Mommy’s Mini-Me!

Pretty girl wearing a new dress to school this morning! Uncle Keith & Aunt Suzanne got her this dress, that even came with a matching headband attached! When I put it back on her head at school (it had gotten messed up in the car), she said, “this is a weird headband.” I said, “no it’s not weird, you’re just used to those little clips you’ve been wearing lately.” And she was just like, “oh. okay,” and then ran away to head inside! haha 🙂

Running off after talking about her headband…

I’ll be living off this stuff this week, praying I stay well for the Singing Christmas Tree this upcoming weekend! (Oh and gargling things, like random concoctions that Elton John supposedly uses, of hot water, cider vinegar & honey. Did this last night, and yuck. But hoping it helps!)

On my lunch break, I went on a rare shopping trip. I had earned $15 Kohl’s’ cash on Black Friday that was set to expire today, and you know this bargain-lover wasn’t about to let that happen! So I went with the intention of using it to buy one present, and I ended up finding presents for five different people on my list. And then I earned $10 more in Kohl’s cash! I also gassed up my car (I was running on less than empty, a trait I inherited from my Mama), and grabbed a sub from Jimmy John’s on my way back to work.

I mentioned here a few weeks ago that I was interviewing for a promotion within my section at work. Last week, I found out I didn’t get it, but my work friend (and current counter-part) did get it. Honestly, I’m totally fine with that, and I know I’ll have more opportunities in the future! As a result of that though, people were moving around offices today, and one of them decided they didn’t want their microwave, so I gladly scooped it up when offered to me! I rearranged a few things on this credenza to make room for it, and it fits perfectly. Now I have my own microwave & fridge, and I’m considering getting another electric kettle to bring to make hot tea… But I guess I could just use our shared Keuring for that.

On a random note, I read this article in the NYT today about Holocaust lovers/survivors that were reunited for the first time in like, 75 years, and it was amazing. And I cried.

Emerson’s report said she had a good day at school today. But when I got that second photo below of her doing her hand-prints, I thought I was looking at a picture of myself from that age! That little face just looks so much like mine!

I sent a text to my Mama (who has of course always said she was my baby twin), about how much I thought she looked like me, and she made this little collage of the exact photo of myself I thought Emmie looked like. What do y’all think?! She is Mommy’s Mini-Me!

In only a few listens, I finished a super short book of short story collections written by Nora Ephron. It was cute and funny, and I literally laughed out loud a few times. It was a good, quick little palette cleanser from some of the longer, more dramatic ones I’ve listened to lately. So after I finished that one, I started this new one today.

While I was starting to get dinner ready, Emmie got to play with some new Christmas decorations. These are actually hand-me-downs from my boss Tammy. Her girls used to love them, but they’re a bit too old for them now, so she thought Emmie would like playing with them. And she did!

And Emerson spotted Sheppy all on her own tonight, without any prompting. She’s getting good at this game!

She also loves standing on her stool, watching Mommy do things in the kitchen.

Tonight we had the Sloppy joes that were supposed to get made last week but I forgot meat (that Jeff stopped to get beef for on the way home today), queso blanco Velveeta shells & cheese, & green beans.

Emerson ate a half of a sandwich, and 2.5 good sized servings of cheese noodles. And probably zero green beans. She’s not so much a fan of the beans…

After dinner, I arranged some ornaments and penguins and a yummy pine-scented candle in my dough bowl, and I think it’s pretty festive and cute. And then we put a few ornaments back on the tree that she had taken off a few days ago, and decided to collect all of her Christmas books in this cute little bucket.

We also remembered to do the chocolate advent calendar for the first time, that Grammy gave her. We were 9 days behind, but I only let her have 2 pieces of chocolate.

And we also fixed up the old advent calendar from the 90’s, that my Mama passed down to me a few weeks ago! The old dowel rod broke a while back (literally years ago), and so it finally got taken out. We actually had a spare dowel rod in the house leftover from another project so now that Jeff is finally recovering and back in the land of the mostly-healthy, he fixed it up for us with the dowel rod and some twine.

We decided to hang it in the hallway on some empty wall space, low enough so Emmie could reach it all on her own every day. She also really loved helping Daddy hammer the nail in!

And with that, I think we’re actually done with our decorating for the year. I decided to go a little bit simpler this year, so we have more in the bins, but I’m not going to use it all. So now we just need to put away the boxes and bins.

Bedtime went relatively well tonight, and she was super sweet as usual. We found some new music to do for lullabies, and she’s loving it. It’s called “Rockabye Baby” and the songs are lullaby versions of popular pop & rock songs, like from Queen or The Beetles. Tonight, we listened to a few of the Queen covers.

I decided to blog first tonight, so now I have to go wash the dishes and clean the kitchen. Jeff has been working on some long-overdue laundry tonight, trying to catch up a bit. So, after I wash the dishes, it’ll be tea-time and Christmas-movie-time.