Emma's First Friends!

   Last week was such an exciting time for us! "Us" is mostly referring to me and my friend, Jenn, who lives in Wisconsin and has been my pen pal for over 17 years since we got to know each other in a MySpace group. Their girls have been looking at pictures of "baby Emma" and talking about her since she was born. Jenn's second daughter (Arla) was born three months after Emma. So I was so excited when Jenn told me she was bringing the girls down to Disney and then taking them to the beach the next day- on a day I had off. I invited ourselves to meet up with her and she was thrilled! Jenn and I had only met one time before, also in Orlando in May 2019, but last time she only brought her first daughter (Nova) with her. Arla was only 1 & 1/2 at the time, so that was understandable. 

   On Thursday, May 20th last week, after I worked a four hour overtime shift, we got things packed up in the car, including the Beau Jardin wagon that Michael bought for our Hilton Head trip last month, which we will always use for beach trips now. We met Jenn and the girls at Lori Wilson park in Cocoa Beach at 2:30 and after everyone got ready (we waited until we got there to put Emma into her swimmy diaper and bathing suit) we headed to the beach! I loved that Nova and Arla who are now a couple months over 5 1/2 and 3 1/2 years old did not do the weird shy thing that kids sometimes do. They were sweet and friendly, asked lots of questions, and showed off the pride flags they picked out at Target on the way, along with their new beach toys! 

   Arla was very nice and let me borrow her little Frozen shovel when I asked for it so I could fill up the bags faster to hold down the tent. It was hard not to laugh though because I could feel her watching me, like "Are you almost done? I really want to work on my sand castle." But instead she came over and asked if I needed help! Nova spent a lot of time playing in the ocean (the whole point of her day!), so I was surprised when Arla preferred to hang out in the tent with Michael and Emma. She was in the water a good bit too, but she was also asking Michael a lot of questions, which he did a great job answering in a way she seemed to understand. Some questions were about Emma and her medical equipment, other were more random like her talking about a loose tooth she had and how one day all of her teeth will fall out at the same time. I replied, "Oh, that will be cute!" 

   Arla collected shells and then gave them to Emma. I thought it was the cutest thing ever! Every time she did it, I quickly grabbed my phone to take a picture to capture the moment of interaction between the two. Emma would take the shell from her.. and try to put it in her mouth (she just likes to rub things against her teeth). This was Emma's first time "playing" with another kid! She had been around other kids before, kind of, like when we go to doctor appointments and she sees other kids or when we go to the zoos or pumpkin patch places and there are lots of kids around. She was around Lindsey's three boys in October at Daytona Beach, but they didn't play together. 

   We took friend and family photos before packing up our things and then going to dinner. The place we decided on (Jenna's Breezeway) was temporarily closed, which I didn't see on Google when looking it up. So we went to my other suggestion: Brano's Italian Grill and that ended up working out great! The food was really good, Arla loved her "spaghetti-o's and meatballs", and Nova practiced writing her letters and names. 

Emma kept grabbing Nova's ponytail, which is why I was laughing so much!!
& note Arla's fist fulls of sand that she threw like confetti into the air later.

   After the girls were done eating they played with Emma some more and Emma was thrilled that they wanted to play her favorite game with her! The "in and out/ push and pull" game with her suction catheter. The girls did suuuch a good job listening and being careful to pull the catheter out slowly like Michael told them to when Emma handed it to them. **The suction catherer was not turned on to do any suctioning when they were playing with her.** I laughed when Arla said, "This is a fun game!" because Emma wants us to play it with her for an hour every day! Haha. Nova also asked and seemed interested about Emma's formula and G-tube. 

Emma handing the suction to Arla by tapping it on her hand to get her attention.

   The next friend plans we have include going to Alana's house at some point to see if Flint will play with Emma, and for her to see two big horses up close. Baby Wyatt and their dog Oliver will be there too. And **finally** meeting her cousins, Peyton and Helena, at the beginning of July. She was supposed to meet them in March of last year, but that trip got cancelled since it was right when Covid started shutting down businesses, and then later my brother's work schedule got switched so me and him stopped having the same days off and we couldn't do family trips on the same weekends anymore. I'm interested to see how the interaction Peyton and Helena have with "Baby Emma" compares to Arla and Nova's! :)