Daddy's pictures
He took her out for a brief walk when he was home for lunch. Otherwise she's been lounging on the couch and watching TV, capitalizing on the privileges of being sick.

Self portrait.




Walking the plank.

One...two...
I stumbled upon a very effective method of "threatening" Emma a little while ago. When she is stalling or balking at a directive from me I start the count, "One, two..." That's usually as far as I get. She hustles on two. She always asks me, "What happens on three?"

Frankly, I don't know. I tell her, "You'll be punished." She always answers, "I don't want to be punished."

Somehow she intuitively knew that me saying "three" would be a bad thing. I didn't teach her that.

Whatever works, man.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Ella Fitzgerald, Amsterdam 1957 - Angel Eyes
Gives me goosebumps.

My blog's readability...
What's yours? I'm not insulted that you only need an elementary school education to read my blog. I'm not here to tax your brain so much; this is for fun. I've found that when I post "thinky" posts I often hear crickets chirping. Nonetheless, I'll keep trying now and then, if you don't mind. I get it that people come here for Emma's adventures and aren't all that much into my brain downloads, but sometimes a girl's gotta vent, ya know?

BTW, please DON'T get a cash advance. I'd be mortified.

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Thursday, November 15, 2007
It's baaaaack!
They're saying we could get 1-3 inches tonight and maybe another inch in the morning. At first they called for it to accumulate only on the grassy areas. Midday they changed it to possible accumulation on the roads after temperatures reach the 20's tonight. Joy.


Getting Sick
It's been creeping up on her slowly. It's the reason I didn't reschedule her check-up yesterday even though we had an hour wait. The doc said there's a virus going around. She's had a low grade fever. This morning she woke up really hoarse and occasionally has a croupy sounding cough. I've given her Motrin and we've put a vaporizer with Vicks in her room. I'm hoping she sleeps well tonight.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007
3 Year Check-up
It was pretty unremarkable. Nothing extraordinary to note from my side or the doctor's side. Everything is normal. I take that back, he did remark on her speaking ability/vocabulary. The one thing on their developmental questionnaire that we didn't do great on is the dressing herself. That's more for lack of coaching than anything. We'll work on it.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Bedtime Backyardigans
Every night when I finish dressing Emma for bed Daddy takes over again. He's the one who does the bath first and brings her upstairs. I dress her and then they finish off the evening together. Lately they've been playing "the Backyardigans game" every night. They take all of the Backyardigans characters that Emma got for her birthday and act out different episodes or stories. It's cute as hell to hear them playing. First Emma points out which Backyardigans characters are in the particular story and tells Daddy all their names. Then the two of them act out different parts for a about a minute before she changes stories. After all that they read a few books and then say goodnight.

Unfortunately for me that means when Mommy does bedtime it sucks. I don't know the episodes. I had to put her to bed last night because we had unexpected guests and I felt like a total loser trying to play. I was trying to get Emma to guide me and she wasn't wanting that. Finally she said, "Just do it like Daddy does it." Sigh. I explained to her that I couldn't do it because I didn't know the shows, I hoped she understood, and could I read her a book instead. She gave me a hug and was so gracious about it.

Here are some pics from the Yeti re-enactment.



Monday, November 12, 2007
Veteran's Day Memorial Dedication
On Sunday we attended the dedication of a Veteran's Memorial on the courthouse lawn. They raised money by selling pavers (bricks) engraved with the names of local veterans. Actually, they didn't even have to be local, anyone could purchase them for any veteran. My family pitched in and bought one for each of my grandfathers, one for my dad and one for my brother. Noni, Popi and my grandmother came over for the dedication.

It was very nice ceremony. A class act all the way. We had a marine color guard from Quantico and a Marine General as the speaker. A woman wrote a poem especially for the occasion. It's hard to recount for you here, but it was very, very meaningful and well thought out.

The one special moment was when the color guard made their way past us and reached the head of the walk of honor. Everyone was silent and reverant and a familiar little voice pops up, loud and clear as a bell, "Are those soldiers?" I knelt down and whispered in her ear, "Emma, they're marines."