9 Months

My Dearest Emma,

As I write this, you are sound asleep in your crib. I am so grateful for that, as you have had many restless nights the past few weeks. You have double ear infections and it seems as though you now have a cold as well. Your Mommy and Daddy are trying as hard as we can to make you comfortable and help you to feel better. We wish we could do more.

You have been quite a busy girl this past month. You are now crawling like a pro, pulling up on everything, and even cruising a little bit! You FINALLY got your first tooth and it's so cute! Your favorite things to play with are not toys, but cups, paper, shoes, hairbrushes, socks, and of course, Mardi Gras beads. Speaking of Mardi Gras, you were such a trooper through all the parades and festivities. For the most part, you enjoyed being close to your Daddy in the Baby Bjorn and catching lots of stuffed animals, cups, and beads. And you were proud to show everyone how you can now wave!

You are loving your finger foods these days. Sometimes we have a hard time getting you to eat your babyfood because you would so much rather have a cheerio or puff! You also love any kind of bread (pancakes, waffles, buns, etc.). As soon as you get some more teeth we will be able to venture into eating more finger foods! You are SO ready!

We love you so much Emma Grace. You are such a joy. You have truly taught your Mommy and Daddy how to be selfless and sacrifice ourselves for your needs.

Oh, and have I mentioned that you have TONS of hair?!

Love,
Mommy and Daddy

After Carnival

This is how we all feel tonight...after a full few weeks of partying and parading...hope everyone had a Happy Mardi Gras!

Mardi Gras: Part 1

Mardi Gras (Carnival) is in full swing around New Orleans. It's our favorite time of year and so much fun to celebrate with friends! We took Emma to her first parade last weekend. All this week and until Fat Tuesday (the 24th) we will be hitting up tons of parades and fun events around town.

Here is Emma getting some beads at her first parade, Krewe du Vieux.

Peek-a-boo!

-Matt (I'm running out of memory on my blog because my account has all the Picasa pics)

Not Me! Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

It has been quite a while since I've done one of these, but the time has come again...

*I did NOT give my daughter a piece of paper to play with/eat just to give me a few minutes to catch up on some blogs

*I also did NOT proceed to let her crawl over to my Crocs and let her chew on them for a few minutes before I took them away from her. No, I would never let my daughter chew on nasty shoes!

*My daughter's first Mardi Gras parade was definitely NOT the most scandalous parade (Krewe du Vieux) in which we saw lots of male body parts (fake not real) and other things (I will leave that to your imagination)...

*I did NOT let my daughter's precious little nose get sunburned (burnt?) at another parade. I most certainly do NOT feel like an awful mom for letting that happen.

*I did NOT buy mini powdered sugar donuts from Winn-Dixie (yes, we still have them here) just because they were buy one/get one free. And of course I did NOT eat most of those donuts.

*I did NOT think negative things about my art journaling pages tonight. Nope, not me. I'm not allowed to. It's a rule.

*I did NOT drive 20 minutes to the Starbucks with a drive-thru, even though there are 2 closer Starbucks, just because I didn't feel like getting Emma in and of the car. I would never waste gas like that. Like my $4 cup of coffee wasn't enough?!

Our quirky home

Our home is a fun place to live. It is a cheap, inner-city apartment, and with that comes the good and the bad...

[Good]

• It's cheap!!! Only $750 for 2 bedrooms and believe me, in this city, that is impossible to find!
• It's in the middle of all the action. We love living on Magazine Street. We're in walking distance from restaurants, drugstores, coffee shops, grocery stores, and anything else you could want.
  
• We have awesome neighbors. The guy downstairs even gives us his internet (on purpose)!
• The kitchen has this cute built in cupboard. I love it!
• Lots of wall space!
• We LOVE our front porch. It's spacious and a perfect place to sit in the evenings and watch the traffic/people on Magazine.
• A nice backyard that Emma can play in when she gets a little older.

[Bad]

• At any given point in time, we may blow a fuse. Sometimes it even blows on it's own when we haven't done anything. Gets kind of frustrating when you are trying to feed a baby dinner and the fuse blows four times in 20 minutes and the breaker box is outside and you have to go flip the switch so your baby won't be sitting in the dark! Yes, this has happened a couple times!
• It's upstairs. I don't mind living upstairs, but the staircase is skinny and gets quite slippery when wet. And it's not very fun to trudge up slippery stairs with a baby and groceries!
• No parking--we have to park on a side street. We have gotten used to this and it only sucks when we have lots of groceries to bring in.
• The walls are very thin. Our precious neighbors like to play some boom boom music on the weekends and we can hear every "boom".
  
• The backdoor has a big gap on the side of it--Matt had to put in a draft guard so that we can keep the heat/air in.
• Because our apartment is shotgun style (with no hallway), we have to walk through the babies room to get from the living room to our room. This is a problem when she is sleeping!
• There is NO counter space in the kitchen.
• No dishwasher.

All this said, we love our home and are so blessed to have found this place!