Bangs...

We had a lovely weekend at Nana and Babchi's house celebrating Aunt Emily's birthday with a surprise party! It was lots of fun for everyone, and Nora was thrilled to see all of her aunts in one place. While we were in Massachusetts, Nora cut her eighth tooth! Now she has all four top incisors and all four bottom incisors. Next up are the one year molars, I believe. None of us are really looking forward to those...

As you can see from the last few weeks of pictures of Nora, her hair has been getting longer and longer, especially the part in front that goes right into her eyes. She's had a lingering runny nose for the last two weeks, and the hair getting tangled up in her snotty nose was starting to get pretty gross. So, today was Baby's First Haircut! One snip of Mama's scissors later, and Nora's got bangs like the British Invasion. Actually, it's really cute. See:








She has two more new accomplishments, too. Nora can now give high fives and kisses! Both are adorable, particularly the sloppy, openmouth cheek kisses.

Snow Day!

It's a snowy morning here today! Nora celebrated by having a blueberry/banana/yogurt smoothie for breakfast. These pictures are after she drank it with a straw!


Daddy got home from plowing the snow just in time to help with the smoothie-baby cleanup.

Then Nora hung out in her doorway Jolly Jumper while everyone else in the house got to work cleaning up the rest of the smoothie mess!

Uncle Ben! Doctor visit! Food!

Nora's Uncle Ben came to visit on Saturday, and we all had a fun afternoon hanging out and playing with baby toys. Here is a picture of Nora and Uncle Ben having a blast bouncing around! She's wearing a cute outfit here that was a Christmas present from Uncle Ben and Aimee. I think the little cardigan is so sweet! And I think we all know how I feel about stripes for babies. :)

Nora's nine month well-baby visit was on Friday, and as usual she's doing great. (Except that it was technically not a well-baby visit, since she still has a little cold, but oh well.) Her stats are 22 lbs 6 oz and 28 inches, which brings her down to the 95th percentile for weight and the 75th percentile for height, from well over 100th for both. Though this means she's not keeping up with her previous growth curves, it's a normal time for a drop, as babies become more mobile. Also, since she's eating three meals a day of solid foods now, and nursing only 5-6 times a day, her body is trying to figure out how to process all those different sorts of nutrients. It's a whole different ball game now from the newborn days of lying around like a little half-baked muffin and nursing 14 times a day!

A bunch of folks have asked me about Nora's diet lately. She eats pretty much regular people food, with some baby delicacies thrown in for good measure. (Teething biscuit, anyone?) She started refusing to be spoon fed about 3 weeks after we started solids, and has exclusively fed herself ever since. A couple of days ago, though, I thought to try some organic maple-sweetened whole milk yogurt, and she'll usually let me feed her a little of that with a spoon, if she's got something else to focus on at the same time, like a ricecake or a bagel. We'd tried plain whole milk yogurt before, but it was emphatically not a hit. Looks like she's got her Mama's taste for maple already! Must be the gallons of it I consumed while she was in utero. :)

Here's what Nora had to eat today:

Breakfast: 1/4 of a fresh cantaloupe, 1 multigrain ricecake, ~2 oz maple yogurt, a couple baby handfuls of generic Cheerios.

Lunch: more Cheerios, about 1/2 cup of steamed broccoli florets, 4 dried apricots. I also offered her some chickpeas and some pasta, but she didn't want any of those.

Supper: a couple of handfuls of Veggie Booty, a spinach pancake, about 1/4 cup of baked beans, 3 dried prunes, and a teething biscuit.

She drinks water from her straw sippy with all her meals, and nursed 6 times today in addition to this food. She's a healthy little eater, and really enjoys the process - as evidenced by the shower that was necessary after her spinach pancake and baked beans for supper!

And finally, last but certainly not least,
Happy Birthday Aunt Emily!!!!
Nora can't imagine what it'll be like to be 22 (well, she can't imagine being 2 either). She can't wait to hear all about it when you come to visit next month!

My Funny Valentine

Here are a few pictures of Nora hanging out yesterday, playing with her animal tails stacking rings (which she loves! Thanks again, Babchi and Nana!). She's wearing her Valentine's Day tee shirt from Jeanna and Mike, and she really had some crazy hair going on!

In that last picture, she's standing up holding onto one of my hands. This is her very favorite thing to do now - if you're anywhere near her on the floor, she'll come over and grab your hands to pull herself up and then hang out standing. She can't quite do it on furniture yet, but I don't think that's too far away. It takes her two hands to get up, and then she'll let go with one hand and find something to chew on!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hope everyone has a peaceful and calm Valentine's Day surrounded by the people you love. We're having a low-key day here - Nora's got a bit of a cold, and Daddy's been out plowing and sanding the snow and ice since 4 am, so we're not doing much in the way of fancy celebrations. But thank you very much to those of you who sent Nora Valentines! She loves getting her own mail.

We do have pictures from yesterday's field trip in honor of Nora's 9 month out-as-long-as-in birthday! Nora was born at Backus Hospital, very near our house, and we had a really wonderful experience there in the Frederick S. Eadie Birthing Center. Shortly after her birth, we received some information on a fundraiser called "A Star is Born at Backus." Basically, in exchange for a donation to the Birthing Center, they engrave your child's name and birthday on a star and post it on a mural in the Birthing Center waiting room. Since we were so happy with the time we spent there, we thought this would be a good way to say thanks, and to get a fun thing that we could visit with Nora to boot. Anyway, we donated, and got a confirmation that Nora's star had been installed way back in August or so. And we finally got around to taking Nora to see it yesterday!

Nora checking out the wall of stars.
A mostly unsucessful picture of Nora with her star - she's the one diagonally off the bottom right corner of the fire alarm.
Nora's a star!
The whole wall.

Edited to replace the star with Nora's full name with the blurry one, thanks to Aunt Abby. Thank you!!

She waves!!

Nora waves for the first time, while eating her first omlette. Coincidence? I think not!


She continues waving while finishing off the rest of her supper, pasta and peas.

And now I am nine (months)

Shockingly, Nora's nine months old today! I can't believe it - everyone said that it would go so fast, but it really, really does. I mean, it really does. Not kidding here. :) Nine months feels like such a huge milestone to me, bigger than any of the other month "birthdays" we've passed already. Symbolically, anyway, it means that from here on out, Nora's been out in the world for longer than she was inside me. I'm blown away every day by how much she's grown and changed in the last nine months. She truly is the most amazing addition to our lives.

To celebrate her nine month birthday, we have a special field trip planned for tomorrow (you'll find out about it then!). After she went to bed tonight, we also opened a bottle of Nora wine (Aunt Abby and Aunt Sara and our friends Mike and Jeanna both found this wine for us!), which was delicious.

Nora gave us two gifts, too! First off, she slept through the night last night, for only the second time in her life. Hopefully she's decided that 9-month olds sleep through, and she'll continue in this vein! Presumably someday I won't be able to keep track of the number of times she's slept through on one hand, right?

Second, she started waving at supper tonight! We've kind of been going crazy modeling waving for her the last few weeks, but she hadn't shown much inclination to do it herself. Even this afternoon at swim class, her teacher Laura waved at her as we were leaving the pool, and Nora just looked at her like she was from another planet. Then, while eating an egg yolk and cheddar omlette (yum!) for supper, she just started waving like crazy at Daddy! She spent the rest of the evening waving - at Daddy, Mama, her sippy cup, her toothbrush, the mobile over her changing table, as she was nursing... It's sooooooooooo cute it kind of hurts. :) Lucky for you, we took a couple of videos during supper, which I'll post as soon as Google Video finishes processing them.

In the meantime, here are a couple of pics of Nora hanging out her her cave - the space under her exersaucer. This is now one of her favorite places to play! She's sporting the new barrette I just made her for Valentine's Day in these. Oh, and her funny faces are due to the fact that she's teething, and just doesn't know what to do with her mouth while that's going on. Poor little muffin.

Here's a still photo of the wave - not quite as exciting as the videos will be, I promise. :)

One more thing...

I forgot to mention this morning that Nora has another tooth! She cut her seventh chomper, the bottom outer right, on Wednesday morning. She's teething on the next one on the opposite side right now - we don't get much of a break, as teeth tend to arrive in pairs.

And, in this picture, you can see exactly none of her teeth. Enjoy!

Winter Wonderland Weekend

We had a fabulous time in Maine with our friends last weekend. There were 8 adults and 3 kids in one good-sized house, along with 4 dogs (and Mica stayed home!), 2 cats (they stayed on the porch, since Nora and several of the adults are allergic), and a one-eyed goldfish. It was a party!


Nora checks out the scene as the rest of the group rents skis.
Nora and Mama watching the skiers!
Alyssa hangs out with Nora while Mama gets all the baby gear together.
Daddy and Nora playing the piano.
They're very accomplished!
Nora enjoys a breakfast banana.
There were a lot of fun accessories in the house where we stayed.
We stopped at Gritty's for lunch on the way home, so that Nora could enjoy her first Scottish Ale (coaster, that is).

Nora has a snack after getting home. (She had already eaten the Veggie Booty in this bowl!)
Nora has a new sippy cup, with a straw, that she loves to use all by herself. She likes to drink water with her meals and snacks.