This is my last post before Nora’s birthday. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?
Time is flying by. Elliott’s first year seemed to go by quickly, but this is lightning fast! I’ll blink and both of them will be in elementary school. Sniff. It’s really unbelievable how fast this is going. Not just the months and milestones, but each day seems to fly by in a fury of meals, routines, snuggles, work, commuting, cleaning, desperately trying to stay on top of everything. Between a busy home and a busy job, it feels like we’re on the go, all the time.
And how I wish I could hit the pause button right now, because Nora is just an incredible little darling. She is perfection, and I love her with my whole heart. Each morning she awakes with her little coos, and I quietly walk into their dark room so we don’t wake Elliott. She is so excited to be awake, I can feel her little 20-some pound body bouncing in my arms. I take her back to my bed and give her a bottle, and I kiss her about 700 times until she can’t hold still any longer, and tries to crawl off the bed. Then we walk into the bright kitchen. She and I both scrunch our faces in the bright light, and Jeremy, who wakes up at 5, smiles at our funny expressions and wishes us a good morning. That gets Nora smiling and cooing, and then she starts trying to dive out of my arms to crawl around and play. Off we go into the day.
Nora is a girl on the move who loves her independence. She crawls very quickly now, and occasionally trips over herself as she’s crawling, because one part of her body is moving faster than another! You should see the way she watches Elliott as he runs around – when she learns to walk, she is going to be unstoppable! She cruises really well on furniture, and is constantly pulling herself up to stand and see better. She’s been waving and clapping for a couple of months now, and often uses it to show her excitement and say bye bye to us when we leave, especially Jeremy. She says dada and mama, hi and bye on occasion, and tries to imitate our words when we speak. She even waved bye to Jeremy the other day and said “bye da.” So cute! We’re also working on baby sign language, but Nora is usually pretty expressive about what she wants, so it’s not that necessary!
Our gal eats like a champ. She often refuses food when you try to spoon feed her, but if you put it on her tray she will eat it all. She loves all kinds of foods, but savory foods and meat in particular. If I put pieces of chicken in front of her, she will eat as much as an adult. I still can’t really get her to eat eggs, and she’s not hugely fond of peas and carrots, but pretty much everything else goes down without a hitch. She’s great with her sippy cup, and I think we will soon need to transition her from her bottle, because she’s pretty much ready.
It’s interesting watching Nora navigate a child’s world. Elliott really explored our adult world first, and then we all together created a kid one. Nora already has Elliott’s toys all around her, listens and learns from children’s books, and hears Elliott’s favorite kid songs and cartoons. I wonder how it will impact them in the future. She sure does love music, and if I sing one of Elliott’s kid songs to her, she moves and grooves and laughs and claps. Her favorite activity is dumping toys out of the toys basket, emptying the Tupperware drawer, knocking over a pile of blocks – basically, destruction. So between her and Elliott, our house is really clean all the time.
In terms of personality, Nora continues to be happy and content, until she’s not! She will be fine but suddenly be done, and will let you know about it. She doesn’t scare at all. I feel like at this age Elliott used to get nervous about loud sounds. Not Nora! She just tries to crawl on the vacuum when she sees it coming. She definitely has an attachment to mommy right now (not that I mind!) She cries a lot when Jeremy tries to put her down at night, but will go down peacefully when I rock her. She still wants me to hold her the moment I come home, but she doesn’t cry the same way she did before.
Now it’s time for me to start making plans for her birthday! I’m figuring out our costumes, and thinking about how to do both Halloween and her birthday party. It will be a fun and joyful day indeed!
She loves, loves LOVES to crawl through this tunnel.
This is one tired girl. Good thing she’s headed to bed here.
Must. Stand. Everywhere.
The babies and daddy on his birthday. 35 years young!
She takes feeding herself very seriously. So much so that she was willing to go to great lengths to procure some applesauce.
Saturday mornings we like to make a pillow pile and play on the floor all morning. I will always cherish my memories of these early snuggles, with the whole weekend stretching before us. Isn’t Elliott the sweetest brother in the world?
Fall is here! We still spend most of our awake time outside. Nora got her first bad boo boo last weekend. She was going down the slide and bonked her nose coming down. She got a bloody nose, so sad! She powered through and was a strong girl.
I look back over my weekend pictures each Monday, and inevitably, there are pictures of the kids in the grocery. Why always the grocery? Because we go there a lot! Between baby food, kid-friendly food, gluten-free food, whole-foods-food, and more, we make almost everything from scratch. It’s healthy but definitely time-consuming.
Until next month, when we begin our journey with a 3 year old and a one year old….
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