Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Resurfacing...



Hello faithful readers...November has not been a good month for blogging, evidently! Pretty much every weekend has been full, and week nights hectic! The weekend before Thanksgiving, our good friends, Jen, Chad & Sophie, visited us from Ohio. They flew down on a new airline called Skybus. You should check this out...you can get a flight for $10 one-way, if you book early! We had a lovely time...Keith got an iPhone (with Chadman's "all-things-Mac" insight) and the men were content. The little girls visited the Duke Primate Center and got to see some lemurs, and had fun playing together. The big girls had a spa day, went chocolate shopping and gabbed until we were blue in the face. I wish we didn't live 9 hours away from each other!!!

The following week, K & I had massive headcolds...ugh. Emmy came down with a GI bug the night before T-day. I really didn't need to see projectile sweet potatoes all down my chest. She was sick until midnight, and then our T-day guests started arriving early the next morning. We had a good visit with Keith's bro, and his parents...and then K's sis and her family when they arrived Saturday morning. We got family photos taken Saturday afternoon and did the big meal (big feed, as my Great Uncle Rich liked to say) that night. Unfortunately, that evening several of us developed the nasty GI bug Emmy had early in the week. Before the weekend was over, 7 out of 9 of us were sick! (and by Tuesday, 9 of 9!!) I've literally not been that sick for many, many years. K & I were bed-bound all of Sunday, and much of Monday. It was so fortunate that his family was still in town when we fell ill, as we would have been incapable of taking care of Em. I suppose there was some fortune in the timing of all our illness, as it seemed to occur in phases...that way someone well could care for someone ill. Thanks to the Stouders & Campbells for helping us out! (And sorry we contaminated you!!)

In other news...I have accepted a new position at Duke, effective the 1st of the year. I'll be working in the Breast Cancer Prevention Clinic with a wonderful team. This will be a local position, with no travel and regular, predictable hours. Em's daycare is 10 minutes from work, and I really think it will be a good fit. I'm sad to leave my friends and coworkers from the past 5 years, but look forward to the challege of the new job!

Emmy updates: she's getting 3 teeth in at once...one snaggletooth on top so far. She's crawling like crazy and is getting a little too fast for my taste. She's trying to pull up as of this week. She says "nana" for banana, and "ca" for cat. (She does love her kitty cats!) Granted, these are not consistent words, but I've heard them several times now, so think I can say she's trying.

That's the updates...check out the Flickr site for updated pics!

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Big Week!



We had my Mom visiting from Indiana this weekend/early this week, and she picked a great time to come down! Emmy started crawling on all fours over the weekend, started getting her first tooth on top, and signed "more" for the first (and only, so far!) time!! Whew! Mom was so excited to get to see all the action, and Em was pure entertainment. She's turning into a less and less a baby, and more of a little girl. She turned 9 months old today, and it just doesn't seem possible! Her personality is busting out all over, and it's a hoot. She's still having a lot of separation anxiety, so the mornings at daycare have been a little rough for the past couple weeks. We're shopping for baby gates, now that she's mobile, and need to do an extra layer of babyproofing the house this weekend.