Birthday Girls!

We all went out for mexican food to celebrate Mama's 28th birthday (and Nora's 7 week birthday) last night. It was lovely! Nora fell asleep in her wrap just before we were seated, and slept until she got into her carseat after dinner. She's good at eating out!

Earlier in the week, Nora and Mama went to Mattapoisett to visit Nana and Babchi. We managed to pick the only sunny day, and had a great time. Nora got to see the ocean for the first time! (Well, Mattapoisett Harbor anyway. The closest to the ocean she's gotten so far...) Nana took some cute pictures of Nora:



Nora had a couple of nice naps in Mattapoisett, which she liked better than napping at home for two reasons: (a) she doesn't have a huge skylight to watch clouds from over her crib, and (b) Nana built her a big pillow fort (no, Nora isn't mobile at all yet, no rolling or any other sort of moving...)! Good Times were had by all.
This weekend she'll be a little closer to the ocean - when Daddy gets home from work today, we're headed up to Maine for a long holiday weekend at Brightwater. Nora will get to experience the New Meadows River and live in a cabin with no running water for four days! We're all looking forward to the adventure (if not so much the drive...). Ok, mama has to go pack now so we can actually leave tonight!

Storytime!

When I was still pregnant with Nora (skippy, then!), Aaron and I read her the same story every night for months, On the Day You Were Born by Debra Frasier. It's a lovely picture book, and we had read that if you repeatedly read the same story to a baby before she is born, that story will have a calming effect on her after she's in the world. It's a way to ensure that your baby has a favorite book right from birth, and before!

Today Nora and her daddy read the story together during breaks from a grueling session of tummy time. She certainly seems to like it! She smiled and cooed through two readings of the story. I guess she has a favorite book!

Bathtime!

So since Nora's cord fell off on Friday, she can finally have a regular bath, instead of the sponge baths she's relied on to stay clean for her entire life so far. Her first bath today in the kitchen sink was a success! She loved the nice warm water, and loved being splashed on the tummy, and (as always) loved getting her hair washed.

Changling Child

Nora has suddenly discovered the joy of solo sleep! She's been napping in her crib by herself (yeah, we don't get in the crib with her) all week. I'm guessing that the hot, humid weather is a factor in this development - she gets pretty sweaty lying on one of us, and the sheet in her crib is nice and cool, and there's a ceiling fan in her room too. The lap of luxury! In addition, she's spent the last two nights sleeping in her cosleeper, which is a little crib attached to mama's side of the bed, instead of sleeping in with us. I don't think the heat has as much to do with that, since it's still pretty cool at night here. Maybe she got used to being alone from the crib naps(she's still all of 18" from mama in the cosleeper), or maybe she's just growing up a little. And, she slept for four hours last night and four and a half hours the night before! We don't know who this new baby is or where she came from, but she's just as cute as our Nora so we're keeping her. :)

Some funny faces that we see every day:



Nora's last bit of news is that her umbilical cord stump finally fell off yesterday, on her 6 week birthday. She was, ahem, pretty attached to that. (Yes, I crack myself up.) Some babies just hang onto their cords longer than others... She's got a super cute little innie belly button now!

First Day of Summer!

The weather is hot and gorgeous! Too hot for daddy, but mama is happy... Nora deals with the heat by sleeping a lot (to conserve her energy) and nursing a lot (to stay hydrated). If you're really really interested in how Nora spends her days, check out her baby tracker website: http://go.trixietracker.com/site/nora. I'm not going to pay for an account there, so it'll only be active for another 12 days (it's a 2 week free trial) or until I lose interest in entering every single thing Nora does, which ever comes sooner. For the time being, though, it appeals to my list-making and organizational (Aa would call it compulsive...) tendencies. :)

We had a lovely Father's Day on Sunday - Nora gave her daddy a board book called My Daddy Loves Me, and then the two of them celebrated by napping most of the day. We attended a high school graduation party for one of Aa's cousins-by-marriage in the evening, and happened to sit at a table with my midwife! It was a funny coincidence.

Nora's Mem and Grandpa stopped by one night last week to see their granddaughter:


And daddy is discovering more uses for the Boppy pillow every day. It's no longer just a nursing pillow and a baby lounging area...

And the living is easy...

Well, it finally feels like summer here! We celebrated by hanging out the diapers on the line to dry (Mama) and lounging about on the boppy pillow (Nora) while Daddy was at work. Our neighbor Cindy, who is a photographer, came over this afternoon to photodocument these exciting events!


Cindy is going to enter the diaper picture in a photography contest, so maybe Nora's bum will be famous by association! We'll keep you updated... :)


In other news, Nora had her 4-week well baby pediatrician visit today. She's perfectly healthy, and she weighed in at 12 pounds exactly, which is about the size of a three month old. We always knew our baby would be above average! She's grown an inch since she was born, and she's now 23.5" long. She's a big girl, but her weight and height gains are perfectly on the curve she's expected to grow on, so she's doing just fine. Yay for healthy babies!

Busy Weekend!

Nora had lots of adventures this weekend! On Saturday, we went to Mystic Seaport in the pouring rain for the Small Craft Workshop, and Nora got her first glimpses of all the boats her mama likes so much. Only glimpses, though, because Nora was snug and dry in her wrap inside Mama's raincoat - she couldn't do much looking around (she slept most of the time, though, so she wasn't upset about that at all). Then we all went out to dinner with our friends Wade and Elizabeth. It was Nora's first dining out experience, and it went very well - she slept in her sling until right before we were about to leave, allowing Mama to have her first margarita in many months!

On Sunday, we went to visit Daddy's grandparents and Nora got to meet her great-grandfather for the first time. They were mutually charmed with each other!


On the way home from the family visit, we stopped at the Wild Rhododendron Sanctuary in Patchog State Forest. The rhododendrons weren't blooming yet, but Nora enjoyed her first little hike and was wide awake and alert to look around at the neat jungle-like atmosphere.



After that busy weekend, we've spent the beginning of the week resting up and recovering!

Naptime

Nora is what they call a "high needs baby" - that means she wants to be held all the time, usually even while she's sleeping. She's really calm and happy most of the time, so long as she's being held or carried in the sling or wrap, close to one of her parents. And it's not too surprising, considering that she was cradled snug and tight inside her mama's belly for the last 9+ months, that she isn't too impressed with the idea of being set down along now. It doesn't bother us at all, either, because she's so cute and little and perfect and we're so taken with her that we don't really want to put her down, anyway!

This is Nora's favorite place to sleep, and we usually have her like this on one of us for most of the evening, before we go to bed. It's the most amazing thing in the world to have her all curled up asleep on your chest.


Right now, though, she's taking a nap in her crib, and she's been sleeping peacefully for nearly 45 minutes on her own in there! If this is the beginning of a trend, Mama might be able to start getting some things done during the day, like laundry and cooking dinner, or even eating lunch! We'll see if it's a one-time event or if it continues tomorrow...