11 Months Old!!

Normally when I do a blog about Emily hitting an age milestone I create a list of all the wonderful things that Emily is now capable of. I am going to break from this little tradition for this new post as most of the stuff she can now do is the same as at the ten month mark, plus at this late stage she is almost ONE YEAR OLD! It seems that the few small markers of eleven months will pale in comparison to the next milestone, so why compete? With any luck, the next "look what Emily can do" blog will be filled with wonderful things. For now I will settle for catching up and telling the tale of the one MAJOR thing that happened just days after she hit 11 Months.

I start this tale by telling you about our plans for the Saturday after November 14th, the day that she became 11 Months Old. We were going to start the day by visiting with Great Bob, make a quick stop at the zoo, and go get Emily's 11 Month pictures taken. Sounds like a pretty good family Saturday, doesn't it? One thing we have learned in the last 11 months is that no plans are permanent until after they happen; Emily often makes plans that we know nothing about, and can do little to change. It seems that today (the Saturday after the 14th that is) was going to be one of those days. It all started pretty much as planned . . . we slept until Emily got up, changed her diaper, made her a bottle for breakfast, and Christa started getting the accoutrements needed for traveling with Emily put together. This is where Emily started to veer off the course of our original plan . . . you see after her bottle, we were going to give her a bath, and then get everyone ready to leave. Emily, however, decided that now was an excellent time to get really sick for the first time. I will spare you the gory details, but it was pretty gross. Emily proceeded to get sick every couple of minutes for about the next 90 minutes (poor little girl!). We were pretty freaked out! We bundled Emily up and headed out to the doctor's office. Unfortunately, they did not have any open appointments, so they sent us over to the Emergency Room for what turned into a 6 HOUR visit.

We had a really great time at the Emergency Room. All of the doctors, nurses, and x-ray techs loved her. They all kept stopping by, just to see her smile. She smiled at the male nurses who were hooking her up to machines and getting her vitals. She smiled at the x-ray techs who had to give her a chest x-ray. She even smiled at the lady who gave her a catheter to get a urine sample. She smiled at the people who kept taking her temperature the hard way. In short, she kept smiling at everybody. It turns out that she had a stomach virus, and at this point, was only the first member of the family to get it. She would soon pass it on to me, Christa, Grandpa B, Grandma B, Aunt Susie, Auntie Mandy, Grandma Kathy, and Uncle Carl. It is comforting to know that even at this early age, she has learned to share.

We managed to reschedule her picture appointment for later in the week (an amusing side note here is that her regular photographer was then out with a stomach virus). We also managed to go visit Great Bob on the following weekend.

So there you have it, the tale of Emily's first REAL illness. It was a blast and I only wish that you all could have shared it with us.

"Daddy, do you see all of my new animals? The doctors and nurses are so nice here!"

"Come here, Pelican. I want to give you a kiss and then throw you on the floor."

Giving all of her animals kisses and then throwing them on the floor must have worn Emily out. I think it wore Daddy out too. Aren't they cute?

Such a big girl.

Grandma Kathy thinks that Emily looks like Grandma B in this picture. (Emily does have a very mischievous look about her in this picture. I wonder if there are any large Yogi Bears taking the place of any religious icons around the Elgin area.)

She just gets cuter and cuter. How does she do this?

I wonder what she was thinking about when this picture was taken. She looks like she's really concentrating on something.

What you don't see in this picture is the little cupcake that had been in the pig's mouth. Emily was looking at it, which would have made a very cute picture, but she flung it out of view right before this picture was taken. What a goofball!