something on the kitchen counter. So dangerous!

Emma is 18 months old!

How time flies by! I look at these babies around me and think hmm... I hardly remember when she was that small. Was she really that small? She's such a big girl now! She can do so many cool things. One of her favorite things is walking around the house with our shoes on. It's especially funny to watch her try to walk in Daddy's shoes! She absolutely loves books, I think that she would be happy if those were the only things she had to play with. As you can see in the picture above, she can even use the books for blocks! She knows all of the sesame street characters in her sesame street book. She adores Elmo and she absolutely loves to watch Barney. She dances nonstop during the entire show. It is absolutely hilarious to watch. I remember in high school, vowing never to let my child watch Barney. Actually he is quite fun and educational, the scary thing is that I don't see anything wrong with him now. Oh well, I'm sure there are several things I said I would never do and I do them now. Hmmm...like letting my child eat off the floor. When she was a baby, I wouldn't even lay her down on the floor without a blanket. Now she eats her cracker, sets it on the floor and comes back to it later. And I don't have a problem with this? No, not really!
She can say almost all of the animal sounds and she is starting to say several words. Even though she is not an expert in the English language, I can almost always decipher what she says and what she wants. And she understands very well what we tell her to do and does it most of the time!
She's starting to eat with a spoon and fork really well. She can scoop things up very well with a spoon and she's starting to get the hang of stabbing things with a fork. She loves to wipe her hands and her face off with a napkin after she's done eating. So, mealtime is beginning to be a little less messy.
She loves to get her picture taken and she's beginning to be such a hamm when I get out the camera! Emma is at such a fun age! As long as she stays well, everything is great! She is our sweet pea, we love her sooo much!

The monster is gone and our little girl is back!

What a hard and horrible month with Emma. She started out with a fever for a week, and then it moved into a cold for 3 weeks. Every little thing set her off and she would have tantrums within a blink of the eye. The last two days have been wonderful, our sweet little girl is back. She is feeling much better, she just has a cough left. We thought we were going through the horrible TERRIBLE two's. But it was just a horrible TERRIBLE cold. It's amazing how much feeling bad effects her mood. Today she giggled all day long, I love that she's back to her old sweet self. I'm praying for no more colds for awhile!

In other news, two things have happened that we thought would never happen.
Number one: Goshen is moving up in the world. We couldn't hardly believe it when we heard it! Goshen now has a Cold Stone Creamery!!!!! How exciting!!!!! I think we're going to get to go on Fri night! MMMMMM!
Number Two: The Zile's have a blog! I'm so excited to be able to see what's happening in their lives! We went down right before New Year's and visited them. It was so great to see them and catch up on life!

What a great Christmas!

We have a spoiled little girl! She got so much for Christmas! She got lots of big gifts this year for Christmas. She got a pirate ship house, a wagon, and a tricycle. All from the Grandparents! We got her megablocks and some books. She got a whole bunch of other stuff too. She surprised us, by actually playing with the toys more than the boxes! Although, she loved sticking the bows on her and the stickers that we placed on all of her packages. Despite having a fever, she really enjoyed the whole day and was in a great mood. I was really afraid that she would be overwhelmed, but she took the whole thing in and loved every minute of it. And this was all on Saturday.

On Christmas day we went to Grandpa and Grandma Crum's. It was a good time. Santa Claus brought her a really cool chair. We exchange names every year, this year Aunt Kathy and Uncle Danny had Emma's name. They hooked her up with a really cool nursery ryme book library set and a dolly.

I had my mom's name and made her a quilt and hot pads. I am really proud how well it came out, but probably won't ever do another one!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas is almost a week away. It will be so much fun watching Emma tear open the paper and play with the boxes (not the toys, just the boxes). We all know that kids like the boxes the toys come in more than the toys themselves. Here's a few Christmas pictures that we had taken. It is very hard to decide which is my favorite they are all very cute!

I'm trying really hard this year to keep the focus of Christmas on Christ, rather than getting caught up in the hustle and bustle. We are tight on money this year, so lots of gifts are being made instead of bought. I never knew I could be so crafty, and all of it is pretty cool too! So each time I'm making an item, I really try to pray for the person I'm making it for. Please remember that this is Christ's birthday, an awesome holiday to celebrate Jesus! Let's not forget to do that this year.