Zoo Life

The pure joy of riding on Papa's back.

Ellie's first top right tooth popped through today!


Since the Zoo Keepers wouldn't let Em and I pet the bears, we were happy enough to roam among the goats!

Blueberries!

Playing the African Drums at the Zoo.

Fletcher women!

It's an Emma-saurus!

I suspect even the biggest Grizzly would meet it's match with Emmy! =)

Chicken watching! Who knew the zoo had chickens?!

Yeehaaa!

My little Wildflower

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What a fun day we had today! Tony was home so we got up early (which is normal!) and picked up Tena (Tony's mom) to head to the Oregon Zoo in Portland. We had such a great time looking at all the animals and showing Emerson everything! She seemed to be the most taken with the giraffes and the goats. Ellie has been teething heavily the last couple of days so she has been fussy but I put her in our front pack and she was happy as could be all tucked against me looking at the world around her. We brought a picnic lunch and left shortly after so that the kids could have a decent nap at home this afternoon. We had two VERY tired girls, but what fun!

After nap, Tony and I dropped the kids off with Ron and Tena and we went out on a date. It was very nice to just visit with each other and not worry about the time or what our girls were up to! We went to dinner and a movie and it's crazy how fast it went and now we are back home, jammies on, and I'm waiting for Ellie to wake up for her late night snack.

I thought I would also write about our latest "adventure" with Emerson as I can already see a particular theme with my entries and it gets me thinking "what next?!"... Here's the latest:

The other morning I woke up before everyone else and went downstairs to get breakfast started. I kind of smelled something odd after a while but couldn't really put my finger on it, so I ignored it. Then, I went to the front door to let Sydney out and the smell was really strong and and yet it STILL didn't really occur to me what it was! I heard Emmy talking quietly to me from the top of the stairs but I wasn't paying full attention until I heard her say "I DID IT MAMA! I DID IT ALL BY MYSELF! COME AND LOOK MAMA!" and then it completely hit me what that smell was...NAIL POLISH! The realization made me run as fast as I could up the stairs (this darn fracture boot really slows me down though!) and when I got to the top I admit, I freaked out. "NOOOOOOO" "OMIGOSH EMERSON!" Tony yells from bed, "WHAT HAPPENED?!" I was still not of sound mind and couldn't even form into words what my eyes were looking at! I think I was just stuttering! I did recover long enough to grab one of the tipped over bottles and put the lid on it and two others but by the time Tony got to the scene, Em was crying, and I was wanting to! Looking at it now, I feel bad that I lost my cool because Emmy really was so proud of herself for painting her own toenails (and she did a REALLY great job!) but our carpet is relatively new and we never even let anyone wear shoes in our house so the fact that we had nail polish all over the carpet was upsetting. Especially knowing that it is one of the worst things to spill on a carpet! I was also mad at myself because it is MY fault that she even had access to my nail polish! I should've know better!

Anyhow, Tony scrubbed and scrubbed and got some of of up but I think we are just going to have to live with "Glamorous Gold" and "Not Just A Waitress" red as part of the color scheme for our carpet.

Now, true to form, Emmy never does anything just once, we had to have TWO things go wrong that morning! So about a half hour later Emmy came up to me to let me know that we needed to buy her more toothpaste. My red flags started raising but denial is a funny thing... So I said "Em, we just bought you toothpaste". She responded, "My toothpaste is all gone Mama! I made a BIG mess on my bed". I looked at her and asked "Are you kidding me?" (knowing full well that Em can't even comprehend how to "kid" at this point in her development!) She calmly replied "I'm not kidding Mama!"

I did the execution walk slowly to her bedroom knowing that I probably wasn't going to like what I was going to see. Sure enough, toothpaste was finger painted all over her sheets and comforter. She is artistic, I'll give her that!

But, THAT can be washed.

If anyone doesn't think that God has a sense of humor, has never met my beautiful, strong-willed, independent, artistic little wildflower named Emerson! I wouldn't want her any other way...

Tony and I think we heard my mom's laughter that day... =)