Funny Girl!

Emily has always had a great sense of humor, but lately the teachers at school have really been commenting on how funny she is. She just loves to get a laugh out of people and has started to develop a repertoire of things that she knows will work for her. Even her little boyfriend, Andrew, has been saying to the teachers, "Emily is so funny." Yesterday when I dropped her off the two of them got into this Three Stooges routine where Andrew would pretend like he was going to poke her in the eye with his finger, and then she would collapse onto the floor, pretending that he had knocked her over. I know what you're thinking - That's too elaborate. There's no way that is actually what was going on - but it really was. Honest.

(Emily after Abbie dressed her up in a ballet costume)

They also commented to me today that Emily is one of the few kids who will actually sit still in art class and really concentrate on what she is doing. She has started to draw lots of pictures of the family. One that I picked up today was a picture of the 4 of us in a snowstorm, and she had actually drawn each of us with a big blue cloud at the top of the picture. Here are a couple of my other favorites:

Emily is also very good at picking up on the emotions of the people around her and diffusing them. She has a couple of classic lines that she uses strategically. One line, which is probably similar to something that she has heard us say before, is for times when someone (usually Abbie or Chad) gets an irritated tone of voice. She'll step in and say, "Now we're having a nice night with no fusses." just to remind us all to keep the fussiness in check. Her other lines are ones that she tends to pull on me when she can tell that I am getting irritated with her requests. For example, when I am antsy to get her to bed, and I start to sigh about one of her requests (which I know are designed to stall bedtime), she'll say, "Mom, you're my best friend." or "Mom, I love you." She just knows that it will completely melt me. Such a little charmer.

Finally, in an effort to get Emily to try new foods, we have started what we call, "Emily's Food Adventure." Basically, it is just a piece of paper where we record the new foods that she has tried and whether she liked them or not. It seems to be encouraging her to try stuff. So far, we have gotten her to eat corn, green and red peppers, caramel apples (all of which she liked), a piece of steak (which was so horrid to her that she dropped it out of mouth almost as soon as it went in), and balsamic vinegar for dipping bread in (liked it). For a kid whose diet is 90% PB&J, pasta, egg, raspberries, and yogurt, this is big progress!