50 Weeks Old / New House

We moved this week so it's been hectic (to say the least). I couldn't even begin to guess where my camera is at this point, so the only picture I am going to post is one Mom took of the kids last Friday at Henry's school.
Although moving is never easy, our new house is fantastic. It's a one level, ranch style house in the Garden Home/Ash Creek neighborhood near where we used to live. We're still fairly close to Henry's school, which was the key factor I was hoping to find in a new place. It's slightly smaller than the old house, but a much better floor plan so, other than the kitchen being tiny, I barely notice the loss of space. Henry's room in particular is awesome - a whole wall of built in shelves...he can have his very own library. So far he's slept every night in there (by himself!) on the top bunk of his bunkbeds. I think it helps that he is absolutely exhausted from school each night...poor guy. The yard is any kid's dream - huge with lots of fun play areas including trees that can be climbed, a sandbox and a "playhouse" (which I think was actually intended as a greenhouse). The decor needs some work...but we'll manage.
Nora is two weeks away from turning one! Amazing! She is definitely starting to talk although not super clearly. She says mama, dada, cat, dog, woof, baby, ball and I think also Gigi and hi (but I can't say for certain those last two). She loves dolls, stuffed animals, dogs, cats, balls and anything that Henry is playing with. She absolutely ADORES Henry - he makes her laugh and laugh and laugh. She's trying to walk, but not quite ready to do so yet...she's such a speed demon when it comes to crawling though. And a little terror around the house - pulling things off shelves, tables, opening cupboards, unrolling toilet paper, etc., etc. Now that we've moved and she'll be turning a year old, I am hoping to transition her to a crib (fingers crossed). To maintain a good nursing relationship, it isn't recommended to nightwean prior to a year old but once she hits that milestone I'd like to see how it goes with her sleeping in a crib. So we shall see...
More next week (with pictures, hopefully!).

49 Weeks Old

Another week closer towards one year old! Although we had a pretty busy week this week, I didn't take very many pictures...here is Nora riding Henry's old truck. She hasn't quite mastered scooting around on it, but she likes to be pushed and loves pressing the buttons to make sounds.

No walking yet. She's not really even taking any little tentative, practice steps (other than the rare one as she moves from couch to couch). But neither did Henry and then all of a sudden he just stood up and walked across the room - so we'll have to see if she follows suit. 

Her personality is really starting to show. She is very outgoing - loves people and making "friends" with everyone around her. I took her (FINALLY!) to an age-appropriate story/song hour this week and she had a blast. Between dancing to the songs, looking at the pictures in the books and engaging the other children around her she was in her element. I've got to take her to more of those type of activities. 

I think she might be working on yet another tooth. Or else the slight cold both she and Henry have is really affecting her because she's been a bit grouchy the last couple days which is very unusual. But even her grouchy is still very pleasant. She's just so happy pretty much all the time. And boy, oh boy, is she ever happy to see Henry at the end of the school day. As soon as we get in the car she just looks at him and smiles and laughs. He doesn't even really have to do anything, just looking at her is enough to delight her into laughter. 

On Saturday we went to see a presentation by the Oregon Bird Man and all his parrots. Given Nora's love of animals, I thought this would be a slam dunk winner of an outing. Not the case. For the first half hour she was near terrified...as you can kind of tell by the picture - she's turned towards me, clutching me tightly with both hands with that worried expression on her face. I think it was the sounds they were making. By the end, she seemed to get used to the birds and enjoy it - the rest of us loved it, it was very cool with some amazing birds. That night we went to see the swifts again (second time this year) and she liked that...just as long as they stay far away I suppose!

Finally, just for fun, a little triptych of photos of Nora eating an apple that Henry put down. She was watching him eat it, saw him put it down, hustled in her speed crawl over to it, picked it up and started eating it. I just love the expressions on her face.

11 Months Old!

Only one month until the little lady turns one! I'd have a hard time believing it except for the fact that she is SO big! I still haven't gotten her weighed...terrible, I know...but I know she has grown a ton in the last few weeks. She's pretty much outgrown her 12 month sized clothes and is moving into the 18 month size ones. Not walking yet but she is starting to talk - she clearly says "mama," "daddy," and "Gigi" and I'm pretty sure she says "baby" but not with much regularity. She's added some more signs to her repertoire: she signs the words for "nurse," "please," and "hat" now consistently. There may be others that I am forgetting as well.

She's still eating like a champ - as is clear in this picture. She eats just about everything although her favorites are still anything with cheese or carbs. She does like her veggies as well (just like Henry!) - in fact broccoli and cauliflower are two of her favorites. Carrots, string beans, asparagus and zucchini are also popular. She isn't a huge fruit eater although she does like the little squeeze pouches of fruit I give her on occasion. The few little sips of cows milk she's gotten have been huge hits so I'm even more hesitant to introduce milk in greater quantities anytime soon in fear she'll favor it over nursing.

She loves exploring - she's much more mischievous than I remember Henry being. She likes to open drawers, try to climb up on things, pull books off the shelf, pull all the toys out of their bins, etc., etc. I caught her climbing into a laundry basket the other day only to have it tip over onto its side, at which point she just crawled into it like it was a cave and was thoroughly delighted with herself.

 Speaking of climbing, the above picture is why she's not going to be taking anymore baths in the kitchen sink! The video is just a little montage of some random moments I caught on camera today.

First Day of Kindergarten

The first day of kindergarten is officially in the books! Henry is now an elementary school student. I can hardly believe it! There were no tears (from anyone, myself included!) this morning as he headed off to school for full day kindergarten. We all took him in to his classroom, found his desk and said our goodbyes. He didn't have a whole lot to say about the day other than he had fun and didn't have enough time to eat his lunch. I wonder if that had something to do with the "fight" he got into with another boy over their lunch bags...they both had the same one and each thought the other was trying to take theirs! They also got two recesses which he was very excited about.

I can hardly wait for back to school night so I can learn more about what his days will be like since he doesn't give up much information. :) Unfortunately he didn't get put into a class with any of the kids that he knows already, but I'm sure he'll make lots of new friends. Plus all the kinders have lunch recess together so he does get to see some familiar faces then. The picture below is of him waiting with his class for dismissal.

47 Weeks Old

Tick, tock, tick, tock. That's the sound of the clock counting down the days, hours, minutes until Henry starts Kindergarten. As the principal of his school said this morning at orientation, it marks the first step in launching our children into the world. Bittersweet for sure! But he doesn't start until Monday so I still have a few days to enjoy with him.

We've had another fun week - swimming, play dates, enjoying the last few days of warm weather. 

I got a bubble machine on clearance at the store and the kids have both been enjoying playing with that (as Nora is doing in the above picture). I love the look on Henry's face in the background here:

He's intensely focused on popping the bubbles.

No big developmental changes in Nora this week that I can think of. She's working on tooth number 9 still. Her hair continues to get thicker (hooray! so happy she has hair!!) and it's getting lighter as well. It will be interesting to see what color it ends up being. I'm still amazed at how dark it was when she was born though. She makes this hilarious growling sound which contributes to a running family joke we have about her being a quasi-monster called "the giant baby." When Henry and I are playing with his Fort Brave set or Star Wars (or anything really) and she crawls over and smashes our people or grabs something we say "oh no! The giant baby strikes again!" Or when she gets mad at mealtime because she's out of food and growls and smashes her hand on her tray we say "oh no! The giant baby is angry! Give her more food!" Etc., etc. So I just couldn't resist taking the following picture a couple days ago when she was messily eating raspberries...we were laughing that it looks like the giant baby has feasted on something bloody...

Oh no! Don't make the giant baby mad!

We made a "car wash" for Henry's cars one day and the kids both had a blast washing the cars while I made dinner....until the giant baby decided it would be a good idea to climb into the carwash. It's sort of hard to tell in the picture, but she's sitting in one of the pans of water. 

Family Resemblance

Nana (Gigi's mom) gave me a picture of her father when he was a baby; taken in 1896. Immediately I was taken aback at the strong resemblance to Nora. This is the picture:

 I tried to find a couple of pictures that show the resemblance and compare them side by side...

While these pictures definitely show the similarities, I don't think either one truly shows how much she looks like him. It's amazing to me because all along I've seen the Winder family resemblance but clearly there are Cuff genes in there too! :)