Brave

When we were at the beach last week, Emerson got "BRAVE".

She LOVED the beach.

She would wade about waist-deep into the water, goggles firmly in place, and attack each wave as it came splashing onto her.

She put those fists up, got her game face on, and she OWNED those Galveston waves.

Screaming, "I am BRAVE!"

Girl was in the zone

and ready to take on anything that little corner of the Gulf of Mexico could throw at her

Those waves didn't know who they were messin' with.

If they thought they could take on Emmy, they had another think comin'.

Because this girl is BRAVE!

Girly Day

A couple of weekends ago, Dane and Aidan went up to see Grammy and GranDoug for a few days.

I have no idea what they did.  I think it involved the Grossology museum exhibit, and some Olympics.  But they had a great weekend, and are already asking if they get to go back again next year.

Brandon and I took advantage of parenting two little girls for the weekend, and planned a very special "Girly Day".

Emerson was quick to correct us in that it was in fact not a "Girly Day".  It was "Girly Day with Daddy.  Because Daddy is a boy.  But no boys, even though we still love the boys.  We just needed a break."

Well said, sweet girl.  May you never be in charge of writing headlines.

We started "Girly Day"* off with a trip to the nail salon for some abbreviated mani-pedi time.  My girls are not fans of sitting for an actual, hour-long mani-pedi, so we settled for just pretty nail polish.

There's a reason Harper's hair looks so bad.  You'll see why in a minute.

And yes, Emerson selected black, slightly sparkly nail polish.  It was surprisingly cute on her.

We continued on, nails freshly painted with a very cooperative Daddy in tow, to get haircuts for two sweet little girls.  Harper got a head-start on her haircut the day before, with a pair of scissors from the kitchen, unbeknownst to her babysitter.  She chopped off several inches of hair around her left ear, so off to the salon we went!

LoLo's favorite part was looking at her tummy in the mirror in front of her.  

After haircuts, we headed over to our little local movie theater that shows new movies for the bargain price of $2.50 for a matinee.  Perfect for our not-so-little family of 6, even more perfect when the four of us could see the new Ice Age movie for a TOTAL price of $10.  Plus the price of Brandon's giant tub of popcorn.

The fun was not over after the movie!  We took advantage of a couple of free kids meal coupons that we had to get some yummy lunch for the girls, then popped over for "Free Taste Friday" and sampled some seriously delicious cupcakes.

A friend from church (who just happens to be one of our former youth group girls, but is now a full-fledged grown up.  There's quite a few people who fall into that category now, one of the fun parts of being involved in youth ministry for 11-plus years at the same church.).  Anyway, Lisa is kicking off her new business, Flick of the Whisk, and invited all cupcake-lovers to a tasting party.  Um, yes please!  One of our favorites was this chocolate-peanut butter number that Emerson is posing with.  Locals, you're going to want to keep Lisa's number handy next time you need a sweet tooth fix.

The girls still had some energy left after the nail salon, haircuts, movies, lunch, and cupcakes, so we took them to the neighborhood pool for a quick swim.  Can't head to the pool before posing for a cell phone picture in our swimsuits and flashing gang signs with our freshly-manicured fingers, can we?

Thanks, Grammy and GranDoug for hanging out with Dane and Aidan so we could enjoy our two little girls and a very special "Girly Day with Daddy.  Because Daddy is a boy.  But no boys, even though we still love the boys.  We just needed a break."  

Happy Birthday Emerson!

Dear Emerson,

The day you have been asking me about for the last couple of months has finally arrived!  You had your big 5th birthday one week ago.  Every. Day.  You have been asking me "Is it my birthday today?"  and "When is my birthday?"  You were so excited when the day finally came.  Everyone we saw got a rousing "Hi!  Today is my birthday.  I am five.  I am going to kindergarten next year!"  You shared the exciting news with your daddy and me, and Dane, Aidan, Harper, your swim coach, and your teacher.  Mommy surprised your school class with cupcakes for lunch, and then we celebrated by going to a Hibachi grill that night for dinner.  

You tried a few bites of your beloved fried rice with the chopsticks before switching back to the fork.  You opened a few gifts at dinner:  a keyboard from your grandparents, a new Leapster game, new pajamas, sunglasses, socks, and a pony toy from your family.

The sweet waiter that you charmed brought you an ice cream treat after dinner...

...before we went home for birthday cake!  You blew the candles wearing your new sunglasses.

Some Five-year old Emerson Factoids:

You love Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and everything Disney princess.
You love to play with Harper, and you play pretend (teacher/teacher, mommy/baby, sister/puppy, etc.) all day long.  You could play dress-up and boss your sister around forever if I let you.
You're still a great (but SLOW) eater.  You're not too picky, but it takes you twice as long to eat as the rest of the kids take.
You're in speech therapy for the time being, and you've speech has been improving quickly!  We're still working on details like possessives, past tense verbs, and putting all of the "little words" in sentences.  Overall, you're making great progress, and I'm confident that you will do great in kindergarten this year.
You love being on swim team with Dane and Aidan.  You are still in the "non-swimmers" group, and your favorite part about swim practice is talking to your friends and your coaches.  :)  Bit of a social butterfly.
You are still as bossy as ever.  This year for your birthday party, you requested to go to a movie with two of your friends.  Since NO KID MOVIES were playing early last week during your actual birthday, we are taking you and your friends to see Madagascar 3 later this week.

Happy birthday, my sweet Emerson!  We love you so much and are so honored to get to celebrate this birthday with you!

Hibachi: Mixed Reviews

Things I had Forgotten About When I Checked My Camera Card

I went to pull a couple of pictures off my camera the other day, and found some I forgot I had from the last several weeks.

We are deep into the "Disney princess phase" with both girls right now. At any given moment, Harper and Emerson are princesses, or mommies, or teachers (when they play school, both of my bossy little girls are the teacher), or kitties and doggies. Even so, it was a little trial and error before I figured out what hair style the girls wanted when they requested "Tangled hair". Behold, the Tangled hair:

And just so you know, Mulan hair is just a regular ponytail (also sometimes known as "dance class hair").

It seems like our family went through a "sick spell" for a few weeks in February and March. Aidan was diagnosed with mono, and was a pretty sick little guy for about a week before he was able to get back to school. He is STILL banned from contact sports (aka outdoor football and living room wrestling) for another week. Harper was sick with asthma and ear infections for a while, and even Emerson had a fever for a couple of days. Thankfully, we have all recovered. Aidan was not to sick to help Dane find this guy in the backyard:

(the boys' hair in this picture makes me cringe. They have both had haircuts since this picture was taken.)

And you better believed they tormented their sweet little sisters, and chased them around the yard with this poor frog.

On a far more rainy day a couple of weeks ago, a couch cushion fort was called for:

Recipe for couch cushion fort:

Take all cushions from falling-apart, tired, worn out living room set, and combine with living room corner with convenient end table. Add blankets, pillows, and as many flashlights as there are children. Give 6 year old stuffed animals and books, and let chill for 2 hours. Best served with popcorn.

Quick Emerson story...

A couple of months ago, I made the mistake of telling Emerson that she was going to go to kindergarten next year. That she would ride the bus with her brothers, and go to the big school with them and get to eat in the cafeteria with her friends every day.

Well.

Speaking of every day, Emerson has asked me EVERY DAY since then if she is going to kindergarten tomorrow. When I say no, she asks me if she is going to swim team tomorrow. Sorry, sweetie. Lately, she has been asking if the wedding is tomorrow. (My beloved babysitter is getting married in June. The first babysitter we ever left Emerson with, and one of her favorite people on earth. And Emmy is going to be her flower girl.)

Anyway, Emerson is a bit excited about kindergarten, and it tends to come up in conversations she has with everyone. Everyone. She tells her grandparents on the phone. She yells it to friends across the church parking lot. Her pediatrician has been notified. I was grocery shopping the other day, and I had to take the girls into the bathroom at Kroger for Harper to go potty. As I'm holding Harper on the toilet, I notice Emerson, who is standing outside of the stall, bend over and notice another lady's feet in the stall next to us. Then I hear a certain unmistakable voice, "Hi, I'm Emerson. And I'm going to kindergarten next year!" If this poor lady next to me thought she was going to be able to steal a quick moment of peace and quiet in the bathroom, she was sadly mistaken.

Hoping you get to pee in peace today,

Prayer Time

I know, it's been a while since I have blogged. It's been so long since I blogged on a regular basis that I can't remember what stories I have shared and what I haven't. I can't even remember what has happened these last couple of months since I haven't been blogging them! Yikes! I'm not even going to attempt to recap the last 2 months (you're welcome), but I will share this little memory from a while back...


Every night we do prayer time with the kids, and for the last few months the girls each take a turn and pray. It typically goes something like this:

Harper's prayers: "Dear God, God made Emerson and Harper sooo special! God made me wonderful! I AM SO WONDERFUL! I AM SO BEAUTIFUL! The end."


(Harper with her "Potty Training Incentive" Barbie. If I haven't blogged about potty training her, it's because it's too painful to remember.

Emerson's prayers: "Dear God. Thank you for Harper and Emerson and Dane and Aidan and Mommy and Daddy. Thank you for my bed and my panda blanket and my pretty pillow and my pajamas with the princess on it. Thank you for my fan and for my shower and my pretty hair. Thank you for dance class and Miss Sarah and Miss Kylie and I am going to kindergarten next year." It's around this point that I try to cut in with a well timed, "In Jesus name we pray..." prompt. One night I got busted though. "MOMMY! I AM NOT DONE PRAYING." Having appropriately rebuked her mother, she went on several more minutes and finished her prayer, having thanked God for every single object in her bedroom. It reminded me of the times when I am talking on the phone with Brandon, and he starts saying, "Okay, I love you" repeatedly. That's his cue that he is done talking on the phone and ready to get off.

The girls, dressed in their "so beautiful" (Christmas) dresses to go out for Chinese New Year. We took them to eat, you guessed it, Chinese food.

I'm hoping that, despite my computer's persistent refusal to allow me to post photos, that I will get my bloggy groove back.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Oh, those stinky cleft palate ears.

Last year when we brought Emerson home, we knew that language and communication would initially be a big challenge. Like, how the heck am I supposed to communicate with my 3 year old daughter who doesn’t speak a word of English? And I speak approximately 4 words in Mandarin. But kids are smart. And if anyone has to learn an entire new language and culture on the fly, a young child is a pretty good candidate. They little brains are sponges at that age, and pick up language considerably faster than adults.
We had some concerns back then about Emerson’s hearing (is she ignoring us because she can’t hear us, can’t understand us, or because she’s a three year old and sometimes they ignore their parents?) But for various reasons, (her language skills, her uncooperation with translators) we were not able to accurately test her hearing. We knew from a little research and from feedback from our ENT, that most kids with clefts have ear problems--up to 80% have eustachian tube and middle ear dysfunction-- and potential hearing problems. We decided last January to preemptively put ear tubes in Emmy’s ears, to help improve any hearing loss she may have due to fluid in her ears.

Well. Whether it was the ear tubes and improved hearing, or just time and development and learning the language, Emerson’s language skills improved quickly after the tubes were placed. Unfortunately, the tubes fell out sometime this past August or September. We got 8 months out of those tubes. We had noticed last fall that Emmy has been having a little more trouble hearing. She was saying “what?” a LOT, and watching us very intently when we were speaking. She wanted the TV turned up even louder than Daddy.

Her speech is not quite what we thought it should be by now, even after having over a year to learn language. Two-year old Harper is usually easier to understand than Emerson. When I took Emmy to the school district for a speech evaluation last fall, they refused to do it because she failed her hearing screening with the school nurse.

This past November, after another failed hearing screening and a trip to a (new to Emerson) ENT, the audiologist tested her in the ENT's office and told us what we had suspected: Emerson's hearing in her right ear is barely in the "normal range", and she had about a 30% hearing loss in her left ear. Another test showed lots of fluid behind both of her eardrums. The ENT, Dr. L, told us that when her palate did not form properly in the womb, her eustacian tubes (or more specifically, the tiny muscles that keep them "open"), also likely did not form correctly, and that she will probably need ear tubes until she is a teenager. Good to know.

So. A couple of weeks before Christmas was ear tube set #2. Emerson and I loaded up at 4:45 in the morning, and headed over to the surgery center for a new set of the tubes. Praying that this improves our girl's hearing! A couple of days later Emerson and Brandon headed downtown to the big children’s hospital for a speech evaluation. This time, the speech therapist decided that Emerson could benefit from speech therapy. Her (relatively mild) speech issues do not seem to be directly related to her cleft palate, they are more likely related to hearing and language development.

A couple of weeks ago, we had her hearing rechecked at the ENT, and though her hearing is improved, she still has some mild hearing loss in her left ear, though not enough to warrent intervention (like hearing aids).

So, this semester, instead of princess dance classes, Emerson is going to see Miss Sarah at speech therapy to "play games and read books" once a week. So far she loves it, but she still asks almost daily when she is going back to princess dance classes. I think she misses having an audience. I made the mistake of telling her that she would be joining the boys on swim team this year (in April), and her face immediately lit up and and said, "WHAT?? Everyone is going to watch me swim??" Yes, Emerson. 80 kids on the swim team, but everyone will be there to watch you swim.

Sweet Emmy, we love you so, so much!

A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes

I'm not sure if I've shared this here this or not, but a couple of months ago we signed Emerson up for a "Princess dance class" at our local dance studio. For the past eight Mondays, Emerson has practiced her moves and learned precious little ballet technique for the first 30 minutes of the class, and then for the last 30 minutes, the girls put on their beautiful Cinderella costumes, read Cinderella stories, and attempt to practice a routine to eventually present to Cinderella's loving family in the form of a mini-recital.

I don't need to tell you how cute the recital was. Or that it took me 37 minutes to get Emerson's hair into the requisite bun this past Saturday morning.

Over the past eight weeks, the girls learned several moves necessary to accurately portray the life and times of Cinderella.

Sweeping the floor,

directing traffic using very-official looking arm motions

and briefly levitating.

(I apologize for the quality of the above photos. Either I had the wrong camera, wrong lens, bad lighting, or just don't take very good pictures. But it's definitely one of those reasons.)

After the recital, Cinderella received flowers from her adoring fans,

then provided an opportunity for the public to have their picture made with her.

Upstairs, during the cupcake-and-sherbet-punch portion of the show, a very special guest arrived to mingle with the little Cinderellas.

A certain little sister LOVED meeting the real Cinderella. Harper was probably wondering how she had the time to stop by and chat in between all of her traffic directing duties.

Enjoy, sweet princesses. This is the closest you're ever getting to Disney World.