Emma Elaine: 11 Months Old

Emma's cousin Jonah turned one a few weeks ago, and at his party it hit me... Emma was born 7 weeks after him, her birthday is next!! I finally registered she was close to turning one after the party, and that feels oh so weird.

Here are some details I want to remember about Emma at 11 months:

If I could describe Emma in a few words they would be: calm, happy, and social. Sure she loves to move around and explore, but she also loves to be close to me. I feel like for her age she is a calm baby... but I guess I don't have any other experience with kids this age other than her cousin. Also a few weeks ago she had no interest in nursing anymore and my heart was breaking, sensing the end was near. Lately I can tell she is loving the calm close time she has with me, and I could explode of happiness! When I sit her down on my lap getting ready to nurse her, she literally throws herself back and gets so excited to nurse. She is getting so strong and it is getting hard to catch her if I'm not careful ;) My sister AJ asked me over facetime the other day, "Is Emma always this happy?" I thought about it for a minute, and realized she really is happy a lot of the time!

She's definitely not calm with Joel though! He is rough with her in a super fun way, in a way that makes him special as "Pappa". She gets hyper and excited just looking at him haha. If you follow me on instagram, I have posted some videos of him spinning her around and you can understand how he is with her! He is seriously such a fun dad to Emma. I love their relationship!

That belly... we feed her very well ;)

I love that I caught her mid scoot

She's definitely got some awesome dance moves, most likely inherited from her grandpa Herrey! I like to think so at least. Here's a video Joel caught of Emma while we were watching Harry Potter a few days ago:

To be honest, I've watched this waaaay too many times! I still don't know how she moves like this

Right now Emma loves to walk around furniture. She could walk around our table that is in between our couches all day if I let her. She likes to practice walking with her walker back and forth in our apartment. At first it used to scare her because she used to fall back and it fell on her a few times, but since then we've put weights in it to help her out a little bit.

Emma is also getting super good at knowing who people are! We first noticed while we were still in the states. I told her, "Emma look at Grandma!" My mom wanted to take a picture of her and Emma hurried tried looking for her. Gosh I am so proud of every little development she makes. It is amazing to me how one day she doesn't understand and then woah! Then next day she does. Now we've practiced saying, "Emma, where's the cat?" And she'll look and point right to Cheeto. By the way she is obsessed with Cheeto. Randomly during the day she'll scoot and chase after her, and every time Cheeto has this annoying look on her face haha. I've tried catching it on camera but it has been tough since Emma does it randomly.

If Cheeto could talk, I think she'd say, "Why are you taking pictures of me..."

The other day Farmor and Farfar (Joel's parents) were at our apartment and when we said, "Where's Farfar?" She pointed right to Joel's dad. Then when we said, "Good job Emma, you did it!!" She started clapping her hands and had us laughing so hard. Since then she's been clapping her hands over everything.

Joel's mom talks a lot about Emma and how her build is extremely similar to how Joel was as a baby. She's not a big baby, more solid than anything. It is fun to see Emma grow up and have parts of me show and parts of Joel. I think Emma looks most like how I was as a babe with my darker eyebrows and hair, but has Joel's ears and build. I still can't decide whose eyes she has... maybe a mix of both? :)

Anyways, Emma is the sweetest little girl and we are so grateful to be her parents! Happy 11 months baby girl.

Joel is so proud of her perfect squatting position