With only writing a total of nine posts last year, I missed out on a lot of updates, including Emma's 4th birthday!! I am going to throw in a few (okay, a bunch) of my own birthday pictures too, as my birthday is the day before hers. But since this is an Emma blog, I'll post about her birthday first.
Her fourth birthday, at our old house in Orlando, was another small family one. (We hate you, Covid. Her second birthday party in 2019 was so fun, with lots of guests!) Michael's parents came down on Thursday, June 10th, 2021, as did both of my parents. I decided for her 4th birthday that I wanted it to be a "4th of July" theme because of how much she loves watching fireworks. And then we just kept the decorations up for another month! It was nice. I like the house being decorated for different holidays. It seems to spread a blanket of fun over the whole house. I remember being at Hobby Lobby with my mom a few weeks prior, her helping me pick out party decorations.
First, here are some pictures from when Michael's parents arrived on Thursday. We lived in this house for a little over five years and it was a really great first home, which Michael made a lot of upgrades to! His parents stayed in a hotel for the weekend, but our next house will have a guest bedroom upstairs. Growing up I always wanted a two story house because both sets of my cousins had houses with multiple floors, including basements, in Georgia and Indiana.
Skipping ahead to Sunday morning, Emma's 4th birthday:
These joyful balloons were leftover from my early birthday/ super fun celebration with my mom at the beginning of the week. I'll talk about that at the very end of the post. My parents arrived to Emma's party at 1pm. Hugs and handshakes ensued. & Please note how our four wonderful guests graciously complied with my request for them to wear red, white, and/or blue clothing to match the theme! Even Sasha was dressed up with her patriotic bandana.
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| At one point Emma was crawling on the ground near my dad and started pulling on his leg hairs- haha! |
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| Michael's dad loves to stay busy when he comes to visit, and on Saturday he planted these pretty new pink and white flowers in the photo above. |
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| We had to move some of the presents onto the chairs once Grammy and Grandpa (my parents) added their presents to the pile for the good girl. |
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| *No oxygen tanks exploded in the lighting of this candle.* |
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| Puppy Biscuits! Still one of her favorites. |
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| She LOVED this 100 Words book that my mom gave her. She played with it for a few minutes, then Michael moved it away to open more presents and she crawled to the book to play with it some more! Haha. They made two other books (100 Animals and 100 Places) that she got for Christmas. |
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| She did a really great job at grabbing and ripping the wrapping paper. |
Remember, when you see these pictures that this was four and a half months before her leg surgery. It's interesting to go back and see all of those "crazy leg" pictures, and how her legs bending the right way now (for the most part) actually doesn't look weird after four years of seeing them the other way.
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| ^^ This is one of the big toys that Michael bought for her, but it was weird because it didn't talk or sing in proper English so I asked him to get her something different. He exchanged it for two smaller toys, one of them being DJ Panda (below). I liked that one a lot, but he died before we moved. His speakers were messed up? It wasn't a battery issue. I might get her another one for Christmas? |
On Wednesday, June 16th, Emma had an occupational therapy session with Meredith, who we have known since Day 10 in the NICU. She was so sweet and brought Emma a bag of birthday goodies too! Emma had therapy sessions at home with her from December 2020 to right before we moved in September 2021, but again, because of my lack of posts last year, I think I only showed her one time in our post about moving to Sarasota. Goodness. I'll add it to my list! ;)
I linked her first and second birthdays earlier in this post, but here is the post from Emma's third birthday in 2020, at more of the "height of Covid", so nobody came down and we just celebrated virtually. I actually put way too much unnecessary stress on myself to constantly keep updating Facebook throughout the day with pictures and videos from her birthday "because I promised everyone that I would". I should have just posted everything the next day and relaxed with family time. That year (the past three years!) have already been stressful enough.
And here's the link if you need a refresher on >> her Birth Story! The original birth day. :)
Now back to Friday, June 11th, 2021- celebrating my 34th birthday with Michael's parents. I had gotten a massage earlier in the day, and Michael was helping his mom with a new type of art (sticks to make crosses, covered in Epoxy and little pearls to give them depth) to add to the paintings that she has been selling for a few years on her Etsy page, which is called Dancing with Emma. I love her angel paintings! The proceeds go towards Emma's medical bills. We are hoping to have a really special trip happening in November revolving around these paintings. All of my fingers are crossed!! :)
For dinner we went to Brio Italian Grille at the Mall at Millenia. I ordered the spinach and artichoke dip for all of us to share, and the sausage, pepperoni and ricotta flatbread as my meal. I was surprised that it came as a huge, round thin crust pizza instead of the usual long rectangle that other restaurants serve, but both items were so yummy! Then Mrs. Patty (Michael's mom) waited in line with me to get a couple pieces of cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory because that is usually always my go-to for birthday "cake".
And going back just a smidge further, when I mentioned that "early birthday/ super fun celebration with my mom at the beginning of the week". I booked a tiny house for us for two nights in Willison (21 miles South of Gainesville). The first one we had ever stayed in after years of being so in awe of them! It was such a fun time. I really need to make a full post over on my "Rachel blog" that I don't update anymore. But it has 564 posts, geez! A lot of them being from 2013 when we lived in California for 11 months. Anyway, here are a few tiny house pictures from Homestead Tiny Resort.
Over the months last summer, I had been hoarding the self care subscription boxes I had been receiving in the mail and wrapping them for myself because I didn't know how many presents I would get. Emma definitely gets priority now, and one year- either in 2019 or 2020, I only got one present (from Michael) and it made me sad. So lately I have been getting my own presents just in case. I am a quantity over quality kind of person. I just like ripping the paper. That's the exciting part. Feeling special and deserving. Spoiled too I guess. **Note: He has done WAY better the past two years! He also decorated so nicely for me while I was gone.** Anyway, I do like Emma helping me open all those packages. It's so cute to watch her look at each item, or see which one she is interested in picking up first, so that's what we did the day I got back from the tiny house on June 9th.
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| It's always interesting when you can see her stoma (trach hole). ^^ |
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