Christmas Cookie Baking with Grammy!

My Mom came down for a visit, and "the girls" had a cookie baking & decorating afternoon yesterday. We doubled the recipe, but forgot to double the flour. It was the cookie bake-a-thon that almost wasn't! Em had a ball with her Grammy.

From the mouth of a 3 yr old...

Upon spying a house with smoke coming out of the chimney, "Hey look, that house has a tailpipe!"

"When I grow up, I was to be a girl fireman!"

When asked if she was excited about finding out whether she would have a baby brother or sister (when I have my ultrasound in a few weeks), "Nope, I'll find out later."

Big Girl Room

Em's big girl room came together this weekend, with the help of Keith and Grandpa, who was visiting from Indiana. She was very excited about sleeping in her new bed, with the girly sheets & bed linens. Lots of very cool touches in this room!

Fall Leaves

Two weekends ago, we did a little leaf raking in order to make a nice, large pile for Emerson to jump. She'd been pining away for a leaf pile, but not enough leaves had fallen yet. Finally, we had a dry spell, and nice weather. She got her little rake and helped Daddy (most of the time using the rake backwards, but it's the thought that counts, right?!). She was ecstatic to finally get to jump into a leaf pile!

My new favorite photo of Emerson

Guess Who's Becoming a Big Sister?

Our family is growing, and Emerson will become a big sister in May 2011!

"Olivia's Dead"

As we were driving down the road last night, heading to Panera Bread for dinner, followed by grocery shopping at Kroger, Emerson piped up from the backseat with this doosie..."Olivia's dead". Followed by dead silence in the car. Olivia, by the way, is Emerson's imaginary sister whom she's talked about for the last year. She literally mentions her daily. From what I can gather, she lives across the street at 8008 XX Road, she's either older or younger than Emerson (some days she's 2, some days she's 43 and drives...who knew?!). It's unclear who her parents are, and why she doesn't live with us. Olivia gets blamed for mishaps & misbehavior and is included in most of the silly conversations shared about the happenings at school.

Needless to say, we were a little taken aback to hear she was no longer with us. After a period of silence, we finally asked Em what happened. She explained that Olivia was out walking her dog and got "squooshed by a car". We asked her how she found out about this accident, and she mentioned that Olivia was at school today crying, and told her about it. "She's dead, but she'll be better on Monday...don't worry guys."

Thank goodness! Keith and I talked about it later, and were a little relieved that Em doesn't yet grasp the concept of death. We've seen dead squirrels "squooshed by a car" on our morning walks, so I suppose this is where the idea came from last night. We are also not totally ready to have this conversation with her, as we haven't figured out how we want to present it to her yet. I want to be honest, but not go into great detail about things. I don't want to use any of the explanations like, "sleeping" or "gone to Heaven". I think being honest & sticking to simple explanations is probably the best route.

Anyone out there have any great ideas about broaching this topic when the time comes?