9 Months

Emerson had her 9 month checkup yesterday - fortunately no shots! She is 18.4 lbs and 30.25" - still in the 50th percentile for weight and above 95th for height. She is in good health, with the exception of the newest ear infection. We just finished her last 10 day round of antibiotics for her last ear infection on Christmas Day and just four days later she has another one, this time in both ears. She also has a cold and her top two teeth are coming in, so she has been a bit of a juicy crab the last few days.

We were instructed to give her more table food - and she is definately interested.

A Merry Christmas for all

We celebrated our first Christmas with Emerson with both of our families. Ryan's family holds their big festivities on Christmas Eve and my family on Christmas day, so we spent a few days triangulating the state, but were able to see everyone.

Enjoying some books with cousin Paige.

Losing the battle for her 'cell'.

Enjoying a song from cousin Emily.

This is my favorite - an attempt to get a decent picture of these 3 (the girl on the left is Dennis & Terry's neighbor's granddaughter).

Hanging out with Uncle Ed.

Reading one of Emerson's many new books she received.

Christmas morning (yes, I know, we should've taken hundreds more)....

Taking a much needed nap on the way to Greenville. On Christmas Eve, she didn't go to bed until 10:30, which is way beyond her usual time (and she only took a 30 minute nap in the morning). Way too much stimulation for such a little girl, but she did very well with minimal crabbiness.

Holiday Card Outtakes

Asleep at dinner

Snow Day!

I received the much anticipated 5:15 am wake up call from my coworker telling me to go back to bed and enjoy the Christmas break. Oh, shucks. We are in the midst of a winter storm that has dropped about 5" of snow (with some freezing rain mixed in) as of the moment and it is continuing to snow throughout the day. So, now our Christmas break has been extended to two weeks and one day. I am so happy about that.

I received this wintry arrangement from my parents - actually I received it twice. The florist delivered it to our neighbors last Saturday and again Monday night. So, we have one to enjoy in the dining room and one in the living room.

Yesterday when I dropped Emerson off at daycare, Karie told me that she wouldn't be there when we picked Emerson up because she was taking the older kids to the mall to the Build a Bear store for their Christmas presents. I am sure that Josh, Landon, Kayla, and Matthew had such a good time and I thought that was such a nice thing for her to do for them. Emerson, Brynley, and Kendall stayed back with Jackie, but they received their gifts earlier in the day (which we are told that Emerson had a great time opening hers). Karie got Emerson a Leap Frog Learning table that she loves - it has all sorts of musical instruments on it for her to play with, it sings the ABC's, counts to ten and all sorts of other fun stuff. We thought this was such a thoughtful thing for Karie to do. We will add that the the other hundreds of reasons that we love Ms. Karie.

When she took a break from the new toy, she decided to work on rearranging her bookshelf (again) ...Notice how she is trying to step onto the books on the floor to reach the higher shelves. Trouble.

More Degreed

It is official. You can now refer to me as Mrs. Julie Marcikic, B.S., M.A. (and I do expect each and every one of you to do so). Western's fall commencement was on Saturday (which I opted to fore go - sitting through a two hour speech and ceremony didn't seem like an enjoyable activity considering I was certain Ryan would be suffering through it with a very busy Emerson), and I have successfully completed my Master's. Of course, I don't have the actual piece of paper yet, but the work is over, & it will be in the mail within six weeks. I feel relieved now that I have it - I'll have so much more time to spend with my dear family and do things I actually enjoy doing. No more coursework (at least for a while; the state of Michigan is kind enough to require me to take 3 credits every five years to keep my teaching certificate). My summers will be free!

We've been attempting to keep up with the daily grind, holiday festivities, and a nutty weimaraner, so I am so very happy that I have two days of work left until my two week Christmas vacation, which may come one day earlier if the meteorologists actually are correct and we get a wintry mix of snow & freezing rain Thursday night. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Emerson is still very, very busy and is turbo crawling and furniture surfing all over the house. She has figured out her m sounds, so now random da-da's can be followed by ma-ma's. She has her fifth ear infection right now, which developed over the weekend. I find this absolutely crazy considering I took her to the doctor the previous Monday for the recheck for the last ear infection. So, the weekly doctor's appointments are still keeping us busy.
She must have taken some cues from Grace because she is regularly crawling around with this finger puppet cow in her mouth.

She has become such a big help lately. She helps hold the spoon when she eats and then uses the food she grabbed from the spoon to style her hair. Also has been a great help in taking all of the socks out of my drawer and pulling all of her books from their shelf.

Let there be (Holiday) Light!

This photo is from last Wednesday. A few months back, Ryan made the comment that this year he would put lights on our new tree. And he did.

The finished product.

Yes, this is our sad holiday tree. It's one of those skinny alpine trees that we've had forever. Next year, we've vowed to get a real tree.

And now, photos of Emerson taken over the last few weeks.