It has been way to long since we have posted new pictures or updates.  So many things have changed.  Emma had her 2 year old pictures taken, you can see them here.  Emma had a great birthday party and got lots of fun stuff.  You can see her awesome birthday cake that was made by Grandma (better known as obama by Emma).  And yes that is a real fish and the fish is still alive so far.  The rest of the cake is long gone though.  You can tell that she loves her gold fish.

Emma is growing up very fast.  She has now officailly been transitioned in to the new 2 year olds room at DayCare.  She started in the new room full time today.  I am sure her old teachers will steal her from time to time.  She was very excited last friday.  Her new teacher let her play on the slide outside.  That is the first time she was able to play on the big slide.  She would not stop going up and down it I guess.  Hopefully she will share it with the others 🙂

Emma has a new Toddler bed also.  She did not like it as much as we thought she would but we will try again soon.  Naps were fine, going to bed at night was to much fun though.  Having full access to all of her books could keep her up all night.  She is a very loud reader.

Saturday we took Emma to get her first hair cut.  She did great.  Sat in the chair and pretty much just looked around.  We were only there for about 5 to 10 minutes.  Didn’t have much to cut.

Before:

After:

A few weeks ago we made some changes to Emma’s room.  Her changing table was starting to fall apart.  We felt it was time to get rid of it.  Mostly for Emma’s safety.  So we took it out of her room and put two cuby style shelving units in it’s place.  Below(had to remove them from picasa to save space) is a picture of Emma helping Dad put one together.  It may be time to get Emma her own tools set.  As you can tell Dad was only able to use the hammer.  She would not let go of the screw driver.  She wanted to help.  It was so cute.  She loved that she could be in the center of the cabinet while dad was putting it together.

We have been horrible at updating Emma’s site. We will try to post update a little more often as the summer goes on. We have a new memory card for our new camera. It automatically uploads the pictures to our picasa website. You can see the new pictures as soon as they are taken for the most part. The picasa website is http://picasaweb.google.com/jnewcastle

I can’t believe it’s been 3 months since we’ve updated here.

We had new pictures taken today. They are her 18 month (even though she’s nearly 19 months old now)/Easter pictures. We were supposed to go last week but she got a big bruise on her left cheek the day before her appointment. It’s mostly faded now, if you look closely you may still see it.

She had her 18 month well child exam a few weeks ago. Emma is 32 inches tall (50th percentile) and weighs 22 pounds 13 ounces (25th percentile). She’s talking up a storm now, we can tell what she’s saying some of the time! 🙂 It seems like she has a new word almost every day.

James ordered a new memory card for the new camera this week. Supposedly it will upload pics to the gallery automatically. Hopefully this results in new pictures more often than every 3 months because I assure you, we still take a lot!

Since the last post James and I bought a new camera. We have taken hundreds of horrible pictures and a few good ones as we are trying to learn about ISO and F-stop and all of the other things you can adjust on a non-point-and-shoot camera. I have uploaded some of them for your entertainment and they are in the gallery.

We bought Emma a pink upholstered chair for Christmas but gave it to her early. She likes to stand on it and has had it taken away several times. {wp-gallery-remote: gallery=0; rootalbum=53533; imagefilter=include:53585,53575,53841;}

Christmas cookie decorating and Wii playing at Betsy and Matt’s house.

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We went to Holiday Nights at the Zoo (Binder Park in Battle Creek) on Saturday the 20th. It was really cold but fun. Emma liked looking at the wolves and made quiet barking noises when she saw them. She had fun riding the carousel and looking at a couple of animals up close. We saw Santa – she was scared; she listened to Mrs. Claus read a book (from a distance). We waited in line forever for a clown to make her a balloon flower. She loved that thing and carried it around for a couple of days. I’m amazed it never popped since she liked to bite it!

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We had a fun Christmas in Stevensville.

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Emma got sick on Christmas Day with high fevers, so she didn’t get to meet her new cousin, though. Her fevers persisted and we ended up going to the ER on Saturday. She has another ear infection. She’s spent the past few days sleeping and until yesterday was most comfortable sleeping while someone held her. She continued to have fevers until yesterday when she broke out in a rash. We went to the pediatrician today and they’re pretty sure she has a virus, likely Roseola, on top of the ear infection. She’s in better spirits today, though. This is her third ear infection in as many months and we’ll probably need to consider tubes if she has another. Ugh. Hopefully 2009 brings her better luck.

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Emma and Taylor spent the weekend with Grandma and Papa.  No one should be surprised by the fact that a few pictures were taken!  They are all up in the gallery.  It looks like everyone had fun.  They even had breakfast with Santa at Weko Beach.  We took Emma to meet Santa at the mall last weekend; it didn’t go well.  It looks like the change of scenery didn’t change her opinion of him.

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There are two new albums in the gallery.  We had Emma’s picture taken today in her Christmas dresses.  We got some family pictures too.  The photographer was running a little behind and most of Emma’s good mood was wasted on the greeter at Wal-Mart.  By the time they were ready for us, she didn’t have much patience.  Oh well, we got a few good pictures.  All of the pictures are posted.

She’s really walking all over the place now and has added another word to her vocabulary, “shoe!”  She is so my kid!!  She “talks” almost nonstop, we’re still searching for a translator to help us figure out what she’s saying.

Emma walked all the way from her bedroom to the TV in the living room without stopping or falling!!  she’s been taking 2-3 steps at a time for a while now but this is the first time she walked that far without holding on to someone’s hand or pushing a shopping cart!  Of course I have no proof of this since I was stunned and forgot to grab the camera.  Maybe she’ll do it again and I can record it for posterity.

There are new pictures up. We went to the Kalamazoo Nature Center in the rain on my birthday. There are a couple of pictures from that. That Ergo baby carrier is a lifesaver! There are also a few from our short excursion to Frankenmuth and Birch Run. I thought it would be funny to have James hold Emma up for all of the photo ops around town. Judging by the pictures, I was the only one who was amused. Oh well. You can also see Emma standing by the big work horses at the petting farm we visited. She seemed to like them. She was terrified of the pony and didn’t seem too fond of the sheep, goats, calf or cow. She laughed at the 500 pound pig and liked the chickens and ducks. The pig’s oink sounded a lot like Taylor’s bark – I think we were all a bit taken aback by that!
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There are also some pictures from this past week at home. Note to self: playing peek-a-boo while eating gets very messy. I’m pretty sure it was Emma’s way of trying to get out of eating her vegetables. Usually she feeds them to Taylor, but I’m wise to that and put Taylor in another room when Emma’s eating. (Peek-a-boo didn’t get her out of it, either!)
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