POST Graduation Ceremony

Aaron graduated from the POST academy and is now a reserve officer for the Blaine County Sheriff's office.

Beforehand, we met the sheriff for lunch, and Emily got to stretch her legs while we waited.

Dad put her in the tree.  This kid has no fear.

 Emily did not like the fact that she couldn't sit with her Dad, and had to sit between Sheriff Ramsey and me.  So, she was pretty excited when she got this quick hug after he walked off the stage.

 But, really, we spent most of the ceremony in the hallway.  Emily wasn't into sitting quietly, and decided to yell out, "Stop hitting me.  Don't hit me!"  Did I mention that we had been sitting beside the Sheriff, in a room full of Idaho Sheriffs inside the Idaho State Patrol building?  Nice.  For the record, I don't hit Emily.

with Sheriff Ramsey

And here's the quote of the week -

Two Hailey homeless guys were walking down the alley outside the store.  Aaron gets Emily out of the car as they walk by.  Emily says  yells, "You are bad guys.  Get away from me.  Go to time out RIGHT NOW!"  Guess she listened to the Stranger Danger talk...

Sunhats

The beginning of this week was summer.  It was sunny days and hot temperatures.  It was lovely.  Emily went through several outfits a day because she was busy in the sandbox and the water table... and refused to be wet or sandy in between.  I guess that's what happens when they're independent and can change their clothes!

And out came the sunhats.  We wore them inside and out, daytime and night.  Time to go shopping and pick out a few more. It seems we need a bigger size to get the big ol floppy look back!

Here she was, inside the laundry basket and singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat  rocking the basket back and forth.

Updates

Enjoying ice cream on the back step on a nice spring afternoon.

A week ago Thursday Emily visited the dentist and had a physical therapy appointment.  The dentist was a moderately successful event; he mentioned that her pretty significant cross bite, caused by so many days on the ventilator in the NICU, has corrected some since our last visit.  However, it all went downhill when he applied her fluoride treatment, a melon flavor.  She did not like that at all, and is still occasionally throwing out the fact, "I do not like melon!"

PT was a waste.  Although this event was much more fun that sitting in the dentist's chair, Emily was in one of those moods where she didn't want to do anything asked of her.  There was no negotiating!  We were there for more than an hour, and her therapist Jan concluded that she's still right side dominant and we still need to work on alternating feet while going up and down stairs and jumping with our feet together.  She did work the balance beam like a pro, however!

Yesterday we did a well check visit to the pediatrician's office.  Emily weighed 36 pounds (70%ile) and is 32 inches tall (40%ile).  Hmmm, might that have anything to do with just a little too much ice cream?

quotes

Emily has been asking for days if she could play in the sandbox.  On a 70 degree day, I finally opened it up.  "Yeah!  The sand is ready!"

waiting for Dad to get home from work

Emily: "My cupcakes are in June.  Mom's cupcakes are in June.  Dad's cupcakes are in June-uary."

Emily: "Doodle eats crayons.  But we can't eat dog poop."

(A good observation as we were cleaning up the yard after the dog consumed 14 crayons in a day!)

Egg Hunting

After nap, Emily hunted for eggs in our backyard.

She got Quacks the Duck in her Easter basket from Grandpa and Grandma.  She was also pretty excited that basket contained candy!

Emily had one more Easter egg hunt to do.  We had dinner with friends Rick and Cindy.

As we pulled up, Emily got a glimpse of the Easter Bunny (Cindy) leaving a trail of eggs and a basket for Emily.  Emily's comment, "I need to tell Cindy the Easter Bunny is scary!"

Dad carried the basket so Emily could keep an eye out to make sure the Bunny wasn't coming back.

One giant egg was the prize this time!

Easter basket

Emily's basket was mostly filled with art supplies.  She was pretty excited with it all.  So far we've painted, put stickers on the butterflies, painted, colored the velvet spring picture, painted... you get the idea.  The candy is saved for the Easter eggs!  

Easter activities

We ate peeps and made a puffy paint bunny...

The next night we used the Peeps to make smores.  

We dyed eggs and decorated them with stickers.

And you've seen the rice krispie with M&Ms in the shape of the eggs commercial?  We made those too.

Tomorrow we have eggs to hunt, Easter baskets to open, and dinner with friends planned.  

Happy Easter!

Spring Break

This past week was spring break, so Emily stayed home with me on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  It was a rainy week, but we still managed to get some time at the park between the rain showers.  "I love my house.  It's going to be a beautiful day," she would say on the rainy mornings.  We also made it to Boise for a night, went swimming at the YMCA, and had a couple play dates.

We switched over to Pull Ups in the next step of potty training, but we're not making a lot of progress.  Emily asked to go potty in about every store we were in while in Boise, but would change her mind every time after seeing the toilets.  We're spending a lot of time running back and forth to the bathroom these days!