10 months

i can't believe how big nora is getting. she's looking less like a baby and more like a toddler every day. nora's favored method of locomotion is still crawling (like, super-crawling), although she's getting pretty daring with her cruising and such. she is also starting to climb now- up onto and down off of couches. she thinks she can climb off beds too though... and that doesn't really go too well for her (she's pretty daring. gotta watch that kid like a hawk).
now that we're in a house full of teenagers who always talk kindly to eachother in moderate tones (NOT) nora's having a whole lot of stuff to mimick around here. basically, she thinks she's a tyrannosauras rex most of the time.

other newly-developed skills include helping get herself dressed (she knows where her arms and feet are!), giving kisses, and sneezing- which really isn't a skill, but she seems to think she did some sort of wonderful trick when she does it. you should hear her self-satisfied smirking afterwards. it's pretty funny.

this month also brings big news: TEETH! two of them! finally!!! they're just barely peeking out of her bottom gums, but she's already trying them out all over the place. i do recognize she's fairly behind the curve as far as teething is concerned, but we're still pretty excited. her top two teeth are actively keeping her and everyone else in the house awake at night, so we're thinking that they'll be the next to break through- perhaps by next month?

we'll see! :)

december post-o-rama.

december was madly busy for our little family. all the stuff we crammed into this month was actually pretty amazing, in retrospect. not like we weren't running around like crazy little chickens-with-their-heads-cut-off for some of it though. this is what we managed to accomplish this month:

commencement of house renovations:
this included much planning with our contractor, meetings with inspectors, coordination with our loan agent and mortgage company, hours of meeting with cabinet people, and browsing many products that we needed to pick out for our house. it's all very exciting, but also very stressful! especially toting a baby around (babies don't like hours of meetings, because meetings are boring). we managed to get our cabinets ordered this month so they can be delivered in february.
also of note: while the inspector was there, a tree full on fell over and grazed our house. thankfully the damage was minimal and happened to an area of the roof that was going to be re-done anyways, but holy smokes! silver lining: it was an old, dead tree that we were planning on getting cut down anyways. merry christmas from the wind, free of charge! :)

nora got sick:
apparently bananas do this thing to babies that doesn't quite help them in their... ehem... process of elimination, so to speak. and so, after a traumatic morning nora and i loaded up in the family vehicle to go to the pediatrician while chris headed off in his -also MY former & beloved- car en route to work. and as luck had it, the ol' family vehicle didn't start. for 10 whole minutes. chris nearly had to call out from work so he could take us all to the doctor's when miraculously and seemingly arbitrarily, it suddenly started. we went to nora's first sick appointment, got some medicine, and were all better by the end of the day (except for the car).

car trouble:
as mentioned previously. we brought the ol' family impala into the shop where she underwent all sorts of mechanical-y stuff. took a whole week. during that week i had to drop chris off at his vanpool for work while MY former & beloved car was temporarily mine again. :) the only caviat was that we had a slight mishap exchanging keys the first day, which sent me driving after him all the way to his work (aka scary-sticks-ville) where it was snowing so i could get the apartment key from him. it was quite an adventure, to say the least. but in the end, we got our family car back for a little while, before it broke down again had to go back into the shop, where it remains to this day (we're actually scheduled to pick it up tomorrow. but holy smokes, impala. give us a break here).

nora's well visit:
a few days after her sick appointment, we went back for a well one! :) our 9 month old little girl weighed in at 18.5 lbs and measured 28 inches long. not the chubbiest kid on the block, but definitely the most active- she's got a little baby six pack goin' on, the weight is all in her thighs (we feed her ALL the time. she just never sits still. takes after her dad with all that metabolism and energy- i'm kinda jealous!). she was pretty happy and adorable until her one and only shot of the day, and then she was maaaaad. :) i think she's forgiven us by now though.

see?

my birthday:
25 whole years old. chris remembered me with a small, sweet gift and we spent the day with my family after church. :) the sweet thing about having a birthday so close to christmas is that you get to sneak around the spotlight. i love it.

midterm ultrasound:
chris came along to see this one. and guess what? another GIRL! :) and a healthy one too. first name has been picked out, working on the middle one. i'm so glad we've got another little girl coming along to wear nora's precious old baby clothes. we're already excited to meet her!

moving out:
holy smokes. probably the most complicated, befuddled move of all time. started off with a wild-goose-chase for the storage unit for which we had made reservations a month prior. after the guy at the storage facility claimed not to know what chris was talking about, there were many phone calls made and much running around town to different storage facilities- took us an entire day to get it all straightened out so that we could have a place to move all of our stuff into while we stayed at my parents. this pushed our moving date into christmas eve, when our storage facility decided to close early on us without so much as letting us know ahead of time. so we had to finish moving everything the day after christmas- the day that chris had originally taken off to spend with his parents and sister who were in town. thankfully it's all over and done with now. chris and i both decided that this is the very last time that we move.

christmas:
oh christmas!!! we didn't even bother decorating our place since we were going to tear it all apart the week before the holy festivities, and i felt like kind of a grinch not doing it. but oh well! by the time christmas eve rolled around we were SO exhausted and cranky from our moving fiasco we didn't even care, and to top it all off, chris accidentally dropped his phone in the toilet right before guests started arriving for christmas eve dinner (NOT a good day for us). and so we had ourselves a little heart to heart, exchanged some hugs, and decided that we were going to forget all the crud and focus on what is really important for the next 24 hours: our health, our strength, our family, our faith, our love, and our beautiful lives together with our healthy daughter and daughter-on-the-way. stuff is just stuff and can be replaced, annoying situations will eventually pass, and these should not overshadow the things that really put meaning into our lives. the juxtaposition was actually very sweet in retrospect. and guess what? christmas eve and christmas turned out just lovely, just as it should have. and since we had to spend monday completing our move, chris's parents, sister and brother-in-law joined us all on christmas day. :) it was wonderful.

new years eve: was wonderfully boring! i wrote a post about it here if you want to read about it (i mention a marvelous recipe). although this post is probably enough reading as it is (it's so long!).

see, i didn't lie to you when i said we had a crazy month. i can bet you that next month's post will not be as laborious to read. and i'm planning on our next christmas season being much less crazy. here's to a happy, healthy new year!!!