Busy summer!

Whew, this is turning out to be a busy summer! We've had something going on nearly every weekend since the weather turned warm, and there's no end to that in sight. Everything is lots of fun, but the cumulative effect is kind of exhausting! (Perhaps that also has something to do with being six months pregnant while chasing this toddler around...)

Nora tries to put on Daddy's safety glasses that got left on the floor on accident.

We went to a church rummage sale last week, and scored this toddler-sized lawn chair with astronauts...
...and a cow...
...who mooooooos!
Mama and Nora spent the weekend in Boston with Aunt Abby and Aunt Sara. We had a fabulous time. On Saturday evening, we went to a LibraryThing party where Nora promptly commandeered another baby's hat.
Nora was still exhausted from the partying on Sunday morning! She fell asleep on my back on the way back from breakfast, and slept through a grocery store visit on the walk home as well.

On Sunday, we went to a Baby Loves Disco party. Unfortunately, it wasn't the best photography environment, but we had lots of fun! Nora particularly loved the balloons.
Dancing is serious business!
She was pretty excited about all the dancing accessories, especially the toddler-sized hula hoops and the egg shakers (she didn't quite get the idea of scarves). She went entirely inside the mesh bin that was full of egg shakers at one point, and started handing them out behind her to the other waiting babies!
One of the most exciting things about visiting her city aunties is the fact that you can look out the window and see cars! Right there going by us!
When we got home, Nora had figured out how to climb up on couches. She spent most of the morning today clambering up on the couch with her magazine, flopping down on her back, and flipping through looking for interesting articles. ;)
She really likes this magazine, Wild Animal Baby. Thank you again, Nana and Babchi!

We're off to Brightwater on Thursday for a long vacation - Nora and I will be there for almost two weeks, and Daddy will be coming up for two long weekends with us. I'll make sure to pack the camera and battery charger and take lots of pictures, but I probably won't be able to post again until we're home. So we'll see you all mid-August!

Random cuteness

Some particularly messy breakfast aftermath earlier this week (blueberry pancakes and yogurt!).
And a cute (but long) video of her playing with her Little People and her truck.

Mmmm, watermelon!

Nora had a great time at her second cousins Alex and Max's birthday party at Amos Lake this afternoon. She played in the water for nearly an hour, and dug in the sand for a while before that! All that effort necessitated some watermelon refreshment with Mem.

Um, I've only had two pieces. Definitely, MORE!!
Mmm, I love watermelon!
Hey, is that a camera I spy? Let me just check that out...
Playing in her tunnel (thank you again, Aunt Abby and Aunt Sara!). Nora's friend Savannah came over for a playdate on Friday, and the girls had a great time playing and snacking together while the mamas chatted! I didn't get many good pictures, but Savannah's mama Carrie did - you can see them on her blog here.

After we got home from the party at the lake today, we had a visit with Nora's other second cousins, Ruth Ellen and Melinda, and her great-uncle Paul. It was so nice to see them, since it's been since Christmas. Nora's a totally different girl than she was at 7 months old!

Millinerily Inclined

Nora loves wearing hats. This is very convenient when we're out in the sun and she actually wants to keep her sunhat on, and quite entertaining (and cute!) indoors the rest of the time. This morning she spotted a cute bucket hat, a handmedown from her friend Emma, and put it on as soon as she woke up.

Here she is asking for the ceiling fan in the kitchen to be turned on.

Just because I'm still in my pj's doesn't mean I don't need a hat!
This is her mooing face. She is convinced that all animals, not just cows, moo. She does a pretty convincing moo! (She's answering the question, "What does a panda say?" here.)
Giving her panda bear a kiss.
She had to wear the hat for breakfast...
...And once she got dressed too!

Back again!

Whew - mere hours after my last post, all three of us came down with horrible food poisoning, and we were totally out of commission for days! Thankfully, we're all feeling much better now, and have had a chance to take a few more pictures.

Here's Nora modeling a Tshirt that her Mem brought back from Finland last year. It's too small for Daddy and too big for Mama, but it fits her just right, huh? I think she looks like she's wearing some sort of wizard robe in this one. Or maybe it's just the Harry Potter madness in the air!

Bathtime is Good Times for Mama and Nora both. :)

Fun stuff

One of Mama's imaginary friends* made Nora this super cool fishy shirt!

It's still really hot and humid (hello, it's July!), and Nora's bangs are too long again. I decided that a hot, sweaty, cranky, teething toddler is not the best haircut candidate, so today we experimented with pigtails.
Not content with walking, she's started running! Nora and her little sister. :)

*imaginary friend = someone Mama only knows online, not in person. But she must actually exist in order to have made and sent us this shirt!

She walks!

A month to the day after she took her first steps, Nora took off walking this morning! Suddenly, walking is her default mode of transportation. It's crazy! She still tumbles down fairly frequently, but gets right back up and starts walking again instead of reverting to crawling. Such a big girl! At the end of this video you can also see her adoration for Baby (and her black eye from the bug bites nearly a week ago).

Last week

Here are a few more pictures from last week that I didn't have time to post before we left for Maine.

I found a bunch of new toys for Nora at some yardsales last weekend. One of her favorites is Baby, whom she absolutely adores. She has lots of stuffed animals, and a few stuffed dolls, but this is her first more realistic doll. She carries him around the house, gives him rides in her cart and on her bike, and hugs and kisses him constantly.

Concentrating at her activity table.
Teething face.

Riding her new yardsale truck.

Playing in the whale pool.


In other exciting news last week, we found out that Nora's going to have a little sister! That's right, the Little Nugget is a girl. We're so excited to be having two sisters so close together!

Brightwater!

We're back from a lovely vacation at Brightwater! Nora really seemed to enjoy the change in surroundings this year (since last time we were there she was only 4 months old, she wasn't really taking in the differences between Maine and Connecticut!), and we all had a fabulous time.

The day before we left, Nora saw Mama packing her clothes, so she decided to help by donning her sunhat and putting every single article of clothing in her bottom drawer into the basket.

Playing with Daddy. Nora got these neat links from her Auntie Em for her birthday, and she really likes them. Her favorite game is for you to link them all together and she'll take them apart, but she's starting to figure out how to link them together on her own as well.


Nora's latest trick is to smack herself on the head or face if you say, "Oh, man! I can't believe we did that!" It's extremely cute.
We went to the beach for a picnic on a windy, cloudy day...
But then it started raining, so we had to finish our lunch in the car!
After lunch, the rain stopped, so we went for a walk around Fort Popham at the end of the beach. In this picture, Nora and Mama are standing in front of the rocks where Mama and Daddy got engaged, almost 3 years ago!
We went out for breakfast at our new favorite place, the Starlight Cafe in Bath. They had the coolest highchair ever for Nora to sit in! (You can kind of see in this picture how, on our second night at Brightwater, Nora got three mosquito bites around and below her right eye. It was so swollen up that when she woke up we thought she had a black eye! Poor baby - she has such sensitive skin that only one bug bite causes quite a bump, so three in the same sensitive area was pretty bad.)
Have lunchbag, will travel! Nora quickly figured out how to open the screen door on the porch and get out onto the (no railings, up over rocks) deck. I think she really looks a lot like her second cousin Max in this picture.
She was none too pleased when she realized we'd latched the door to keep her inside!We forgot to bring our camera on our second trip to the beach, but let it suffice to say that this girl is definitely a water baby! She crawled straight into the freezing ocean, and was only deterred by the 4th or 5th wave that crashed up into her face. When we got home, she had a refreshing sunshower to get rid of the massive quantities of sand all over her body.
Her hair is getting too long to dry by rubbing a towel over it, baby style!
Our only (minor!) complaint about the vacation is that since all four of us were sleeping in the same room, when Mica woke up to go outside early every morning, Nora would wake up too. At home, since she's in her own room, Daddy can get up and take the dog out without disturbing her. At Brightwater, 5:15 was the latest we ever got to sleep! Since that's an hour earlier than Daddy usually gets up, and two hours earlier than Mama and Nora usually get up, we were all pretty tired those mornings.

Another (unphotodocumented) highlight of our trip was a free Dan Zanes (kid's music) concert in Freeport with some new friends. Nora really loved meeting Ingrid, who is the same age, and Bridget and Moriah, who are almost 3. Mama had fun talking to their mamas! Then we all went out to dinner with even more friends. It was a great time!

We're already looking forward to next month, when we'll be at Brightwater for a week and a half. Can't wait!