There has definitely been a lot going on lately, and I think it will be easier to use bullets so that this post stays somewhat organized. So..
- Emmory is going to be a big brother! We've known for a while but I just haven't gotten around to posting about it. It was a surprise to me, but I am truly thankful for life. So sometime around November 4th, when Emmory is just over 18 months old, we'll have another Steenback baby.
- We went to the beach last week. We stayed in a house with Mark's family just south of Myrtle Beach, and had a great time. We were able to take Emmory to the beach a lot and he loved it, he loved the sand so much that he just had to eat it :) I am really looking forward to our beach trips this summer now that we know he likes it and hopefully he will be out of the "put everything in your mouth" stage so we won't even have to worry about him eating sand. We took pics and videos so I will have to do another post about the trip.
- Emmory is going to be the big ONE in just over two weeks! I cannot believe how fast it has come up, hard to believe it was almost a year ago that I gave birth to him. My family is coming into town to celebrate and we are so excited about that. I haven't really done any preparation at all because it has just been hard to believe it's actually happening, but now I realize how soon it is coming and need to get to work! We aren't really doing anything big but I need to practice making his cake, and I'd like to get a few decorations.
- Emmory's preferred mode of transportation these days: Walking! He took his first steps on March 17th, but now he is really good at it and is pretty much all he does unless he falls down, and when he falls down he just crawls over to something he can pull himself up onto and then starts walking again. It is a really fun stage, I think I may be one of the only parents out there who feel this way but I really prefer walking over crawling....and it is so nice now not to have to hold his hands all the time so he can walk. Now I just have to follow him everywhere :) He has the cutest walk ever, he holds his hands in the air and kind of waddles and it is just precious.
- Clingy: Emmory has definitely entered the clingy stage, he now cries when we leave him in the nursery, he cries when Mark and I leave him with somebody else, and he even cries if Mark leaves when I am still with him, and vice-versa. Thankfully right now the crying doesn't last long, it is just initially when we leave. He is definitely not afraid of strangers though, we were at a baseball game last night and he was walking around by himself going right up to people he didn't know, smiling at them and hanging onto them. I think it's funny that he is fine going to other people on his own, but if we are holding him and try to hand him over to someone, he wants nothing to do with it.
- Just a few other things I love about my boy: When he sucks his thumb he runs his fingers through hair with his other hand, either his hair or our hair, he does the same thing when he drinks his bottle; when I get him out of his crib after a nap he wraps his arms around my neck and gives me a hug, and usually gives me a big open-mouthed kiss; when he picks up something new he holds it out in front of himself to examine it and turns it over, then he shakes it.; sometimes he will pick up a book or magazine and start "reading" it to himself, it is so funny to watch and listen to the sounds he makes as he "reads"; he can be a big flirt, and really try to get other people's attention; frequently throughout the day he will grab a toy or object, walk over to me with it, and try to put it in my mouth, whenever he is with his cousin he also tries to put toys in her mouth too, either that or he will bounce it on her head in a not so gentle way; his smile, I have always loved that smile and he's always had such a great one; how he will walk over to a light, look up at it, and say "off", although it sounds more like "ahh", wanting us to turn the light on and off, and when we do he just stares at it and smiles with delight; when he plays now he is really into manipulating things, he loves to put things inside of other things even if they don't belong together; he has a toy where you press a button and music starts playing, so he will walk/crawl over to that toy, press the button, then turn and look at us smiling and start swaying with the music. I could go on and on, but I will stop now because this post is getting really long! Here are a few pics I took of him last month:
Love this face
One day he decided to put all his toys on top of the storage bench 
"Daddy, please don't go"
