Baby Brother

Well it’s official “baby brother” finally has a name.  It may be the only thing he has because Emery is still sleeping in his bed!!  When he’s twenty years old and reading this blog because he appreciates how his mother kept track of his life (haha), I hope he knows that just because we have not been as on top of getting EVERYTHING ready for him its not because we love him any less than Emery, we’re just more laid back.  We still think about him as often and pray diligently for him, we just are a little behind in the material things.  We initially narrowed it down to two names

And finally decided Emery’s baby brother will be named…

Wagner Bradley Collins

It is definitely a unique name, but we LOVE it!!! I love to hear Emery call him “baby Wagner”.  It sounds like “baby wadner” :)

 

Golfing with Daddy

A couple evenings this summer we have gone out to the golf course with Brad to hit balls and chip and putt.  Let me rephrase that Brad hits balls and chips and putts.  Emery picks up tees, cheers loudly for the golfers as they hit their balls while simultaneously telling me to “shhh”, runs around the putting green counting the flags, and grabbing Brad’s ball before it can make it to the hole.  I chase Emery around and complain about being hot. 

 

Two weeks of FUN!

This year we were fortunate enough to be able to go to the beach with my family for one week, and with Brad’s family the following week.  We even got to stay just the three of us for one night in between!  We are so fortunate to have such generous families that invite us to spend a whole week with them at the beach.  Thanks guys!  Here are some highlights from each trip…

Holden Beach, NC (my parents and sisters):  water slides, eating at new interesting places (haha!), HOT and sunny weather, catching fish, getting to swim in the rough ocean with Haley and Riley, Brad golfing with Dad, Haley and Riley teaching Emery to count to 14 using the steps, Emery sleeping on a twin mattress for the first time like a big girl, taking Emery to the Disney outlet (she screamed when we walked in…I can’t imagine the child actually at Disney World haha), Emery watching “Finding Nemo” (first movie she’s ever watched start to finish)

Oak Island, NC (Brad’s parents, brother, aunt and uncle, cousin and her family):  Olympics (DUH!!), shopping, flooding, Emery making a friend on the beach named Sophie, cooler weather which this pregnant lady GREATLY appreciated, grilling out on the charcoal grill, spending lots of time floating in the ocean, Emery “surfing” on the boogie board, Emery playing with the dolphins…there was one for Mommy, one for Dada, one for Emery and one for “bruder”

Both weeks: Emery “shimmin” with Dada and saying “nin, nin” over and over because she NEVER wanted to stop swimming with Daddy, getting lots of love from both sides of the family, eating great food

During the couple of days we had to ourselves we took Emery to Britt’s doughnuts on the boardwalk at Carolina Beach, to the aquarium at Ft. Fischer where she saw turtles, alligators, lots of fishes, and “sharks”, bought her new tennis shoes, and swam in the pool at our hotel.

There are two funny stories that I want to remember from each of these trips.  As I said before Emery slept on a twin mattress in the floor of mine at Brad’s room at Holden Beach.  We assumed that she was going down great and never getting up because we never heard her and she was always asleep on the mattress when we came up for bed…WRONG!  One night Haley and Riley went to bed and went to check on Emery and she was gone, so they freaked out.  They saw the light on in the bathroom and checked in there even though the door was closed.  Sure enough Emery was in there, sitting on the toilet brushing her teeth with Riley’s tooth brush.  The girls were cracking up and ran down to tell us about it.  Before we could get up to the bathroom to see Emery was already back in the bed pretending to be asleep…CRAZY girl!!  Then, on our last night in Oak Island Emery kept saying she was ready for bed, but I was trying to get all of our clothes packed up.  Finally she said, okay night night Mommy, and then proceeded to get the cover to her pack n play out from under the bed and used it as a sleeping bag and pretended to fall asleep right there on the floor…I think it’s safe to say she’s not lacking in the personality department! ha!

We have really enjoyed making some memories as a family of three this summer in anticipation of baby brother coming in a month (oh my goodness…a month??? Are you sure???!!!)

PARTY TIME!!

This year Emery had a Mickey Mouse party!  I decided I would go “low key” this year for her party…that didn’t happen.  Not that her party was anything elaborate, but its so hard to keep it small because there are so many people who are special to Emery, and who care about her…she is a lucky girl!!

I think Emery had a GREAT time playing with all of her friends…thank you to those of you that made Emery’s day SO SPECIAL!!

Two year old “issues”

Issue number one potty training or lack there of.  I had it in my head that this whole potty training thing would be easy because Emery comprehends everything we say (you can stop laughing at me now).  Boy was I wrong!  We went to Wal Mart bought big girl undies, and we were so excited to wear them!  I’m not even going to explain to you how we went about this potty training boot camp because obviously it did not work, so why would you waste your time reading what NOT to do!  ha.  But honestly, I do realize that she just is not ready and that is JUST FINE with me!  Although, she did look pretty cute modeling her new undies :)

Issue number two sleeping or again lack there of.  Let me preface this by saying my child has slept through the night since ONE MONTH old!  UNTIL one week ago when she started SCREAMING when we would lay her down for her naps or bedtime.  It was crazy, and we did not know what to do because she had NEVER done anything like this before.  The worst part was that we would get her down, and then around 12:30 that night she would wake up again screaming to be held.  We tried EVERYTHING, and finally she just started sleeping again two days ago.  It was the strangest thing!  I did some research online (I told you guys we did not know what to do ha!), and discovered that apparently kids go through certain times in their lives where they have to retrain themselves to sleep and two years old is one of those ages.  I’m just hoping and praying that is the LAST TIME we will go through that!  Some days in order to get Emery to finish her nap we would bring her in and lay her on the couch, and she would finish out her nap there…not a good idea we know, but we were on survival mode people!

That sleeping face is pure heaven to me!