Moments this week

Here are a few random moments from the past week. Nora and I are headed to Maine to visit friends for the weekend tomorrow, and Daddy will follow us Friday evening (depending on the weather - if there's a huge snowstorm and he has to plow a lot he may have to stay home). I'm sure we'll have fabulous baby pictures of the Winter Wonderland Weekend when we return!



Nora LOVES blueberries.

Some silly expressions playing on the floor.
Nora's latest excitement is taking things out of other things. Dumping stuff = Good Times. She'll entertain herself for a good few minutes if you load up a bunch of her cups with beads and blocks.




Baby's First Protest: in conjunction with the March for Peace in Washington last Saturday, smaller protests against the war were held at highway overpasses around the country. Nora's Nana and Babchi organized one, and we had a lot of fun getting cars to "Honk for Peace" (the wording on one of these banners - the other said "Make Sense Not War").
l-r: Aunt Sara, Mama, Nora, Aunt Abby, Babchi (Nana took the picture)
Playing with Nana's trolls after the protest. It pays to have a grandmother who's a preschool teacher!

Playing with Mem's zippers on Sunday.

Nora is taking swim classes this winter, thanks to a generous Christmas gift from Mem and Grandpa! Daddy came along on Monday to see what the fun was all about, and took some pictures. Nora's wearing a little baby wetsuit here - it keeps her nice and cozy in the water!
Nora practicing one of her first water skills - swimming with straight arms. Each mama throws out a little toy in front of their baby, and the baby "swims" over while reaching out for the toy. This teaches them to move through the water with their arms straight out in front of them. The other skills we've worked on so far are comfort in the water and getting ears wet, kicking, and floating on your back. We both really like the classes!

More pictures...

Here are a few more pictures from this morning.

You're putting this cold white stuff in my mouth WHY?

Ok, this is pretty neat.
Yay! Sledding is great!
Yeah, that's enough of that. All done now, please.

After we went inside and got warmed up, Nora discovered that playing underneath her exersaucer is nearly as much fun as sitting in it. And you can get there all by yourself!

Finally, SNOW!!

We got about half an inch of snow this morning - the first snow of the season, and the first snow of Nora's life. Of course, we went sledding to celebrate, and proved how versatile the baby colander is. It's a laundry basket! It's a bathtub! It's a sled!



If you were at our wedding, you'll recognize my footwear in this video - these are the boots that I wore with my wedding dress! :)

Creepy Crawly

Nora is nearly crawling now - I call her current mode of locomotion a cross creep, because it's not quite true cross crawling (she doesn't get her belly up off the floor the whole time, and she uses her hands some of the time and her forearms some of the time) but she does have the opposite hand/leg thing going on, and she's a lot more mobile than when she was just creeping.

Here's a video of her using her advanced techniques to try to get Mama's cup of tea. (It takes a tempting target to get her to do anything other than look at the camera when it's out!) I have to apologise for the shoddy camerawork in the middle of the movie - she made it to the cup faster than I anticipated and I had to set the camera down for a second to get it away from her, since it was full of hot tea!

Perfect Saturday

We had a perfectly lovely day today, despite the rainy grey weather. We had planned on taking a drive to the beach and going for a long walk, but the rain ruled that out, so we ended up going to Mystic Aquarium instead. With a discount pass we checked out of the local library and a discount from where I used to work, it wasn't expensive at all - and we had a great time. I can definitely see getting a membership so we can go regularly when Nora's a little older! It was her first visit (obviously), and I had been once about 8 years ago and Aaron had been when he was a little kid, so it was pretty much new to all of us. What fun!

Nora particularly enjoyed the beluga whales, who are also called canary whales because of the high pitched chirping noises they make. We watched them eat a meal and do some tricks, and Nora spent the whole thing conversing with them - everytime one of the whales chirped, she'd call back to them. Luckily, the people around us thought it was cute! (It was.) She also liked watching the seals and sea lions get fed, because of the deep coughing barks they made. In the inside exhibits, she was mesmerized by the jellyfish - we stood there for her to watch them for at least 10 minutes, and she probably would have stayed longer if she'd been in charge. The coral reef was also a hit, with all the brightly colored fish swimming past at a super fast pace.

After the Aquarium, we went for a quick early supper at Friendly's - Nora charmed the servers, strewed Cheerios everywhere in a six foot radius from her highchair (don't worry, we picked up as much as we could and left a good tip), and ate three dill pickles. She loved the pickles! Weird baby.

Nora and Mama watching a beluga whale underwater.


Mama and Nora hanging out with a penguin mama and baby!

I'm wearing Nora in a new wrap in these pictures - it's something that I've coveted for ages, and finally got myself as an after-Christmas present! I love the colors, and it's super comfy. I wore her in front like this for four hours this afternoon, and my shoulders and back aren't a bit sore! It's very convenient, too - Nora got hungry while we were in the Institute for Exploration, and it was easy to nurse her in the wrap while still walking around and checking out the exhibits. It's discrete, too - someone came up to me to ask what sort of a baby carrier it was while she was nursing, and I don't think they even realized what was going on during our conversation! Here's a picture of her on my back before we went for a walk the other day (ignore the weird look on my face).


In other news, Nora's still really enjoying feeding herself. Here she is with some of her meals in the last few days.

Avocado.

Toast.

Yum!

A peach (yes, she is completely covered with peach and cantelope juice here. That's why she's wearing the approved baby-feeding outfit!).


And a movie of her eating cantelope (and sharing it with Mica, too)! This also features her favorite new noise, the growl. Good Times!

Yum, yum!

Despite the fact that Nora took to solids pretty well at first, she ended up refusing to eat anything but nursies for about 3 weeks around the holidays. After a while, we figured out that it wasn't so much the food that she didn't want, but the spoon - and the lack of control involved in someone else feeding her. She LOVES to feed herself, but won't let you get a spoon anywhere near her mouth! We're now pretty much exclusively letting her eat on her own, and giving her big "people sized" chunks of food. This method is called baby led weaning, and it's a theory of baby feeding that's becoming gradually popular in the US and is more common in Europe. The name comes from the idea of weaning onto solid foods, not so much weaning off of nursing - though that is the ultimate goal, it's not something we want for the near future. I kind of wish it had a different name because I don't like to think about weaning Nora yet, but whatever.

Nora enjoys an apple for lunch on Sunday.




And a banana for breakfast today!

Snuggling with Daddy post-meal is the best. :)

Styling Do's

Nora has one chunk of hair in the front that's so long that when it's hanging straight down it's past her nose! Needless to say, this gets in her eyes a lot. My latest solution is these cute felt barrettes! They're so easy and quick to make (and they actually stay in her superfine hair), I see a lot more of them in her hairstyling future. Who doesn't need a barrette to match every outfit?!

Sleeping on the couch...

No pictures from our New Year's Day brunch party, since we were too busy enjoying the wonderful company to get out the camera. But for an idea of how much fun was had, check out this picture, taken about 2 minutes after the last guests departed.

And I'm reposting a picture taken back in May, when Nora was about 10 days old, just because I'm fun like that. She's so grown up now!!

Nora on the floor

Nora is soooooo close to crawling. Also, she likes jingle bells. The sad-looking pouty face featured here isn't really sad - she just can't really figure out how her top and bottom teeth are meant to interact, and the bottom ones end up on the outside, pushing that lower lip out! If you do this face back to her, she cracks up. Very entertaining.

Big Girl!

Nora sitting in her big girl chair, reading a magazine. :)

Whew! January already.

Nora had a week of fun, festive, and somewhat exhausting holiday celebrations at home, at Mem and Grandpa's house, at Meme's house, and at Nana and Babchi's house. Between four Christmas celebrations, Daddy's birthday, New Year's Eve (ok, we didn't really do anything for that), and our annual New Year's Day brunch, it was a full week! That's my excuse for not posting pictures sooner, anyway. :)

Daddy brought home a giant stocking full of goodies from work right before Christmas. We decided to refill the stocking with our own goodies...

Trying for a more arty shot, but the model was intent on escaping.

Christmas Eve day at Mem and Grandpa's house was so much fun that it was exhausting! Nora takes a little time out from the festivities.

Nora's second cousins Alex and Max and their parents gifted Nora a couple of fabulous hats that will fit her next winter too - one of which was this cozy earflap cap that will come in very handy when she's expeditioning in the great Maine woods tracking bobcats. Or something like that.

On Christmas morning at home, Nora opens her first Christmas stocking. Santa knows how much she likes her bath, so she got a fun bath book and some other toys.

Nora likes chewy things! This fun ball lights up when it's bounced (or smacked hard against Mama's hand), which makes it even more interesting.

Yay, books! Mama and Daddy's gifts for Nora were all books. We just can't get enough books around here!

Christmas Day at Nana and Babchi's house is underrepresented in our photographs - maybe Nana has some she can email to me to post! Anyway, Nora opened most of her presents there on Boxing Day, because she was getting a little strung out by the time we got there on Christmas. Here she is enjoying a bow or two. They're at least as much fun as the presents they decorated!

Nora had a lovely holiday, and she was glad to be back home. Here she is sitting in her kid-size IKEA POÄNG chair (just like the big people chair that she has been nursed in every day of her life!) from Aunt Abby and Aunt Sara, hanging out with Bradley, her new lovey bear from Aunt Emily, reading her new BabyBug magazine from Nana and Babchi, and dressed in her cute stripey dress from Mem and Grandpa! I have a little video of her sitting here reading too, and I'll post it when I get it downloaded from the camera.