Emily antics

Emily made us laugh today when we caught her "playing chess" with her bears. We have a little "coffee/game corner" in the fireplace room where I have had a chess board set up (thanks to my generous friend, Kimber!). Emily discovered it this week and has had a ball climbing up on the chairs and playing with the chess pieces. We have found the pieces all over the house. Just yesterday I moved the toilet paper roll holder in the upstairs bathroom and three pawns fell out. Emily had put them down the tubes of the stacked up rolls. (She likes hiding lots of things in the tubes--including hair clips and her toothbrush.) This afternoon she took it to the next level and hauled her bears downstairs so it looked like they were playing each other. She then happily moved back and forth between the chairs.

Emily decided it would be fun to use Cheney as a chair this afternoon. He humored her for about 5 seconds. She also decided to "help" feed him tonight. She hauled out the container with his food all by herself and then dumped it in his dish after I scooped it out. Cheney was hiding from the vacuum cleaner, so Emily busied herself playing with Cheney's food. Check out the video in the April player. Austin stopped recording just before she picked up the entire dog dish and held it up to her face like a drinking glass saying, "All gone." :o)

I finally got some metal silverware for Emily and she has been practicing "poking" her food with a fork. She got pretty good with cooked carrots the other day. Bite-size pieces of PBJ toast work well, too (probably b/c the peanut butter makes it stick regardless of how well it's actually on the fork). Emily & I also shared a bowl of ice cream the other day, which surprisingly worked well with her fork b/c it was hard enough--too hard for her to scoop with a spoon. The other momentous occasion in that department was officially moving her high chair downstairs. I'll haul it up again when the weather gets really nice and I can hose it down for good outside :op, but she now exclusively sits at the table in her "big girl" chair. :o)