Self-feeding

Lately, Nora has been trying to feed herself with a spoon. It's more like painting with a spoon! She is pretty careful at first, but after a while usually resorts to trying to eat it with her fingers. Also, don't be fooled by the spoon being in her RIGHT hand...she spends 90% of her time with it in her left hand. Not that I am pulling for her to be a lefty, or anything :)

Swim Day

You know it's summer when an ice-cold pool is a relief! We had a great time swimming at Aunt Sarah's pool last Saturday. Nora likes being in the water, but was a little more cautious about getting her face near it than she was last year. She loved going back and forth between the baby pool, the big pool, the chain-link fence, and the lounge chairs. All was like a picturesque Saturday afternoon until the car ride home. Just keep scrolling down.

Here's what happened.

MG: Nora? Do you want some goldfish?
Ben: Yeah, she's probably hungry.
Ben (looking in the rearview mirror): Nora, don't stuff so many in your mouth at once. Yeah, that's right, spit out that little bit. Wait...auughhhhhh! Oh my gosh!
MG: Is she throwing up?

She had indeed. So while I went into Wal-Mart to grab a few crucial items (paper towels, butter, and decorating bags) Ben was in charge of the clean-up.

And somehow it resulted in this shot.

MG: Oh, my gosh! Someone's going to nominate us for one of those bad parent photographs!
Ben: No, the car was not running. Yes, it was still cool for the 30 seconds it took for me to take this shot. Yes, the doors were unlocked and I had the keys.

And yes, those women in the background were giving him some weird looks.

May Days

Here are a few pictures from a Mother's Day shoot, and last week, when we hit 90 degrees! It's funny I'm posting this today, when it's rainy, and around 60.
Nora is getting really hard to capture on film, at least the front of her is! She runs all the time now, mostly away from us. I think there were only about 7 shots of her facing the camera and smiling of the 2oo attempts tried!





I found out one day when I was watering the garden just how much Nora likes the hose. She walked right into the stream of water, fully clothed of course, and had so much fun running in and out of it! She also loved playing in her kiddie pool, especially getting in and out, in and out. She did not like the grass clippings that stuck to her hands ("nyuuuch!")




She's using lots of words now, including "poo-poo" when she has a dirty diaper (yay!), "pappy?" which means we sing "If you're happy and you know it" over and over, and "Weeese" which is her friend Reese! Elmo (a.k.a. "la-la") continues to be a favorite, especially on a certain miniature guitar, complete with wammy bar and the worst renditions of the alphabet song and Seasame Street song ever heard. No volume control, no off switch. If it didn't keep her happy in the car, the batteries might have gotten lost by now.

A Few Pictures for April

Here a just a few pictures for the month of April. Not doing so great on the two posts a month goal for this year.

We noticed recently that we had 44 posts for 2010! I'm not sure if we're going to have that many for 2011. We had also forgotten what we blogged about before Nora...oh, yeah, we wrote about what we were doing!

Here' s a picture of Nora getting into the pantry, which she does any time the door is left ajar. Her ability to get into things is increasing. She's so fast! And her reach is growing. Tonight she actually climbed up onto a stool to reach onto the counter top. Oh no...

Here's another of Nora sporting my new favorite hair-do. Pigtails! I'm so glad it's finally long enough!

And finally, a picture of a few of the Easter cookies I made. Let's face it, I'm a total novice in the field. But getting a little better...

Trip to the Park

In Abstencia

Don't worry, we won't share any excuses for why we didn't post at all in February. Although, we're wondering if people who check our blog have given up on us!

Nora's milestones:

Walking!

Two teeth!

An ever-expanding vocabulary! Here's the short list: Na-na-na (banana), ba-pa (apple), cra-ka (cracker), juuu (juice), noi (milk), num-num (yum yum), de-dyet (blanket), nigh-nigh (night night), ba (bath), ball, da (dog), tahhhh (Star, our new little dog, pictured below)

Animal noises! Only growls, woof-woofs, and fish puckers at this point...

Here are a few pictures from the past several weeks:

Time with our friend Clark

Our little dog, Star

Getting into trouble - yes, that's a checkbook and a remote

"Sharing" with our friend Reese

Cruising with walker

Here is a nice video of Nora playing with her new/used walker, courtesy of Hannah, Emily and Will. She is really starting to get the hang of it. At first when she ran it into something, she would simply abandon the walker and crawl off. Now she can pull it around and go where ever she wants!