february in review

now that it's halfway through march, how about i post about what we did back in february?
(i am on. top. of. things. around this blog, aren't i?)

which really isn't too exciting, because in february we all essentially got super sick a bunch more times. it was pretty miserable. i don't know what is going on with san diego recently, but apparently we are being visited by plagues (still. even into march. agh!). the pharaoh of this city needs to let moses's people go, or whatever, because it's seriously been beyond excessive, and i'm ready for it all to go away.

while we were busy recovering from our bouts of flus, colds, and other illnesses, chris and i celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary (this is 2 out of 2 i've spent pregnant), and valentines day! awwww, so much lovey-dovey in one month! we found time here and there between being sick to go out and celebrate, so it was like a whole four weeks of lover's-days. hooray! (although if you were to ask chris, he would have preferred just having a healthy family for all of those weeks. but, you know, you gotta take what you have handed to you and make the best of it, even if it's not ideal).

nora was happy on valentine's day! :) she had just gotten over being sick!

and there you have it! our super exciting monthly review, late as usual! :) hope everyone else has been seeing healthier days than we have!

also: our house is still coming along. in february the exterior saw the commencement of the plastering process:

while the interior got a bunch of electrical finished, doors and drywall installed and walls prepped for painting. maybe i'll have more pictures in next month's report! :)

11 months

oh my goodness. how is this the last month that our little nora will be considered a baby?! next month she graduates into toddler-hood. and i'd probably shed a tear here if we didn't already have more "baby"directly in the line-up. therefore and luckily, there will probably be more celebration than weeping when it happens. :)


growing up so fast! look how long those legs are now!

nora's becoming quite the little lady. this past month she has learned "pointing as a method of communication". thankfully this has reduced her disposition to be fussy, however she still does prefer to be held quite often- pointing here and there so that her lucky holder can take her whichever way suits her fancy, and screaming when she doesn't get her way. she really is quite spoiled.

"that way mom"

she is not yet saying too many words- just "hi", "bye" and "uh-oh"... she uses the latter before she throws something onto the ground- serves as a good little heads up for us. her newest thing is to nod her head and say "yeah"; she also babbles all sorts of baby nonsense while nodding her head as if to simulate a conversation. she also says "no," but only when she's attempting to touch a no-no thing, and she does it in a growly voice... i wonder where she learned that?

nora's been able to stand by herself for about a month now; however, she has become able to stand up from being seated without the aid of furniture if she reeeeeally wants to. no walking yet. most the time she likes to cry for someone to pick her up or power-crawl/cruise. she'll turn into a limp noodle if we so much try to help her walk. that girl is definitely something else.

nora's getting to be a pro at peekaboo. she sure likes the attention. she feeds off of the stuff. she's also having fun giving kisses... she's got quite the aggressive technique going on- chris and i are currently trying to teach her to tone it down.

we're still waiting for those two top teeth... they're pretty close. i'd say they'll definitely be in by next month, but isn't that what i said last time? anyways. we'll see.

waiting... waiting... hm...

until next month!

january times

can you believe we're a whole month into 2012 already?
holy smokes!

well, as i anticipated, january was much more mellow than december was. a good month for doing things like getting sick and such. we did a LOT of that.

on the upside, house renovations are coming right along. the place looks like a bit of a mess currently, but a good kind of mess- the one that spells "progress" instead of "i need SO much help!" :) we're getting pretty excited about the prospect of things. if you'd like to see details go here & here (i'm documenting progress on my other blog as things come along).

chris, the ever-enthusiastic work-out junkie, decided this month that he wanted to start doing P90X2 since it had just came out. unlike other people who do the program to "get results", chris does stuff for the challenge because he's crazy like that. and since he's completely bored with regular P90X and P90X+ (i am too- listening to a broken record of tony can kinda get annoying after a while), the prospect of something new was exciting to him. and so he began. his progress has been a bit thwarted by the series of sicknesses we've all gotten (he's not allowed to work out when he's sick, says i), but he's still determined to get the program off the ground.

and while chris is doing things like working out all crazy and being important at work, i'm taking care of little nora girl and growing larger by the day. :) #2 and i are finishing up our second trimester here- only 3 more months until she's due! i wonder if our house will be finished by then???
we'll see... it's all such an exciting mystery! :)

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!!!

what we did in november

well hello and happy december!
want to know the happenin's of november?

this past month was SO RAINY here in san diego! pretty much every weekend brought torrents of rain, so our activities were limited to the indoorsy-types. that kind of sounds boring, but it was kind of relaxing.

one of these rainy weekends chris & i went on a fancy date to the prado in balboa park while my family watched little nora girl. neither of us had ever been to the prado, but had a gift certificate to use. it was very nice- including the wet, chilly stroll through the park that took us there. balboa park is rather whimsical at night in the rain. the restaurant itself is probably the most eclectic we'd ever been to-from the decor, all the way down to the dishes on the menu. chris found that relatively entertaining. definitely worth visiting, if you're ever in the area and up for it.

also mention-worthy for november is that we finally bought a house! closed escrow and got our keys the day before thanksgiving. after over 2 years of looking, we FINALLY found the perfect one. we're pretty excited about it. for more details go here.

and of COURSE, this november we had our first thanksgiving as a family of 3. :) we spent it with my family and a whole bunch of friends. it was a regular ol' party. nora even had some mashed potatoes and stuffing... turns out she actually likes to eat, she just doesn't like baby food (took us forever to figure that out. now she just needs teeth so she can eat big-people food better!). in any case, it was a very happy thanksgiving. hope you all had a happy one too! :)

8 months

little nora is growing up so fast! saturday was her 8 month birthday, and we've made significant progress this last month in regards to eating solid food and sleeping through the night! :) we're all happier campers these days.

nora girl's newest discovery is clapping, as of a few weeks ago. she is also experimenting with different syllables to babble in addition to the ol' "da-da" and "ma-ma". she's also getting pretty good at mimicking, as it's her favorite game. she especially likes to make clicking noises in attempt to get someone to click back at her. she's stolen her daddy's heart with that game. :)

we've been trying to get her to wave at us for the past couple months, but with inconsistent results. lately we've gotten to get her to wave back a couple times, but she still just prefers to clap whenever someone waves at her, 'cuz she's so excited. :) maybe we'll have some progress by next month.

nora's getting super good at pulling herself up onto stuff and balancing very well. she's definitely not a baby that's scared of falling down- she's learned how to do that without hurting herself, and is now as fearless as ever. the only time she ever really exercises any caution is when she hears the word "no" from mommy or daddy. once again, i am thoroughly surprised at how obedient my kid is- i figured any child coming from my gene pool would have difficulty with the concept. ;) no doubt i'll get what's coming later on.

last but not least: we STILL have a toothless baby! no teeth! not even a sign of them! i wonder if she'll get at least her two front teeth by christmas? (i'm not thinking so, but we'll still wait and see!)