Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had as wonderful a Christmas as we did. Nora crawled over to her Santa toys, looked at them for a few minutes, then took a piece of wrapping paper over to the kitchen to play! We got to see lots of family, and enjoyed the beautiful snow. We are so grateful to have such a sweet baby girl to share our Christmas!

Christmas Cookies

Mary Grace has been on a cookie making binge lately. It's awesome, as I am her primary taste tester! She also made cookies with Hannah, Emily, and Will. A great time was had by all, and many cookies were devoured.

Our Favorite Present

We decided to follow the tradition that Dad and Candy did for Mary Grace and her siblings, and give Nora an ornament each year to hang on the tree. We found a sweet little ceramic rattle with "Baby's First Christmas 2010." She loved gnawing on it, chucking it across the living room, and chasing it!

Here is a picture from our (late) Christmas card shoot we decided not to use, and a few of Nora opening her little ornament.

Music Time

Nora loves to help us when we practice!

Eleven Months

Milestones:

• Crawling with her belly off of the floor, and getting quite fast
  
• Waving bye-bye (with her whole arm!)
  
• Saying "Uh-oh" and "No-no" appropriately -- lots of opportunities for those words
  
• No more formula
• Lots of table food
• Still no teeth...
  
• Learning boundaries and obeying sometimes!

We can't believe she's almost a year old (or that the last post on this blog was the 'Ten Months' post)! Here are some shots of her impersonating mommy on the phone.

Ten Months Old

Nora is becoming much more locomotive. Over the past few weeks, we've watched her go from mostly rolling to get to what she wants, to cruising along furniture and walls, and army crawling on her belly. Still no actual crawling on hands and knees, and no teeth!

Milestones:

• Cruising along the walls and furniture
• Paying more attention to books. We can usually get in 2-3 words per page before she's turning it for us
  
• Eating a lot more table food - in fact, baby food and formula are quickly losing their appeal!
• Imitating sounds and babbling in what sounds like a conversation
• Getting into mischief, as you can see by the following pictures!
  

Happy Halloween!

Sunny Afternoon

Nora got up early from her afternoon nap, and I took advantage of the beautiful light in our bedroom and her sunny disposition! Hopefully it will last through the usual fussy dinnertime hour. If not - early bedtime for both of us :)

Reading Time

And now, back by popular demand...a blog post!

Nine Months!

The two biggest questions at this stage are: Any teeth yet? Is she crawling? Still not yet for Nora, but she is definitely developing her motor skills in other ways.

Milestones for the month:

• She is able to stand while holding onto nearby objects or people for support
• She is eating more and more table food - she loves tomatoes, beans, and yogurt
• Her verbal skills are developing. She is making conversation-ish sounding babbles, clicking her tongue, shrieking, and lately, growling like a baby Nazgul (so says Ben)
• Rocking back and forth on hands and knees

It seems our days of plopping her down and having her stay in one spot are dwindling! Additionally - is chewing on paper something babies commonly like to do? Nora is wild about any paper she happens to get her hands on. She will rip, tear, and one time, chewed it to a concrete pulp that got stuck to the roof of her mouth!

We hope you enjoy these pictures of Nora standing in her "tunnel" and the video clip of her shrieking in delight!

Eight Months

Nora is getting to be such a big girl: rolling and 'skootching' around, dancing in her exer-saucer, interested in friends, saying 'ma-ma' and 'da-da' indiscriminately, etc. Here are some shots of her on our first picnic in the mountains, and some play/attack time with Reese. She is more and more delightful to us!