meeting baby emma

This past weekend, we went to Arizona to see baby Emma and be there for her blessing. It was a very fruitful trip - Greg had a conference in Tucson at University of AZ that he was presenting at and it was also Mother's Day. It was great to spend my sister's first mother's day with her and my mom. I don't know the last time I was able to spend Mother's day with my mom.

Even though Emma is now twice her birth weight at almost 8 pounds, she still looked teeny tiny to us. And she was super cute. She's a good mix of Hyeson and Curtis. Nicholas and Sophia just ate her up and couldn't get enough of her. (And as you can probably tell from the photo above, Emma apparently could get enough of her cousins jiggling her around.) I decided that as big as my babies--ok, maybe just Sophia--were at birth, my baby in utero is probably just as big, if not bigger than Emma. Or I could just be feeling that big. Everyone keeps telling me that I should take a picture of myself while I am pregnant so I remember, especially when they find out that I never really took pictures of myself while I was pregnant the last two times. Perhaps one of these days when I am not grumpy or feeling marginally not huge, and the camera is nearby, I will. I digress.

It was 97 degrees in Arizona - while I know that the weather in Chicago was about half of that over the weekend, I couldn't help feeling that it was still a little too hot for me. I'm not sure I'm cut out for desert living. The kids, on the other hand, loved it. My sister and I took the kids to the park on Friday while Curtis was at work and Greg was finishing up his presentation and it was so nice to hang out with her and watch the kids play. It made me wish that we lived close to each other that such an outing was an everyday thing. Later in the afternoon, we all took the kids swimming and they had a great time. Ok, maybe 97 degrees wasn't so bad after all.

Hyeson and I went shopping for a brunch that she was having for family and friends who were coming to Emma's blessing on Saturday. As I was waiting for her to get ready to go, I realized I had forgotten how long it actually takes to leave the house when you have a newborn. Everytime she got done nursing Emma and tried to put her down to get showered and dressed, Emma was ready to eat again. And Emma likes to eat--often and long. But she's so stinkin' cute, it's hard to be mad at her, even when she get all fussy. And when she spits up all over her auntie.

My parents got into town Saturday night and they were excited to see all their grandkids, minus the Shanghai bunch. Hopefully we'll be able to get together as one big bunch over the summer. Emma's blessing was lovely - Curtis and Hyeson were a little worried that she might cry through the whole thing, but she was mostly asleep and very quiet, just as we suspected. She's a good baby. We miss her already and can't wait to see her again! And when we got home from church, we had a chance to take some pictures--it had been a while since we actually took any of all of us together!