Emerging from the Cave...

I've had a leap of hope the past few days that I may actually return to civilation. I think I'm actually beginning to feel better! It's always hard to believe ever actually getting better when you feel so horrible. Anyway, my cough is on the outs and my nausea is much more tolerable.... my appetite is returning... I've been eating foods I haven't been able to eat for the past month (such as pasta, bagels, cheese, etc). Don't talk to me about hamburgers or salads, however. Those are still on my hate list. I was recently watching a DVD that my dad had burned of my mom doing an interview of me while I was 5 months pregnant with Emma. Apparently at 5 months, I was feeling very well.... I was no longer throwing up and I had even gotten over my aversion for hamburgers and salad. Surprisingly, my food likes and dislikes have been the same for this pregnancy as they were the last. (Does that mean another girl?) I thought it would be really different, but they haven't so far. My favorite foods right now (which were the same with the last) are fruit, peanut butter, orange juice, and cereal.

Anyway, since I've begun to come out the fog I've been in for the last while, I finally left the house for a decent outing. (If only the outside of my apartment looked like the picture above!)Ben was so happy that I was feeling better today that he took time off of a few classes and took Emma and I to the zoo. It was really fun! We even bought Emma a very cute "zoo hat" from the gift shop. She actually picked it out. She refused any color but blue. She wore it around the whole day and even went to bed with it. What a funny girl. Ironically, we didn't actually see many animals while we were at the zoo. We spent most of our time eating and watching Emma play on the spray pad and then in the playground area of the farm. We even took some time to eat some ice cream. Yum! We did see some animals, however... all of which Emma really enjoyed. She said "hi!" to them all and got rather affectionate with the goats in the petting zoo. She was petting and hugging all that she could get her hands on. Those poor goats didn't know what hit them. ;) As I write this, I'm uploading some videos of our zoo adventure to add to this post. They are taking forever, because I finally remembered to switch it to high quality video. So, this time they won't seem so out of focus. While they continue to upload, I'll move on to another topic...

Emma's been really getting into dress-up as of late. It started with the Nemo costume we got her. Since then she's gained a growing love for hats, purses, dresses, etc. For Halloween she is going to be Tinkerbell (as part of a family theme of Peter Pan... I will be Tiger Lily and Ben is going to the Indian Chief... the rest of Ben's family will taking the parts of Peter Pan, Wendy, Captain Hook and others). Anyway, Carol and Emily put together a lovely Tinkerbell costume for her. Here's an early photo of Emma trying on her new costume. There are actually some darling shoes with ribbons and bells that go with it, but they are still "under construction". Emma also had fun wearing around some wild rainbow pants (which were actually Ben's when he was a kid. You'll have to ask him why and for what purpose he wore these). So, I'm going to try to compile a dress up box for Emma, since she enjoys it so much. Carol gave us a good start with some hats and other clothing items. I'd like to get her some fun scarves and jewelry and other accessories that she can put on herself and strut around all she pleases. What a good activity for her. ;)

Oh lovely! The videos finished. Enjoy!