Dear Emmylou,

On Saturday you turned sixteen months old. This is getting ridiculous! What have you done with my little baby? No more bottles! You want to use utensils! You communicate with words and signs! Pretty soon you'll be asking to borrow the car and wanting to get your belly button pierced (please, not that). The other day your dad walked in and you said, clear as day, "Hi, Dada" like you've been saying it for years. What is that all about!? That's all I'm saying this month. Nothing mushy, just wanted you to know that if you want to slow all this down just a little bit, that'd be fine with me...

All my love,
Mama

Emmylou reading her favorite book, "The Wheels on the Bus." I'm afraid "Pride and Prejudice" might be next...

I continue to be amazed every single day by Emmylou's development. Not only is she insisting upon feeding herself (and doing a pretty good job at it) and opening every door she comes across, she is a sign language fool! She's like a little sponge when I show her signs and now consistently uses the ones for "more," "all done," "milk," "water," "open" and "eat." She also can make the animal noises for dogs, horses, sheep and cows. When does Harvard start taking applications?

Lizzie and I finished the Iron Chicks Triathlon on Sunday in New Braunfels at the Texas Ski Ranch and Emmylou and Grammie came out to cheer us on! Everytime I wanted to stop I just thought about seeing Emmylou at the finish line! Thanks for the motivation, Emmylou!

Hi everybody! Emmylou would like to introduce you all to Gustafer Yellowgold, her new favorite kiddie character. Aunt Lizzie found out about him at the Children's Museum last month and got the DVD for her. Isn't he so cute?! He's kind of like Wilco-meets-The Shins-meets-The Wiggles, singing silly songs like this one about his eel friend:



They had me at the opening lyrics: "Up through your pant leg and out through your collar..."

When Gustafer performs live, it's a group of 3 (pretty cute, according to Lizzie) guys who play the music in front of a big screen with Gustafer animation. They're from New York and she says they're coming back again in December. We can't wait to see them!

Emmylou's impression of Paris Hilton:

Happy Fourth, everybody! We took Emmylou down to our neighborhood parade this morning and in our infinite wisdom, decided against bringing an umbrella. Sometimes I do wonder if we might be unfit parents. Of course by the end of it we were all completely soaked to the bone but still enjoyed it and warmed up quickly with baths back at home. The parade was fun but wasn't much more than a bunch of families with decorated strollers, bikes and scooters going around the block following a fire truck, and us pulling Emmylou in the wagon Eric made for her. I would've taken pictures of the actual parade, but I was keeping my camera in my pocket so it wouldn't get ruined from the rain.




I'm not sure if you can tell from this picture, but the wagon says "Fleet Flyer" on the side-- we lived on Fleet Street in Baltimore! Adorable, Eric.

Last week Emmylou created her first work of post-modern abstract surrealism* that I like to call Happy Face in (Mostly) Primary Colors: The Early Years.




Really, I was just glad she didn't eat the paint (not that she didn't try), and, yes, I did help a little here and there.

*That combination isn't even possible, right, Alex?


On Wednesday we went to visit Alyssa and her big brother Joshua at my friend Lizette's house. We had so much fun playing and Emmylou could not tear herself away from their piano!




And since things have been so hectic lately and I didn't get around to posting a pic of Emmylou and her daddy for Father's Day (which Gary pointed out the other day), here are a couple of photos I took today of them together. I hope all of you have or will get to see them together for yourselves- the smiles, giggles and full-on hyena laughing never stop! For either of them!