Another Exciting Day...

It's another exciting day in the Hypes' household today! Now that school is wrapped up for me (Jenni), I am able to sleep in... well, at least until my internal alarm clock wakes me up at 6:30am... and I can work around the house for a couple of hours before our precious little drop of sunshine decides to wake up and start jumping in her bed. I'm waiting for the day when she can hurdle the crib railing. I fear it's not too far away.

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Once we're up and moving, we typically get a request for milk and breakfast in the form of sign language. If you remember, Emily picked up on the "milk" and "more" signs right off the bat about a year ago and she loves to put them to use. Most of the time we go with a lazy breakfast which involves walking around the living room with a sippy cup full of milk and a bowl or baggie of dry Cheerios (or occasionally Honeycombs). We've been practicing carrying the bowl with two hands, but nearly ever day we forget and spill dry cereal all over the carpet and nearly every we practice picking cereal up off the floor and putting it back in the bowl. We like to think of it as "occupational therapy" or a lesson in patience for Mommy. You would think that some day I would be smart enough to remember to strap her into her booster seat, wouldn't ya?

After breakfast, we go to work... ie. we get all the toys out of our toybox and go from one to the next, to the next, to the next. At some point before lunch we still take a nap and sometimes those naps actually last up to 2 hours!

Lunch these days usually consists of meat/protein (chipped ham, corn dogs, fish sticks, peanut butter sandwich, or chicken if we're lucky), a vegetable (usually peas, corn, mashed potatoes, lima beans or the occasional french fry or smiley fry when we're out to eat), or fruit (applesauce, mandarin oranges, bananas, peaches, apples, or strawberries) and of course milk. Sometimes, if we're lucky, we might even sneak in a cookie if we were good and ate most of our lunch.

After lunch, we usually repeat the after breakfast routine. Sometimes we throw in a video. It seems that Baby Einstein stuff with sign language and Elmo's World are the favorites right now. Em also seems to enjoy the Little Einstein shows on TV which is an animated series that has a lot of music and interaction with it.

Emily still takes an afternoon nap and they tend to run from 45 min. to 2 hours as well. She's usually awake by supper time and we tend to repeat our lunch menu as options. She still doesn't like pizza... bummer... and has convinced herself that she doesn't like chicken so much any more. She usually like bread but seems to get tired of it after a couple of bites.

After supper we usually play as a family, read books, wrestle or play a fun game (usually Mommy hides around the corner and jumps out to scare the begeebees out of Emily... and she gets some pretty good belly laughs out of it.) Lately, I've started giving pony and piggy back rides around the house and those seems to be pretty entertaining as well.

Bathtime comes around about every other day unless it's a dirty play day and is a big hit. Emily loves to round up her foam letters from her floor puzzle as well as any other Mommy-approved bath toys and plops them in the tub. She pushes Mommy's footstool into the bathroom so I have something to sit on by the tub and the stripping commences... hers, NOT mine! She loves splashing and laying down in the tub and even though she acts all freaked out when I rinse her hair she signs "more" when I'm all done.

When it's time to get out of the tub, we wrap her up in her towel and take our "baby burrito" to her bedroom to find some pajamas. We play a bit and put toys away until the munchkin's hair is dry and then it's on to bed. Our bedtime routine usually consists of giving Daddy a kiss and/or a hug and playing "flutter" with Daddy. Flutter consists of putting your hand over Daddy's long eyelashes and letting him tickle your hand with them, then they swap and Daddy's hand goes over Em's long eyelashes so his hand gets tickled. Occasionally I get let in on the fun but Daddy's really the better player!

Bedtime's usually around 8:30 and Em still settles down pretty quickly. Every now and then we wait a little too long and pass the bewitching hour... but even then she only cries for about 15 minutes or so.