A playmate just her size

Yesterday we went to see our friends from college, Jeremy and Sarah, and their adorable dog Bowie. Emilia waiting patiently all day since we had told her she was going to meet a new doggie. She and Bowie bonded immediately. The treat might have had something to do with that...And by the end of the visit, they were having deep philosophical conversations together...

Chilling with Uncle Corey

Uncle Corey came over to play and have dinner on Saturday night. It had been a long day of gymnastics and playing, so naturally, Emilia was exhausted.

Gym rat

Emilia has been making improvements at gymnastics and is really enjoying it -- so much so that we went ahead and signed her up for the next session. Here she is tearing it up on the balance beam:

And getting a 1:1 lesson from Coach Mike...

But her favorite activity is still the trapeze...

A break from bed rest

Last weekend, some good friends and I hosted a small baby shower for Sandra. After being on bed rest for about three months, Sandra was particularly deserving of a break with the girls. We had a great afternoon scrapbooking the start of her baby book. Here are the master scrapbookers: Megan, Wendy, Sandra, Kristy and Mary.

Dreaming of someplace we'd rather be

Emilia insisted on wearing her "Mo Mouse ears" (Minnie Mouse's ears) all last week. I think she's trying to tell us something...

Going green

The Korsvall house made an attempt to honor our roots and celebrate the spirit of the Irish a few weeks ago. We started our celebration of St. Patrick's Day on Sunday when we made yummy corned beef and cabbage for dinner. Emilia and I enjoyed the leftovers for lunch all week. We also made Irish potatoes, a sweet treat from my days at Tripician's Macaroons.

On the actual St. Patrick's Day, Emilia was a little confused when I didn't get her dressed before breakfast. That was intentional. We were having a special "green" breakfast -- green food coloring added into her normal breakfast of oatmeal mixed with pear yogurt.

We also both had a special treat when we discovered that daddy had gone to Dunkin' Donuts really early before he went to work and left us some special treats. Surprisingly, Emilia really wasn't into the donut, so mommy was left to polish it off for her (the sacrifices of motherhood).

Not dressing Emilia until after breakfast was a good call.

That night, we had another treat: lime jello. Emilia was particularly excited about this. She saw me making it the night before and was distraught over not being able to have it then. When she woke up the next morning and I told her we were going to have a special breakfast she asked, “jello?” Here she is sharing her treat with her buddies, Nathan and Clara.

I had hoped that all of the focus on green things that week would help Emilia learn that color, but no such luck. Yellow, pink and red remain the featured answers to any question that starts, "what color...?"

Our little Irish lassie

UnBOWlievable

I just had to share the bow collection Emilia has amassed in her 19 ½ months of life. Surprisingly, we have only had two casualties in that time: one barrette is lost forever in the Loudoun Gymnastics Club foam block pit; and one coral bow will never be the same after it was a stowaway on some dirty dishes and took a trip down the Vaughans’ garbage disposal. Oh, well – I think that’s a pretty good track record considering!

Afternoon at the museum

Daddy was in Boston for an executive education class last week. Emilia and mommy were very excited for his return on Friday night!

On Saturday, after "nastics" (gymnastics), a successful sitting on the potty (yeah!) and a long nap, we took Emilia to the Museum of Natural History downtown. She was a little scared at first to see all of the life-sized "an-mals," but I think she really enjoyed it. Here she is with some of her favorites (note the Harvard sweatshirt -- a souvenir from daddy's trip).

Ready for spring training

Last week, Emilia donned her Phillies t-shirt from Uncle Kyle. Don't worry, Emilia is an equal opportunity baseball fan -- she also has a Nationals hat and an Angels rally monkey.

The lion and the lamb of March weather

I’m back! I apologize in advance for the following “cluster blog.” We have been so busy in the last month that we haven’t had time to post. Here’s what we’ve been up to:

At the beginning of last week we had our biggest snowstorm of the season (OK, it was pretty minimal, but still enough to cause a mess). Then, over this past weekend, it was in the 70s! It was great to get Emilia outside to play. She even ate dinner al fresco last night!

Emilia was dying to go outside and play in the "no" (snow), but once we got out, she pretty much hated it. The girl does not like to get dirty, so snow angels were just torture for her.
She much preferred this weekend's warm weather. Here she is riding on Nathan’s tricycle on Saturday:
And she demanded to go on the horsies at the outlets on Sunday:

A future in the circus?

We definitely found one thing our daredevil daughter likes at gymnastics: swinging on the trapeze! She’s fearless; you can't tell from the picture but her feet are a couple of feet above the foam pit! She even got a report card at the last class. Let’s just say Coach Mike’s grading scale was very generous!

Another friend in matching PJs

A few weeks ago, we had dinner at our friends Dominique and Phil’s house. They have an adorable daughter, Annaliese, who is about one month younger than Emilia. We hadn’t seen them in a while, so it was fun to see the girls play together. We had a delicious meal and a great time!

The wrestling match started on the chair...

...and ended on the floor

Time to get spoiled

Grandma and Grandpa came down to visit Emilia a few weeks ago. Five minutes after they arrived, Grandma had already taken over bath time.

Squeaky toy line up

Here’s proud Emilia after surrounding herself with all of her bath time friends.

Snowman birthday

Also on Valentine’s Day, we went to Nathan’s third birthday party – a snowman theme! Emilia had the perfect hand-me-down dress for the occasion – red corduroy in honor of Valentine’s Day with white snowflakes to go along with the snow theme. The party was adorable and Emilia had a blast.


Here are Emilia and Clara posing with the snowman:



The birthday boy with his snowman cake:



Emilia dressed as a snowman:

Brad did another one of his famous videos to recap the festivities. Check out the Hills’ Web site to view it.

Happy birthday, Nay Nay – we love you, buddy!

Valentine's week

Earlier this year I was in a store and saw a cute little outfit with hearts on it that I thought would be perfect for Emilia to wear on Valentine’s Day. I resisted the urge to buy it (yes, I’m a changed woman, Eric), thinking that I could scrape together something in her wardrobe that worked for the holiday. The weekend before Valentine’s Day, as I was sorting through Emilia’s drawers and closet, I found some hand-me-downs and things Emilia hasn’t even worn yet that were perfect for Valentine’s Day – in fact, enough stuff to fill a whole week. So, here was Emilia sporting a different Valentine’s Day-themed outfit every day this week:

Monday (note the animal print is actually in the shape of little hearts) Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
On the actual Valentine's Day, we started with daddy’s heart-shaped pancakes with berries.
And our after-lunch snack was mommy’s heart-shaped rice krispie pop.