Here she is opening her birthday presents.

Later in the day, I brought cupcakes to her daycare.

The teachers at her school were so nice and made a princess hat for her to wear.

She waited until the singing was over and blew out the candles with the help of a friend sitting next to her.

Yum....

Later that night we had dinner with Memaw, Ama and Papa.

On Sunday, we had a party with the rest of the family...

Emmy had a blast and was fast asleep as soon as everyone left.

Thank you so much to everyone for all of the love and support you give!

I am going through the same nostalgia that I think almost every mother does on the eve of their child's birthday. Remembering each of the steps leading up to the birth of their baby... I know that nobody gets as much excitement from these stories as the mother does, but too bad. Here goes...

It is about 10 pm now. Three years ago at this time, I had figured that another day had passed without going in to labor. Just two days prior, my ob had predicted that she would come any day. I had spent every spare second with Jeremy walking, trying to get this baby out. I wish that I loved being pregnant, but the truth is, I just wanted to meet my baby from the day I got the positive pregnancy test (the 9 months of nausea didn't help either).

I went to sleep at about 12 pm that night. Jeremy stayed up watching tv in bed. I was only asleep for about an hour when I felt a contraction (everyone says you will know the difference between a braxton hicks and a "real" contraction and I would have to agree).

It woke me up instantly...I turned to Jeremy (who was still awake) and told him I was in labor. I got out of bed and started to get things ready. My water broke soon after. The contractions were coming very frequently. Within 20 minutes we were headed to the hospital.

By the time that we got the hospital, I was dilated 5 cm and the contractions were coming every minute or more. After some monitoring and deliberating, it was decided that I should have a c-section.

At 4:02 am Emmy came crying into the world. After she was cleaned they brought her to me. I kissed her head and said "she's beautiful!!" and she was...

Currently, I spend most of my time in denial.  I live my life taking care of my beautiful two-year-old daughter...figuring out ways to sneak vegetables into her diet, playing with dollies and keeping up with the constant chaos of toys everywhere.  

But every so often, I am reminded of the struggles that she will likely have to face.  Struggles based on people's lack of information.  I know that when someone uses the phrase "retard" or "retarded", they are not trying to directly attack my daughter.  But these words only serve to perpetuate the notion that people with intellectual disabilities are worthy of jest.  

Please join with me in the national day to end the r-word that is being promoted by the Special Olympics.  

Here is John McGinley supporting the National End the R-Word Day.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7dyueB1C88

One of the skills to accomplish is getting dressed.

It requires a lot of fine and gross motor abilities and because these are Emmy's weakest areas, I haven't thought much about the idea of self-dressing.  

Until this week.  

I had several days off, so I was naturally been doing laundry.  CLEAN laundry was everywhere.  Emmy was having fun.  Pulling various pieces of clothing out of piles of unfolded and stacks of folded clothes.  Somewhere in the midst of the heaps of laundry that she was playing with, she decided to start "dressing" herself.

Ok, no laughing...she is feeling very proud of herself.  She diligently finds our underwear and drapes them around her neck.   The whole process is is hilarious.  Did I mention that the underwear are clean?  She has even started doing this with her own underwear.  She will happily walk around the house, doing her business, with my panties draped like a scarf.  

Should I be worried?   

I wish I could say that I have been relaxing, but the house needed to be cleaned, groceries needed to be bought and I decided to make a bunch of meals to freeze for next semester.  Somewhere in the midst of that, I threw my back out.  The rest of the night has been excruciating and of course Emmy wanted "up" (I couldn't resist).  So now I am trying to find things to keep me occupied that don't require me moving (no T.V. at our house, a story for another time).  

It was nice spending the day with Emmy though.  I miss her incredibly for the weeks leading up to tests.  She seems to grow so fast during those weeks.  Here are a few things that Emmy decided to start doing:

-pointing to objects when asked to

-saying "baby", "bear", "elmo", "poo" (hehehe), "potty", "pillow" (or "eeleop") and "NO!".   Up until this point, when she didn't want to do something, she would say "no, no, no, no" in a sweet little voice that was far from convincing.  But last night, when I asked her to come to me so that I could put on her pj's, she told me in no uncertain terms "NO!"  It took me by surprise, and rather than putting on my stern mommy face, I 

laughed.  Hmmm...I'm still trying to figure how to handle this new "skill".

-she decided that she would start pee-peeing on the potty again.  

-and the biggest news, is that she is WALKING!!!!  Ok, it isn't all the time yet, but she is 

really taking off.  It seems like every day, she is walking more and more (it might have 

something to do with having the right sized shoes, another story for another time).  

Pictures to come...