A visit to KidTropolis

Today we headed down to the Children's Museum with the Graessers. I've been wanting to try it out so I was so glad to get to do it on a weekday when there wasn't 800 million kids running around and being nuts. It's such a cute place! There's tons to do. When Emmy gets a couple of years older she's going to LOOOOVE it.

The museum remodeled a year ago and built a "kidtropolis!" It has everything a city has and the kids can perform jobs to earn a "salary" and then spend thier salary in shops. It's really cute. Hannah decided she would be a news anchor for her job. This was so cute. You could sit in front of the green screen and other kids could change your background, type words for you to say on the teleprompter and add sound effects. I would've eaten this stuff up at about 7.

Emmy decided to be the fire chief.

And Benjamin and Ellie decided to be brother/sister PoPo's on patrol.

Since the rest of the kids were on civil servant budgets, Hannah took a trip to the ATM, pulled out some cash, and decided to treat us all to a trip to the grocery store! There's a little mini-HEB where the kids can shop for groceries and then ring them up on REAL registers. Again, something I would've LOVED. Here's a picture of what Emmy put in her cart. Perhaps we need to have some serious discussions about nutrition.

Ok, to be fair, she did grab a rotisserie chicken first, but it kind of freaked me out a little so I made her put it back. She also found a box of crackers that we have at home and brought them to me. She didn't QUITE understand why she couldn't have any of the crackers she thought were inside.

After all that shopping we decided to express our artistic side and paint. The girls are expert painters by now, but Emmy and Benjamin managed to express thier inner Picasso with only a little carnage to their clothes. Emmy somehow has a blue spot directly in the middle of her butt. How the paint manages to find its way directly to the middle of her butt is a very strange phenomenon indeed. Benjamin just sported a little green patch of hair. Very punk.

We finished up with some playtime at the Tot Spot. It's like a Mall play area except WAY more clean, it doesn't smell like feet, and the adults actually watch thier children. Amazing concept. Emmy had a blast climbing up the stairs and sliding down the slide. There are also tons of other cool things to do like a gigantic lite brite, tunnels, a tea party house, spinning flowers, and lots of things to turn off and on, shut, and open.

We only hit a little bit in the few hours we were there, but it was pretty fun and I can't wait to go back and explore more!

This is so worth it!

So I just had one of those "wow, this is so worth it moments" of motherhood and I had to share. At this point I've put so many hours of time into working with Emmy on shapes, letters, numbers, animals, and sounds. Since she doesn't talk a whole lot yet (it's coming), you don't get a lot of feedback on your efforts. You know you're doing good and you just have to trust it.

But we just pulled out her Baby Einstein book that the Boyers gave her for her birthday and I asked her "Emmy, where is the.....?". She can point out every single animal in the book by its' name and noise!!!!! She got the horse, cow, frog, sheep, pig, duck, bird, flowers(ok flowers don't have a sounds) and even the owl!! I had no idea that she could do this! All those months are worth it in one second!

This weekend she kept putting her hands abover her head and waving them when we were outside. I knew it was a sign, but I wasn't sure what she was trying to tell us. I asked her teacher today at school and she told me they learned the sign for airplane at school last week. She was already putting two and two together to tell us she saw an airplane in the sky!

It's so amazing to watch her grow and learn. I can't believe that just a year ago she couldn't even move around and now my little baby girl is so smart. It's just incredible!!!!!!!!!

duh-dide... (Emmy speak for outside)

After about a month of being sick and being cooped up because it was cold, we finally got a nice mild day where we all felt relatively good so we took advantage of it and played in Emmy's favorite place... OUTSIDE!!! She wakes up in the morning and points to the door. All she ever wants to do is go duh-duh....so today she was in heaven!

Ever since she's been about six months old we've taken her to the Gleannloch Farms park to play, swing, and feed the ducks. She's never really cared anything about it.... until today! I'm so glad that she's finally ready to have fun! She loved climb up the stairs.....

......over the sqeaky bridges and then down the slide.


Then in typically Emmy Kenieval fashion, that got old and she wanted to start climbing up the slides and then coming down by herself. We're in trouble becasue she has my grace (that is sarcasm there) and absolutely no fear!
After we went to the park we had to go run a few errands and we stopped off for a quick lunch at Panera. I decided to be cool mom and not push the veggies for a meal. Emmy had an entire mac and cheese lunch. I think she inhaled the entire bowl in 2 minutes.

When we got home we contined the fun. Emmy roamed in the grass.....

....took some rides in the car and on her motorcycle (yes, she has miltiple vehicles)

,,,,and shot some hoops.. she's a natural =)