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Nora Lee is 13 months and is now more of a little girl than a baby. She is not yet walking but takes up to three steps on her own before going back down to the ground. She is very fast and can get up and down off of the couch and bed and walks easily while holding onto furniture. She laughs a lot and we are constantly amazed at how much she understands. Although she speaks almost no words yet, she seems to understand most things we say.

She LOVES music and dancing. She dances any time music comes on and usually sings along if there are lyrics. In the car or at home there is music on almost all of the time and you will hear a tiny little high voice singing along. Her dancing is the most precious thing I have ever seen. She shakes her little hips back and forth and it kills us.

A few weeks ago I put on the "Sound of Music" and was amazed to find that she would stop and watch whenever the singing and dancing happened. The rest of the time she ignored the TV but when the music was on, she was thrilled. I began doing an experiment and she consistently stops playing and gets a HUGE smile on her face and begins to dance when Gene Kelley or Fred Astaire comes on the screen. I have been anti-TV for her but after seeing how much joy she gets from the old time dance and song numbers I loving TIVO-ing musicals and showing them to her. Matt is of course THRILLED with her love of music, dancing and singing. We are both excited to see how that develops in her.

She still has eight teeth but a few more are on the way. She has had a break from teething for a while which has been really nice.

She is VERY inquisitive. She wants to know what everything is called. She only says a few things and one of them is "Ga da?". Ga da means "what's that?" and she says it ALL the time. When we say what the thing is called she is satisfied and is quiet or points to something else to learn the name.

Nora Lee still loves food and will befriend anyone in the room who has food to share.

That's all for now.

Love,
Sara

Adventures with Poop

I have two short stories about poop that I wanted to document.

One is simple and involves a diaper change when Nora had pooped about 30 grape sized pellets which as I unfastened her diaper she grabbed and threw all over the bedroom. Deeelightful.

The second is more disturbing, so put down your sandwich before reading further.

We use cloth diapers and wash them in our washing machine. This is no big deal and we do several loads of diapers each week. Since Nora Lee has been eating solid food we have to have a poop pail along with a regular pee pail. When she poops we dump the poop in the toilet and then put the soiled diaper in the poop pail to soak. On this particular day I noticed that the poo pail was maxed out (its quite small) and so I decided to put in a load to wash. I lifted the pail by the handle and began crossing from the bathroom into our kitchen toward the washing machine. As I entered the kitchen the handle broke and the pail fell to the floor dumping poo diapers all over the floor and splashing my entire face and body with poo water. Matt heard the commotion and came running in to find me soaked and startled. He was horrified and found it hilarious.

Before you all decided to never come over to my house again or to kiss me, let me assure you that both my body and my home have been sanitized to the max. At least after being showered with poo water no one can say I don't care for the environment.

Mexico Part 4

Mexico Part 3

Mexico Pics Part 2

Mexico

In the first part of January my brother Clay got married in Mexico. I was excited about this event and the trip but nervous about Nora Lee. She has done a little traveling with us by plane but before she was mobile and I envisioned a challenging five hour flight with a squirming little one.

We left home at 4:30 a.m. to begin our journey to LAX, then had a five hour flight, and a two hour busride to the resort where we were staying. We lucked out and had extra seats around us on both the way there and way home. This was an incredible blessing. My mom and step dad traveled with us to help with Nora and it was really nice to have four adults to one child. She slept part of the way there and did incredibly well on the twelve hour journey.
The resort was stunning and we spent the week enjoying family and friends and the beautiful Mexican Riviera.

Nora had never been in the ocean and she enjoyed playing and eating the sand. We were told to let her eat the sand and once she tasted it she would find out it wasn't so tasty after all. So we let her take that first handful, which was followed by another handful and another. When I picked her up to stop her from eating more sand she began licking the sand off of her fingers. So much for that advice :)

I snorkeled and Matt played with a wave runner. We took turns with family spending time with Nora Lee. There were forty adults and one child so there were many arms for holding and playing with her.

We took her to the Mayan ruins in Tulum where she rode on my back as we toured the historic site. It was pretty amazing.

She was the flower girl in the ceremony and she and I walked together and threw the flowers. It was a sweet experience and a beautiful ceremony on the beach. I even got to party into the night while family was with Nora Lee in our hotel suite. I had a blast.

I have to say that although traveling was tiring, she was an incredible little travel companion.

Nora Lee's 1st Birthday!

A few days after Christmas Nora turned one year old. It's an understatement to say how fast this year has gone by. It seems I was just finding out she was in my belly.

The unfortunate thing about having a birthday so close to Christmas is that most peopple are busy or out of town. This may be even more of an issue as she gets older and actually has friends of her own.

Right after giving birth last year, it was about 5 a.m. and I was lying in bed and I suddenly realized that I was famished. My best friend Lena was there and offered to cook me whatever I wanted and my greatest heart's desire was blueberry pancakes. I might of eaten a thousand of them that morning.

So, for Nora Lee's first birthday we thought we should make blueberry pancakes again. We had a low key day with a few friends and family members. She got more wonderful presents (the poor thing) and best of all - she got to eat her first cupcake.

Let me first say that Matt and I are pretty strict about her sugar consumption. And what I mean by that is that until the cupcake she had had almost no sugar. (I say almost no sugar because I suspect the grandparents may indulge her every once in a while). Anyway, for her birthday we decided to put a cupcake in front of her and see what she would do. First she looked at it, then looked at us, then looked at it, then looked at us. Then smelled it and took a small bite which turned into a big bite which turned into stuffing the entire thing in her mouth. I was quite surprised because I assumed she would take a few bites, but no, she ate the entire cupcake. We all died watching her enjoy this treat. I wish I let myself enjoy cupcakes that much - one more thing I can add to the list of "What I have learned from Nora Lee".

After the cupcake, we hosed her down and put her on the floor to open presents. After about fifteen minutes she was zipping back and forth squealing with delight as she zoomed from room to room. What a sugar rush (and the reason we don't let her eat sugar :)

I'll finish this segment by saying that she crashed pretty hard that night and we didn't hear a peep from her until morning.

Christmas

We decided to stay home for Nora's first Christmas. My dad, brother, and sister-in-law came up to celebrate with us Christmas morning and we had more loved ones over in the afternoon. Nora enjoyed opening presents and playing with all the wrapping paper.

She made out like a bandit - surprise, surprise.

Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving in San Diego with my family. We stayed with my brother and his fiance (now wife!) in their beautiful home. We spent four days cooking, eating, sleeping, and playing horseshoes.

Nora Lee nearly slept through the Thanksgiving feast but woke up just in time to discover a new favorite food - butternut squash.