Celebrating Uncle Edger's Birthday Oct 9, 2009

Edgar turns 36!

We celebrated uncle Edger's 36th Birthday at the winery in Wallingford, CT. It is really beautiful there. We all had a nice time, although mommy couldn't have any wine since she was still taking medication for her shoulder :(. Emma was great first playing with Sean and then by herself during the party. Mom and dad had time to socialize and have fun. Thanks Emma for being so great at the party. Afterwards, Emma was so great, we left her with her cousin Ashley and joined 5 other couples for a movie. It has been quite a while since we saw a movie, even longer for a night movie, and forever for a premier night of the movie. Wow what an accomplishment! We saw "Couple's Retreat". The movie was quite funny but way over the top in some places.

Cake in the face courtesy of Ashley, his 14 years old daughter.

Just the girls

Emma finally braves the roller slide - Oct 8, 2009

div>There is this playground that we like to frequent in my town. Emma is always brave enough to go on the big kids play scape and use the regular slides but was always too hesitant to go down the roller slide even with mommy. It took a lone trip with dad to get her to do it and Daddy got it on camera!

First the small one at the 2-5 years old play scape

Here is Emma braving the big kid play scape roller slide!

Proud Emma at the bottom!

Animal Love... Sept 15, 2009

Emma has gotten into this new routine where she plays with our cat Vinny every morning. I am not sure who enjoys it more. You can observe their love for each other. She is speaking in Polish and says "Vinny really likes Emma".

Emma's First Zoo Trip - Sept 5, 2009

On Saturday Sept 5th, 2009 we took advantage of Corporate Days at the Bronx Zoo which gives certain corporate employees free zoo admission. We too the 1.5 hour ride down to the Bronx and it was well worth it. Emma really loved the trip a lot. To this day she talks about the animals we saw there and when we read her zoo book, she says Emma saw the giraffe, Emma saw the lion and so on...

Oh what big ears you have....

Emma's favorites were monkeys, all types, especially when they had their babies on their back.

Don't I make a cute Bumble Bee?

Emma and Grandma's First Mini-Golf Game - Aug 30, 2009

On our last day of camping the weather finally improved and we were able to catch a game of mini-golf before we left.

Here is Emma taking an aim even if her club is facing the wrong way...

Here is Emma deciding it's easier to just put the ball in the game rather than hit it!

Let's see what else I can do with this club...Oh yeah ride it!

Emma is too tired to finish the game, the heat and the lack of nap finally wore her out. It is 18 holes after all! She observes how Grandma does.

Emma's final sentiment over the game...

Emma's Second Camping Trip - Aug 27-Aug 30, 2009

On my birthday we decided to go on our second family camping trip to camp Odetah in Connecticut. This is Emma's Second camping trip. Her first was almost a year ago on Labor Day. We were also joined by Emma's grandparents. It was Grandma Jasia's first camping trip ever at the ripe age of 61. They both did great despite the fact that we had heavy rain for most of it. On the really bad day we went to Mystic Aquarium so we were able to enjoy the day. We still cooked our own food, had fires and marshmallows every night. Emma also did a much better job sleeping at night than she did a year ago and she didn't take any naps...

Here is a photo of Emma camping last year.


And here is a couple from this year that are similar. What a change a year makes...

Here are some family photo shots. The first is of Grandpa Antoni and Grandma Janina with Emma, and the second is of our little family.

Here we are enjoying some ice cream time at the lodge after some dancing...only grandpa and mom participated. Dad and grandma refused...I guess they forgot their dancing shoes.

Here we are enjoying the fire.

Grandma gives Emma some knee rides that Emma calls "Hopsa-Hopsa".

Emma gets her groove on in Jamaica

Here are some older videos of Emma during our Jamaica trip.
I finally figured out how to add my digital photo camera videos to YouTube. Who knew Picasa did that for you?

The first video is of Emma dancing the night away during an after dinner show courtesy of Sesame Street at the Beaches Boscobel.




This second video is of Emma showing off her musical talent during an impromptu performance during dinner. I am not sure if you can see it but her shirt actually say "Call My Agent"...

Gardening and poop oh my!

The potty training is not getting any better. Still doing great with number 1. Getting no where with number 2. She still poops in her underwear and even pooped in the bathtub the other day. I guess she would go anywhere besides the toilet! Believe me I tried everything I can think of. She is at least doing much better with the constipation. Going every other day so hopefully this means no more horrifically painful episodes. This should help with the training. She did go #2 in the toilet once and I made this BIG deal out of it. We cheered, clapped, sang, called Daddy, got stickers but unfortunately this did not help her continue to do this. I was sure that once she went at least once this would break her but no. I am still being hopeful it will happen soon.

Yesterday we did some much needed yard work. I have had no time to tend to the garden or weed the flower beds so we had a whole bunch of crab grass, weeds and spent flowers to clear out in addition to trying to get the vegetable garden in a semi-decent state. We removed the old salad mix, the dill, and weeds but the garden still doesn't look that well. We have had so much rain and cool weather followed over this past week and a half with very hot humid weather that our tomato plants are huge and so heavy that they bend the heavy duty tomato cages and bend the bamboo sticks we tie them to. The cucumbers all now balling up due to the hot weather and we also got rid of the yellow ones we didn't have time to pick when they were still good. A lot of our large tomatoes got in-rot do to the wet summer- I hear everyone in CT and surrounding areas is having similar issues. Emma really enjoyed eating the cherry, grape, and pear tomatoes and she had no red blotches from them at all. They are much less acidic than the big tomatoes so that may have been why. She loves eating things from the garden. She even tried to bite into an eggplant! Cucumbers and snow peas are still her favorite though. I think next year we will reduce the amount of vegetables I plant because I don't have time to tend to them and pick them when they are ready and a lot of it ends up not being eaten.