Another month has passed and Emily continues to grow up. (Funny how that happens!) After literally years of mispronouncing "breakfast" in a number of different ways (it has been "bres-theck" for a long time now), Emily all the sudden started saying it correctly at the beginning of the month. She still has a few speech corrections that need to be made, but she's figuring some of them out on her own.
One thing Emily has a reputation for with my side of the family is making up new words and explaining the definition of them with a completely straight and quite serious face. While visiting last week she explained that a "treelay" was a rainbow with an extra color--like the one in her Bible that has pink. She also tried to convince me to play a card game called "Warsh" with her. It is surprisingly played almost exactly like "War" except the lowest card wins. For some reason I strongly dislike "War" and have flat out refused to play it with her. She's a tricky one! ;o) She is darn good at
Crazy Eights and
Go Fish, though. She may not be all that strategic, but she can still beat you!
Emily has adopted a few annoying practices this month. One of them is big, dramatic, very fake yawns with declarations of "I'm so tired!" This happens often. I always make the same offer: Go lay down in your bed then. However, she has yet to take me up on it.
Another practice is "fishing" for numbers at meal time. Oftentimes before she has even taken a single bite, she has already started negotiating and asking how many bites of what she has to take before she can have dessert. If you say, "All of it," she'll respond with, "No, I need a number," or "That's too high--try again." She sometimes spends more time negotiating than actually eating. We have rules about the minimum she needs to eat/drink before she can leave the table and the amount she has to eat before getting dessert is always more. Thankfully, she usually succumbs to our demands without too much of a fuss, but this is only because we have had more than a few long sits/bawling sessions at the table in the past that have established the standards and expectations.
The last one is the most troubling. Emily has developed a sassy attitude that emerges as soon as she doesn't get her way about something. She quickly declares something like, "Well I just won't do anything then," to which I usually reply, "Fine with me!" However, it is almost always accompanied by a high-pitched, very impertinent "humph." This quickly becomes grating on my nerves. I haven't entirely decided how to handle it, so if anyone has any suggestions, they would be much appreciated!
Side note: The reason Emily is wearing bright blue socks in her picture is because I recently bought a new package of brightly colored socks for her with one for each day of the week, which is printed boldly on the bottom. The blue socks are the Wednesday socks. :o)
