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.