Hey look at this! Fastest Rising Baby Names, guess who is on that list under “More girls on the rise”? I find that funny because before we chose Ember the only person we’d ever heard of with that name was someone Den went to elementary school with (many many years ago!). We just liked it, it suited us and our family. Now when people ask what her name is and I tell them I get a lot of, “Oh, my neice/cousin/friend of a friend just named their baby that!” Okay maybe not a lot, but it happens far more than I expected. Go figure!

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Ember wants to be entertained. Here I thought I was going to have an itty bitty baby, I could sit her on my lap and do whatever I wanted! Fail. She wants my attention and she wants to talk. She’ll be squawking as I carry her around the house on my hip but when I put her down on the bed to change her she gives me a big smile, blows bubbles, and babbles some sounds at me. Well that fixed it, mama! Let me show you what I can do! I have to say, she’s a very charming child. Anyone at all looks at her she’s all cute smiles and coos.

I am so happy that things feel so much more normal with her now! It did take a while to bond with her and sort through the fear and weirdness. But now I can’t help but giving her little kisses on the top of her head all day long (why are their heads so soft and kissable?!) and I just feel at ease. I know her little quirks and personality now, I know the faces she makes, I know how she gets a rash from disposable diapers. I know that kissing her on her belly gets a huge smile and she just started a “Heh heh heh!” laugh. When she’s being a grouch I know which voice is her annoyed whine and when it’s about to get serious. She makes me smile a lot. I’m so glad she decided to land in my life and shake me up a bit.

(Yes, she gets a rash from disposable diapers. For a long while I was doing cloth at home and sposies when we went out and she had a rash that kept coming and going – red and dry skin and very angry-looking. I started using creams to combat it. Then I went on vacation and took only sposies. She started getting red on the plane, and it got worse by the time I arrived. That afternoon it looked horrible! The entire time I was there I was slathering on moisturizer and diaper cream. I ended up using some of my friend’s cloth diapers and would see an improvement. When I got home I put her in the cloth full time and it’s gone. She does get red when she’s wet and sitting in it, but it’s just red, not bumpy and dry and flakey.)