Emily's first real smiles!

Emily gave us her first real smiles on Monday. Since then I have been trying to reproduce whatever hilarious thing I was doing at the time to try to get another smile :) I've gotten a few half ones but no huge ones like I got on Monday. I must have really been on my game that day, haha.

I managed to snap a few pictures... it doesn't get any better than this!

(poor thing has a pretty bad case of baby acne too... boo! :( )

Matthew can spell!

For a while now anytime we've been out in the car or stroller,  Matthew would see a stop sign and say "S-T-O-P... stop." Well he was just saying the letters he saw and since he knew it was a stop sign, he knew it said "stop".

When Nonna was here, in addition to teaching him that he lives on "Glebehome Bulvawd", she taught him that "p-e-e spells pee" (one of those grandmother things to do, haha). She'd ask him every now and then, "Matthew what does P-E-E spell?" and he'd say, "pee!". Okay, well when you say "p-e-e" it sounds like you're saying "pee" so no great stretch there.

Then this week I put up a Halloween decoration that said "BOO". He asked, "What does B-O-O spell?" and I told him "boo". We went on to tell him, "And m-o-o spells MOO. And p-o-o spells POO!" Haha.

So, anyway - now you can randomly ask him what S-T-O-P or B-O-O or P-E-E or M-O-O or P-O-O spell, and he can tell you the right word. The rest of the time when he sees a word he will recite the letters and say "What does that spell?" or "... spells..." and I'll tell him the word. Or he will make up a word, which can be really funny: "T-O-D-D-L-E-R... spells blehberr pthhhh."

Emily: 1 month old

Miss Emily is one month old today.

Already? Seriously? Did someone turn up the time dial a few notches? Who authorized this??

In any event, she is a real joy, is starting to sleep for longer stretches at night (hallelujiah!) and is exploring her voice which is just adorable. We took her to the doctor last week and she weighed in at 10 lbs! You grow girl!

Here are a couple of recent pictures...

Emily's birth story

Here is Emily's birth story...

I had been having mild contractions every hour or so for a couple of days, so I was doing a lot of walking and bouncing on the birth ball to get things going. Then a couple of contractions closer together (7 mins apart) Wednesday night, then my water broke at midnight. That was a trip (it didn't break on its own with Matthew). Mom had arrived the day before to stay with Matty so we decided to head to the hospital before things got hairy. At that point the contractions were still mild, though the one I had while walking into the hospital I had to breathe through.