At some point early on in this month the toddler fairy came to visit our house. She waved her wand over Emma while she was sleeping, and *poof* our baby was gone and our little girl was here.

Yeah. I guess it didn’t happen that way, but her transformation from baby to little girl did happen this month - with startling rapidity.

No more drama this month with sleeping or separation anxiety. Just lots of new facial expressions, more dancing, more singing, and a serious ratcheting up of the cute factor.

Emma lost her second great-grandmother this month, and I lost my Grandmother. I have been feeling her loss acutely but am thrilled that she got a chance to meet Emma and spend some time with her before she passed away.

Gram’s funeral was highly surreal. It was held at the Dupont Funeral Home in Bristol, Connecticut which is in a house built by her grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, in 1903. Gram spent many family holidays there as a child, and later married my Grandfather in the house. To stand in a room that was once my great-grandfather’s bedroom, at my grandmother’s memorial service, while I held my daughter, was a little mind blowing.

We drove to Connecticut for the funeral and Emma was wonderful. We left at 5 am and got four hours of driving in before she needed to stop, which meant we were almost there. On the way home we left at around 4:30 pm and didn’t need to stop much either since a lot of the drive was after her bed time.

Once we got through the funeral and made it back home, Emma had places to go and people to see.

A few months ago Mike’s dad got to choose a gift from his company as a thank you for an unimaginable number of years of service. He looked through the options and the only thing that jumped out at him was a Eureka! mansion tent which he guessed maybe his granddaughter might enjoy rattling around in.

Let me in!

This month we tested the tent for the first time on an overnight camping trip with Emma’s friend EJ, who brought his parents along for the ride. Emma had her own room (no, seriously, she did) and the tent held up well during the torrential downpour that started at about 3am. We went on a hike with Emma, taking turns carrying her on our back, which she enjoyed. Enjoy would be a strong word to describe how Mike and I felt about the hike. *Happy to get to the end of it and to have survived* is probably much more appropriate. The camping trip was lots of fun and we are hoping to be able to go at least once more before the we wimp out because of cold weather.

The weekend after the camping trip was the best weekend EVAH. My friend Kate left her idyllic life in Vermont to come visit us in hot and sticky DC. She brought her cute-as-a-bug son Jack, who is 10 weeks younger than Emma, and there was great rejoicing. We hung out, went to the zoo, played in the Silver Spring fountain and just generally had a great time. Emma loved playing with Jack but seemed a little stressed by the end of the weekend. I think all the FUN was getting to her. Plus since Jack’s daddy couldn’t come, Emma’s daddy was doing double duty, which she was NOT a fan of.

Clearly we kept Emma pretty busy this month. She still had time to learn “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and now walks around the house singing “Down rain! Down rain!”. At some point during their visit, Kate was trying to get Jack to say sorry and Emma obliged by saying “sorry!” loud and clear. Mike and I practically fell out of our chairs since we had never heard her say it before. So she is picking up a few words here and there. Being the perfectionist she is, I think she is just waiting until she can get a word *just right* before using it regularly. We can wait. I do love listening to her little voice though.

Things are pretty fun around our house these days.