Our Emily - 6 weeks

Look at that precious face! 

Saturday night play date

Cora And Quinn LOVE having friends over for dinner. Last nighth, Sona and Jack (not pictured) with their families.

Emily

3 things I'll miss about having a newborn:

1. The startle.

2. When she's eating peacefully, then suddenly starts flailing passionately like she's been put on a bull and timed for 8 seconds.

3. The sleeping smiles

And Quinny says...

Before I forget... and maybe I posted this summer... but -

Quinny is obsessed with Monsters Inc right now. It's the movie that she has in the car, and she has a "find the picture" book with a Monsters Inc theme. The challenge is that she doesn't call these "Monsters, Inc." Instead she refers to what she wants as "Happy Feet" - which is super confusing for everyone but me (and now Landon - I let him flounder with that for a few days - even he needs to believe that I can magically know what our kids want at all times).

The Monsters Inc picture book (purchased for $2 at Marshall's this summer, by the way, and ignored for at least 1 month - it's so hard to predict what will become an absolute favorite... but I digress) is such a favorite that even with one page ripped and one page missing (try finding a picture with one page missing - and it doesn't look like it is missing, so it even made me obsessed with finding the pictures the first few days it was missing... until I realized that the picture on the left side of the page didn't EXACTLY align with the picture on the right, finally cluing me into the missing page, thus half the pictures to find were entirely missing... but again, I digress) that Landon and I have promised each other that we'll hide it each night, only to forget and find ourselves at bedtime the next night looking for the SAME pictures again in her "Happy Feet" book. The good news is that other than when a page goes missing, finding the pics is a really quick game. She has it memorized. The bad news is that she has realized that the game is going really quick, so she pretends like she doesn't know where the pictures are, which can make the game go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on...

Every single time Quinn bumps anything, or every single time she receives a minor infraction to her body from getting her hair brushed or shirt on or shoes tied, she screams, "You hurt my boo-boo, Mommy". I wish I could write the way she says Mommy. Something about the "o" is different - it's nearly an "a" sound, but not quiet "Mammy". Almost like "Maummie".

If she doesn't get her way, or even when she does, she ends sentences with a really high-pitch scream. It often goes like this:

"I want gummy's now, Maummie".
"Quinny, I didn't bring gummies today."
"I want gummy's now MAUMMIEEEEEEEE [turning to an ear drum shattering pitch]"

And...
Cora is still referring to messy coloring as "Scribble Scrabble". For example, "Quinny, you can color with me if you promise not to scribble scrabble". Till this day we don't know where she got that.

While making muffins...

After feeding Emily around 4, I came on downstairs this morning to work. Cora joined me soon after.
She asked to make muffins. I started to say no (I hadn't planned for it and we were out of blueberries), but found a super quick recipe and decided to oblige.

Cora's quotes about muffins...

"Mommy, you have to spray that stuff in this pan otherwise the muffins will be SUPER STINKY!"

Later...

Landon: These muffins are great! What kind of flour did you use?
Me: Just regular all-purpose flour.
Cora: Mommy, so you used all the flour on purpose?

And, one from Quinn.
On Tuesday, Cora had her 4 year old appointment (aka, the BIG shot appointment).
On Wednesday, we all stayed home from work and school (Landon and I have colds, Cora had vaccine symptoms, and Quinn had been up all night the night before. With the rumors about this crazy virus headed our way, we decided to be cautious and keep the girls with us). In the afternoon, Landon ran Quinny to the doc; an ear infection. When they came home:

Me: Quinny, how was Doc Davis?
Cora: Are you sick? Did you have to get a shot????
Quinny: Yes...
Me: Quinny, are you telling a fib?
Quinny: Yes...

She also came inside last night and told me, "Daddy spanked me".
Totally false!

How to know when Quinny is lying:
She tilts her head down, looks up through her eyelashes, and talks really slow.

It's super cute.
I think I'm going to wait a while to teach her what a lie is so that we can enjoy her like this just a little bit longer.

PS - Emily hasn't learned to talk yet.

"Our" Emily

While going back to school Landon started a landscaping company, and had a major contract at St. Mary's downtown to redo the path through the cemetery. The project was huge - he designed a herringbone pattern (everything Landon does, he does it big), and the outcome is really pretty. If you visit Charleston, St. Mary's is immediately behind Charleston Place.

That is where he encountered Emily.

In the very back of a very old cemetery he found a forgotten grave, dirty and completely covered in leaves that had mounded against the back fence. When he uncovered it, it really effected him. It was the grave of a very young child (an infant?), and the tombstone was inscribed "Our Emily".

This happened not long after Quinn was born. He came home and told me that if we had another baby, and it was a girl, he'd like to name her Emily in honor of that long forgotten child. Two years later, we had forgotten this. Until we were in Ireland this summer and encountered the name again. As soon as we saw it, we both exclaimed, "Emily! That's it!". Seriously, if we used words like "Eureka", it would have been the perfect moment to have used it. We didn't even discuss girls names after we remembered Emily.

The middle name is classic Carrie and Landon naming shenanigans. We had settled on a first name, and never really even discussed a middle. So, as Landon and I go, it was nearly time to check out of the hospital when we started discussing it. We listed some family names (I liked nearly all of them), and then Landon suggested "Frances". I commented that it overlapped with Joy's baby name (and Joy is so dear to my heart; Cora's god mother, my UTK roomie, and the best friend a girl could have during a time that was particularly hard for the both of us), and said directly that I just wasn't one to name my baby after the Pope, even if I thought this was the most compelling Pope in my short history of paying attention to the Pope.

I finished nursing Em and hopped in the shower. When I got out, Emily's name had been printed on the birth certificate, texted to friends and family, and been made Facebook official (you can't go back after something is made Facebook official).

Emily Francis.

It wasn't until later that I learned that the female version of "Francis" is actually "Frances". Don't be confused. The social security card came. Her name really is "Emily Francis Messal".
I declared that I would never ever ever write her middle name on anything, and I'm the one who does all the paperwork, so...

After I confirmed that Joy is indeed not upset that we also used a name similar to her baby name (she actually seemed pleased!)... it grew on me a bit more. That was my big concern. It's her first baby, afterall! Plus, my dad's step-uncle Francis was one of the funniest characters from my childhood, and always mailed me trinkets and gifts in between visits. In fact, if the turquoise stud earrings he sent me as a kid aren't still in my jewelry box, it is literally because I must have lost one in the last year. I bet that there are still others in the jewelry box in my bedroom at mom and dad's. The name grows on me more all the time.

An older lady at church asked me where we got her name. When I told her, she said, "There is some mother in heaven celebrating. You've named your baby in honor of hers, and she certainly knows it."

Our Emily.

Em's hospital pics

Emily Francis Messal.
Born August 7, 2014, and 3:15 PM.
Our Emily