I recently put up a new photo album covering a brief visit by Stephanie’s sister, when Emma got to open yet another birthday present.  You can also see our newly-painted living room in these pictures—it’s a kinda tan color now, instead of boring white.  There are also some pictures of our trip to the beach, but we didn’t take that many pictures this year.

It’s time again for some new pictures and videos of Emma.  I added two new albums to the photos page.  First, Emma’s second first-birthday party.  That’s right, Emma got to celebrate her first birthday twice—once with family and then again with friends.  And second, we have a set of photos from our recent trip to Myrtle Beach, which we took in the last week before I started my new job.

Beyond that, I have four new videos for you.  Here is a video from a month and a half ago, showing Emma climbing the stairs.  We happened to catch her descending the stairs properly for the first time while we were recording this video.  Nowadays she can go all the way down the stairs with no problem.

Next, we have a series of scenes in which Stephanie and I try to get Emma to play the drums in Guitar Hero.  We had some success, but I think Stephanie and me end up playing the drums more than Emma does!

Now we get to the afore-mentioned beach trip.  Nothing particularly special about this video, it’s just Emma wandering around on the beach for fifty-nine seconds.  Enjoy!

And to finish this off, we have another demonstration of Emma’s musical inclinations.  We never taught her to dance, but we found that whenever fast music would come on during TV shows or video games, Emma would start dancing.  So I tried to capture it on video, and I was mostly successful.

It’s hard to believe it, but Emma turned a year old on Sunday.  She is now walking like a pro.  There are two new photo albums available: miscellaneous photos of Emma over the last three months, and Emma’s first birthday party.

And if that’s not enough, I’ve got three videos for you.  The first one shows Emma’s progress in learning to walk over the past few months.

Next, we have Emma’s first experience with birthday cake.  She didn’t like it very much!  I’m sure that’ll change over time.

And lastly, we have a video of Emma opening presents.  She got practice at this last Christmas, but now she’s really good at it!

We woke up this morning to find our yard blanketed with an inch or two of snow!  Of course, this meant we needed to take Emma out for her first sledding experience.

I’ve put up a new album of snow photos, which you should certainly check out.  We also took some video of the experience, which I am posting below.  Enjoy!

As promised, more pictures of Emma have been put online.  I added a few new pictures to the “Autumn 2008” album, starting with this photo.  There is also a Christmas 2008 photo album, with subalbums for each of the times we celebrated Christmas.

I have put up nineteen new images of Emma being cute in Autumn.  Hope you enjoy.

I also have three new videos to share with you.  First, we have Emma trying to figure out how to use a sippy cup for the first time.

Next, we catch Emma on camera during a chatty moment.  She has a lot of these, but she seems to get shy around other people and around the camera, so a lot of you haven’t been able to see this side of her.

Lastly, we have a video of Emma trying to eat an apple.  While she has a few teeth that have broken through the gum line, she’s not quite up to the task of eating an apple.  The other voice you hear in this one is Emma’s Aunt Heather.

Hope you enjoyed!

A whole new set of photos has been added to the photos page.

These pictures cover a day at the pool, Emma’s first experience eating food from a spoon, and a Labor Day weekend trip to Edisto Island and Charleston, SC with Stephanie’s parents.

Enjoy!

For those of you who like photos, I put a lot of them up last night.  A hundred and twenty-four to be exact.  I decided at the beginning of the month that I’d hold off putting up photos until the end of the month, rather than making lots of “heylookit new pictures!” posts every week.

There are pictures from our trip to Tampa, Florida to spend Independence Day with Stephanie’s sister and her family.  We went to the beach and Emma was OK with getting in the water this time (unlike last time).  There are also some pictures from my brother’s wedding, in which I was the best man.  Then there are some professional photos of Emma that we had made last week.  And finally, there are a bunch of Emma pictures from the last month that didn’t really go with any of the others.

Enjoy!

P.S.  I changed a lot of code on my website, but you shouldn’t visibly see any changes.  Let me know if something doesn’t seem to work like it used to.

Last night I added a bunch of pictures from last week’s beach trip.  I also added a set of miscellaneous pictures which I titled “Emma in June.”  (The first three pictures in that set were moved from the “Emma continues to grow” set, but the rest are new.)

Some interesting tidbits-

• Emma did not care for the ocean (compare and contrast her facial expressions before and after touching the water).

• Emma’s second-cousin Clara, who is five and a half weeks her elder, was at the beach too.  At one point, Kaylor (Clara’s mother, who is my cousin) was holding Clara, and Scott (my brother) was with them, while some Asian family with a screaming baby was nearby (they were at a restaurant at the time).  Some moron—who must not have looked closely enough at Clara to realize Scott was definitely not the father—said to Kaylor, “That’s what this country needs: more good, white babies.”  Of course, Clara is only half white.  I think the guy just walked away after that (I wasn’t there).  Like I’ve said before on this blog, I’m always surprised that there are still truly racist people out there who are under the age of seventy.  I mean, if you were, let’s say, over 25 years old in 1960, maybe you were already set in your ways before we as a society figured out that racism is a Bad Thing, so you’ve at least got a bad excuse for your behavior.  For anyone younger than that:  really? seriously? there are still people that ignorant?  (Also, I can assure this guy that white babies are quite capable of screaming very loudly.)

• Emma likes riding on my shoulders.  But I think this is mainly because she likes running her hands through my hair.

For all who are concerned (and I know many are concerned, because I get requests/demands frequently), some new pictures of Emma have been put up on this very website.  I also created an album of photos of Emma’s nursery.  Be sure that you see the time-lapse animation of Stephanie painting the Noah’s Ark mural!