42 months old

We made it to 3 1/2!  Emily is sporting her current favorite outfit in this picture.  It never stays on the hanger for more than 12 hours (not that much does these days) and gets washed every laundry day.  It started out as a really cute Wal-mart clearance item.  Between the twice/week washings, constant hand-wiping at meals/snacks and going through the wash once with a name tag sticker still on the back, it has seen better days.  This one probably won't be worth passing on.

In other Emily news, I think we have pretty much mastered potty training. (Hooray!)  After her success at Fazoli's a month ago she pretty much ditched the potty ring and insists on doing everything herself.  We still have incidents here and there, but it's not really anything to get uptight about.  The main thing is supervising to make sure she actually flushes and washes afterwards.  Also, we still have some issues with over-using toilet paper.  For some reason she thinks she needs to roll it up into a tight "cinnamon roll" and therefore, uses way too much compressed into tight little wads.

Emily has had some interesting changes verbally in the last month.  She now adds "tags" to the end of most of her sentences (e.g. "He threw the ball, didn't he?"  "I ate a cookie, didn't I?")  The one that drives me nuts is "I'm being nice, isn't I?"  No matter how many times she has been corrected she hasn't switched to "aren't I".  You become painfully aware of all the difficulties and inconsistencies of the English language.  She also says, "I and Daddy".  On a positive note, Emily is making progress on her beginning /th/ sound (vs. using /f/) thanks to a jump start from Grandma Boote. :o)  We practice a lot with "three," "think" and "throw."

One of the slightly odd changes is that Emily started calling me "Mama".  I'm sure it's due to an over-saturation of the Berenstain Bears. (Just a guess since she sometimes pretends to call Lizzy Bruin on the phone and tells me she's going to Lizzy's house to play.)  Once in a while she will refer to Austin as "Papa", but she usually still addresses him as "Daddy".  I can't decide if it annoys me or not.  For some reason it makes me feel like some old, southern lady with a twenty- or thirty-something-year-old son who still lives with his "momma".

An exciting development is Emily's completely unprompted attempts to write her name.  One day she told me she wrote her name and I thought, "Sure you did."  At first glance it just looked like a bunch of lines and squiggles, but if you look closer and turn it around a few times, you can definitely distinguish E-m-i-l-y.  Under it is a picture of balloons she drew for Lincoln's birthday. :o)

Some other great skills Emily has mastered this month are how to button buttons and buckle her own seat belt.  It still sometimes takes quite a bit of verbal prompting, but technically she is able to completely get in and out of the van on her own thanks to push-button power doors.

The Winkflash pictures for April are uploaded.  Beginning this month I'm going to put the monthly video player in a separate post.