Girl Scout Cookie Time

This is Abby's first year in Girl Scouts and her first year selling Girl Scout Cookies. As a troop we have been talking about cookie sales, how we are going to spend and save our money and the prizes that they can earn. Abby has been really excited and I have been really nervous! I am just hoping that I can pull this off as a leader with our busy schedule! We started out by ordering a 150 boxes so we have some serious selling to do.

Abby has been practicing her speech that she is going to say as she is selling. The first weekend Abby, Caleb (her cookie manager) and I went door to door in the entire neighborhood selling cookies and stomping through ankle deep snow. She had pretty good luck and for the most part she remembered what she was suppose to say. I think Caleb was more into it than Abby was! He kept pushing her to sell more.

 

Our first booth was kinda a bust. We were suppose to be at Hy Vee inside but when we showed up that morning the Hy Vee had closed 2 weeks earlier so we sat Outside at a Dollar General. It was freezing and no one was very into it. At this point I was feeling like this 4 week long cookie season could feel very long. I was hoping that the booths started to go better.

As expected Cookie Season was a ton of work and most of the kudos go to my co leader Laura who ran a ton of booths, managed all of our cookies and was a cookie cupboard for our entire area. Amazing or Crazy not sure which.

Abby ended up doing an amazing job selling cookies and ended with a total of 450 boxes sold! Our troop as a whole sold an amazing amount of cookies and we made 1,800 to spend as a troop. I was thrilled with how well our first year Daisy's did! Robb was thrilled that our family could stop funding a Daisy troop.

Snow Days

We didn't get much snow this year (I am not complaining!) but the kids have been dying to use their snow boards and sleds so we headed out to Pioneer park for a little sledding fun with

Tasha and her kids.

 

Abby and Lennon sledding

The boys. Eventually Bryce, Caleb and Ezra had moved to the hill as far away from the moms as they could get. They had to go to the one with the ramps so they could get air. Hmm sounds like an ER visit waiting to happen.

 

Abel and Emerson were good sports and the weather was nice enough to have them out for a little while.

All the kids!

Emerson is 1

 

 

I have said this about all of our kids, but I really can't believe Emerson is 1 already! This year has flown. I will say that I have kind of been dreading this day. Emmy turning 1 makes it too real that my last baby is growing up right before our eyes and we can't slow it down. She is a delightful baby and although a 4th child has made our already busy lives ridiculously crazy, our family wouldn't be complete without her. Everyone has fallen head over heels in love with this little cutie. Bryce and Caleb love to play with her, are always willing to watch her and just plain love her. Abby is enjoying being a little mommy to her. She likes to tell Emmy what to do and she likes to tell everyone how to take care of Emmy. She likes being the big sister.

 

Emerson is 21 pounds (48%), 29.75 inches tall (69%) and her head is 17.36 inches (21%). She is our smallest kiddo for her age. She has chubby cheeks and thunder thighs even though she is only in the 48% she is chunky and compact. She has perfected her walking and toddles all over the place. She loves to sneak up the steps any chance she can get and just recently learned how to go down the steps backwards with help. She had pretty impressive balance and likes to stand on her little cars and dance. She enjoys playing with her kitchen set and getting into anything that she isn't suppose to! She likes to sneak dog food and if no one is looking she likes to sneak in the bathroom and starts throwing stuff into the toilet and fishing it back out.

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She is a great little eater and is transitioning from breastmilk at daycare to 2% milk. So far I am still sending the milk that I pump at work but then the daycare supplements with 2%. She no longer uses bottles at daycare and does a pretty good job with the sippy cup. At home she is pretty vocal about wanting her "ba bas". Every time I hold her she pulls the front of my shirt down and tries to crawl under my shirt while she loudly says "My BaBas". This makes Robb think that she is getting too old for nursing. I will admit, it is going to be hard to be done nursing her. I love that bonding time! She eats about any table food that we make. Some of her favorites are spaghetti, noodles of any kind, cutie oranges, crackers and green beans. She hates having someone fed her so we let her eat about everything as a finger food even though it is a disaster sometimes. She is just starting to use a spoon and does a pretty good job. She picks up food, loads it onto the spoon and then puts it in her mouth. She absolutely refuses to wear a bib which drives me crazy but I have given up fighting with her and instead I just us a lot of spray n wash.

Emerson does daycare 3-4 days a week with Andrea. Daycare has worked out better than I ever could have imagined. Emmy loves it there and does great there. Their is a little boy named Bo that is just a couple months younger than she is and they have fun together. Andrea also has 2 dogs that love kids and Emmy can't get enough of Carl and Lola. In the evenings she gets a little needy and likes to be held a lot. Usually by me if I am home. Don't get me wrong, I love being her favorite person but sometimes it would be nice to have to 2 hands to cook supper. Robb is the bath giver in our family so he has been working on getting her to like the water in preparation for boating and swimming this summer. She really loves her baths.

Sleeping is still a challenge for Emerson! Mainly because I can't say no to that cute little face in the middle of the night. I have let her continue to eat about every 4 hours throughout the night and until very recently we would try to put her down in her crib 2-3 times before she was sound asleep enough to stay.  Recently we have been putting her in her crib and making her cry it out if she wakes up. However, I haven't had the heart to take away nursing at night so she still wakes up around 1 and eats and then just sleeps with us the rest of the night. She still takes a morning and afternoon nap at daycare but when she is home it is usually too loud and she only gets one nap.

Emmy started talking a couple months ago and has a couple words that she has been using for a while now but doesn't seem very interested in adding to her vocabulary. She has been saying pupu, mama, dada, baba, and Hi for a while. Recently she has added bye bye, Ya, vroom, bubu (brothers). She understands a lot more than she can say. She knows her name, no, danger, come here, eat, drink, bye bye, where is Abby, Bryce, Caleb, Penny. She also likes to copy what you are doing which is really cute. She likes to pick up my phone and yell HI into it. I guess that is what I look like when I answer the phone. She likes to help take laundry out of the dryer, put on peoples shoes and play with the kids toys.

This time around having a little kid and trying to keep up with big kid activities has been hard. Emmy will be tired of going to all of the kids games by the time she is in preschood! I feel like this time around we are pretty confident in our parenting and we don't feel as pressured to do things by the book ( or maybe we have just given up. Kidding) By now we know that she won't sleep in our bed forever even if we don't break the habit now. We have accepted the fact that we can't keep a  schedule that is very baby friendly and we just go with it. What else can you do. Sorry Emmy I hope you don't grow up feeling drug around. Instead I hope you see it as us making you part of our family from day we brought you home.

As hard as it is too see my baby grow up it is also very fun to see the little person you have become in a year. I love your personality and easy going nature. You mean the world to us Emerson Paige Lutz. Happy Birthday Baby Girl!

Slumber Party

This year for her party Abby really wanted to have a sleepover. She invited 4 girls but only 3 were able to come. She had it all planned out. They had McDonalds Happy Meals for supper, opened gifts, ate Frozen cupcakes, went to a movie and then stayed up ridiculously late.

She had Addison, Emily and Randi over.

The girls were so cute! It was the first sleepover Abby had ever hosted and it turned out great. However, I didn't realize how late 5-6 year olds would want to stay up! I decided to sleep in the basement with them just in case anyone needed anything or in case someone got scared I would be available.

This was breakfast the next morning.

Friends at the movie. We saw a fairy and troll movie. The movie was painful to sit through but the girls liked it. Robb, Bryce, Caleb and I felt like it was the longest 90 min of our life.

Happy 6th Birthday Abby

Abby turned 6 this year which doesn't seem possible. She has been the "baby"of the family for as long as she has been alive and just this year has had to give up that title. She was alright with not being the baby anymore and instead turned into the little mommy of the family. She is really caring and likes to take care of everyone. She says that she wants to take care of animals or babies when she is bigger.

 This year she started Kindergarten and I lost my little shopper. We used to run errands and do all of our shopping together. A very proud moment was when she told Robb we got all of our purchases on sale. She is doing great in Kindergarten and recently got her Smart Cookie award for knowing all of her letters and sounds and also the Brownie Points award for being able to write her numbers to 100. She has started to read simple books and has been bringing home math sheets and is doing a great job with them. She joined Girl Scouts this year, which she loves. A lot of her friends are in Girl Scouts with her and we do a lot of crafts so it is all right up her alley. She played soccer last fall and plans to play again this spring, I really think she would like dance or gymnastics but she is too nervous to try them.

Abby is really crafty and artsy. She sometimes is easily distracted and flighty which can drive me crazy at times but that is just her personality. She loves to paint, craft, do clay, playdough, beads and any other craft project. She also loves music and makeup. She got a karaoke machine for Christmas and has been singing up a storm.

This year has been a bit of a challenge for me because Abby has become quite the diva about her clothing. She completely refuses to wear jeans. The closest thing to jeans she will wear is jeggings. She really prefers to wear yoga pants almost every day. She also doesn't like to wear dresses anymore so that is always fun to convince her when she has to dress up.  Most mornings that Robb has to get her ready for school are pretty interesting, I think. She can never figure out what she wants to wear and if you rush her she only moves slower. Robb and I joke that she has 2 speeds: Turtle and Dead Turtle. This year she learned how to put her hair up in a low ponytail so Robb doesn't have to fix her hair on days that I work.

She is still a fairly adventurous eater for her age, although I think she has become a little more picky lately. She still prefers to not eat anything that is very spicy and meat still isn't her favorite.  She loves chocolate like her mom and tries to sneak sweets. She loves fruit and eats a ton of it. So much that we have to limit it so she doesn't spoil her meals. At school they really stress the importance of drinking milk and Abby has taken that to heart. If she hasn't had a least 2 glasses of milk for the day she reminds you that her bones are not going to be strong enough.

We have finally after 6 years gotten to a point where Abby sleeps in her bed by herself consistently. Sad but true. She has to sleep all tucked in like a burrito and she has to have her Teddy that protects her. This special Teddy was a bear that I had when I was little and I gave to her out of desperation one night. My selling point was that he had kept me safe for 32 years so he is a professional. She bought it, so now we just have to make sure not to ever lose it!

Abby adds joy, drama and fun to our family and I can't imagine our family without this major dose of girly that she has brought to our lives.

Happy Birthday Abigail!

On her actual birthday I went to eat with her at school and brought her a special lunch and cupcake.

She got to open gifts when Robb got home from work. She got the Anna doll from Frozen that she had been wanting.

Since we had already had a cake the weekend before we let her choose where she wanted to get a snack. She chose Cherry on Top and she even wore her birthday crown from school. Love It!