Nora’s biggest fans know all too well just how normal it is for her to ramble on and on about waffles and airplanes and matters of fact (bonus points if you can place that quote). It’s happened for months now, and quite frankly we’ve loved every second of it. Lately things have started to change; our little Miss is starting to string words together like it’s her job! “Dadda eats suh cheese” (as Daddy takes a bite of his grilled cheese), “Momma Dadda ree booka siiit” (as we sit down to read some books before nun-ites). It’s all starting to make sense!

Along with her constantly increasing vocabulary Nora’s getting more and more able bodied every day. She doesn’t want to be carried up and down stairs, she wants to walk up and down them on her own. She might not want you to read that book, akshully, she’ll sit and read it on her own. She easily climbs up on the couch and sits down on her own, no assistance required. At the park she can make her way up the steps, across the bouncy bridge and down the slide all on her own. On the one hand it makes me happy to see her taking these baby steps (tee-hee) toward independence. On the other hand, STOP GROWING UP SO FAST!!!!

Nora’s found arts & crafts to be a fantastic activity for a few months. She’s been honing her Play doh skills, her drawing skills, her coloring skills and her stickering skills nearly every day. It’s only a matter of time (probably shortly after she stops trying to eat the Play doh and coloring on the walls!!) before her pieces start showing in the trendiest galleries across the globe.

The dog days of summer have treated us well. Nora’s been getting plenty of time in the water, it’s both practical and recreational. She’s actually putting her face under water on her own! She has a blast being towed around her cousins’ pool in her tiny little tug boat. As you can see she’s also gaining some crucial ocean experience. First lesson: incoming waves can topple you :-D Second lesson: salt water is salty, she was constantly licking her lips tasting the ocean. Cute, but a little gross if you ask me.

1 + (202 / 365) = 1.55 years (and counting!)

We recently attended a birthday party for Izabelle (Trish’s college roommate’s daughter). We had a blast! They’re about an hour away from us in New Hampshire, it was the perfect distance for a quick cat nap on the way up and back. While we were there Nora became very familiar (eventually) with their dog Jillean — it never ceases to amaze me how obsessed Nora can be with dogs in books and pictures yet be so skittish with them in person. She eventually warmed up after a delicious lunch with Jackson:

It’s a monkey!

We knew very well that Nora had been listening to us and understanding most of what we say for months now. She’s the proverbial sponge soaking up the entire world around her from the second she wakes up from the second just before she falls asleep every day of the week. I won’t bother to list off all of the ridiculously incredible things coming out of Nora’s mouth, but suffice to say that she’s literally saying new things every day. The usual flow of conversation involves her asking “What’s that?!”, we say what it is and she tries to repeat us. You can almost see the wheels turning inside her head as she listens to us and tries repeat it.

We’ve just entered into the climbing phase, apparently — anything above floor level is fair game. Things that help you reach even higher things earn bonus points! We’re having to resort to timeouts here and there that ultimately end up amusing her more than anything else. Count to ten, right?! Right. As I mentioned, she lloves climbing up on things that let her reach other things — sometimes, though, she just sits and reads her books :-D

Nora + water == fun. She’s developing a rapport with water that we hope will last a life time. She loves tubby time, especially since we’ve stopped using the baby tubby. There’s so much more room, so many more toys to play with! We recently picked up a little backyard inflatable pool that’s been a big hit. Nora had her first underwater experience on Father’s Day at Uncle Brian and Aunt Christie’s pool. A puff of air to the face, a dunk from Daddy and few seconds later it was all over. She handled it all like a champ. We keep practicing in the tubby with putting our faces in the water and blowing out air, too. We can’t wait to play a game or two of Marco Polo! (Or get her into a kayak :-D)

Things really couldn’t be better. We’re all happy, healthy and enjoying the great weather. I know this is a recurring theme, but expect more frequent updates at a Sterner family blog near you ;-)

As we go for walks around the town I see couple after couple toting around a baby younger than Nora and all I can think is “where did our little one go?!”. She’s right there with us of course, usually holding on to someone’s finger as we walk along the sidewalk to the park or the pond.

Family Snushi Dinner

We went out for a family sushi dinner a few weeks ago to a local restaurant japanese joint! Mommy and Daddy took care of the raw fish while Nora polished off a California roll (light on the soy sauce/wasabi) all by herself. Well, almost all by herself. She got to try some miso soup and vegetable tempura, too. She loved the sweet potato tempura, crunchy + sweet and mushy = yum. This was the first of what will be many visits, I think. I hope.

We don’t really worry as much about little things like “is she going to see that big crack in the sidewalk?”, our worries are more like “where did she go?!”. Seriously. Nora moves with the grace of a baby elephant yet remains nearly silent. She confounds our sneaky baby detection systems. She can make it from the kitchen to the office in 13.7 seconds flat. It’s funny how that’s both amazing and, at the same time, terrifying.

Communication used to be somewhat difficult with the little peanut, that’s all changing. She probably understands more than 90% of what we say to her (and in her presence, yikes :-/), it makes things like cleaning up pretty nice akshully. If asked to help pick up the destruction she causes she usually obliges for at least a few minutes. That’s usually followed up by MOAR DEMOLITION!!

Nora, where’s your belly?!

There it is!

When she’s not busy unstacking books or chasing the kitty around so she can give her kisses Nora can still usually be found with her face in a book. Her new most favorite makeshift-toy-in-the-kitchen is a Ziploc bag of bottle caps that Daddy uses for home brewing. Sometimes they come out individually or in small groups, sometimes the bag is shaken about like she’s some maniacal maracas player with bottle caps soaring through the air and ricocheting off of walls, cabinets, whatever is in their way. It’s quite an event but rather difficult to get on film due to its short life and spontaneous nature. Speaking of Ziploc bags.

Nora’s figured out how to open zippers (she actually got this months ago), Ziploc bags, boxes of cereal, screw-off tops and, last but not least, doors. Yes, that’s right. Nora opened her first door last night. It was the door to her closet so she could get her tub out. Why her tub? We don’t know, we were both awestruck at what we’d just seen.

When it comes to talking Nora’s never been a slouch. I know that she understands about 90% of what we’re saying, the flip side is that we are starting to understand her about 10% of the time. I imagine we’ll understand 100% of what she says by the time she’s 14 or so. Get it?! Get it?! Her vocabulary consists of words like, “Teddy!”, “kitty!”, “what’s that?!”, the sometimes awkward “who’s that?!”, “cookie” (followed by her infamous cookie monster impersonation), “chicken”, “truck”, “GRRRRR” (a bear/tiger), “snort wheeze snort wheeze” (someone/something sleeping), the list goes on and on.

Last but not least, Happy Easter!

“She’ll grow up so fast.” “Don’t blink or she’ll be leaving for college before you know it.” Sadly, it’s true:-(

The Silent Sprinter

I won’t go making any predictions here, but it’s crazy to me just how fast that little peanut is! She’s twice as quiet as she is fast, too. Nora’s making excellent use of her more stable mobility using it to bring destruction and disorder to any clean, orderly room in the house. One of these days I’m going to let her romp around and follow her with the video camera just so you all can see what it’s like! Alas, who can stay mad at that face?

But seriously, Nora’s sneaky! She can reach door handles around our apartment and in a few fractions of an inch will probably be able to turn them. This is scary stuff, people. Scary! Before we know it she’ll be getting up on weekend mornings and making herself breakfast while Mom and Dad sleep in. Wait a second — that doesn’t sound so bad! We can wait for that, for now just stay little Nora!

Her Things

This should come as no surprise, but Nora is all about her things. Spatulas, an empty cereal box, a wooden spoon — no matter what it is her things will come with her as she makes her way around the house. Sometimes she’ll leave things behind in other things (her favorite is to hide Mommy’s cell phone inside of our mini-crockpot). She’s getting quite skilled at getting on all fours and looking under furniture for her things, too, at first I thought she was giving the ground hugs :-)

Bwweeeeeeeeeeee

Enough said :-D

I hope it’s obvious why it’s been such a long time since an update — we’ve clearly been busy chasing Nora around the house! It boggles my mind to think back to one year ago today. Our evenings were spent bouncing with an unhappy baby for hours and hours wondering when she’d settle down so we could try to get some sleep. Trish was waking up every couple of hours to feed Nora and, sometimes, change a diaper (or two!). Again I sit here with the monitor quietly humming interrupted occasionally by the rustle of blankets in Nora’s crib appreciating how far we’ve all come — mostly Nora :-)

She’s on the go

For starters, let’s talk about just how we’re chasing her. It all started out with Nora lying on her belly flailing her arms and legs upset about her predicament. One day a little light bulb went off and instead of flailing, the limbs started being used for crawling.

It’s hard to picture her on the floor flailing now as I chase after (on my hands and knees of course, it’s only fair) around our apartment. It’s a multi-stage event with stops at every drawer (that she’s allowed to go into). She empties each drawer of most, if not all, of its contents. There’s Daddy’s shirt drawer, there’s her linen drawer, there’s her junk drawer in the kitchen (filled with tupperware (for chewing), ginger bread cookie cutters (also for chewing) and various wooden kitchen utensils). One complete lap takes around 20 minutes if we don’t also hit the books on her toy chest in her room. Did I mention that she’s walking?

It all happened so quickly Trish and I weren’t even sure it actually happened. Daddy was lying on the floor in the kitchen while Nora played with her the things in her junk drawer. Mommy gave her a piece of dried mango to munch on as a little snack. Eventually Nora got bored with the junk drawer and wanted to move along to the next station of destruction but she faced a perplexing situation: her hands were full yet she wanted to move. In hindsight I think I remember seeing it click in her head — "Oh yeah!", followed by about a half dozen little baby steps. It was incredible.

She’s got pipes

Nora has always been fond of her voice, particularly the high (and loud) notes. Not much has changed, except for the sweet, sweet ballads she belts out. Words are getting more and more elaborate, the sentences more deliberate. Something is trying to be said, it’s a complete mystery to us what we’re missing. One thing is clear, she’s listening to us (scary :-/), she’s trying to talk to us and she’s understanding us. If we’re all done emptying out her clothes drawer and we ask her to “please help put the clothes back in”, she’ll usually oblige with a few of her clothes and help put them back in the drawer. Now let’s just get that going for her toys before nap time and we’ll be all set!

Most of you know about Nora’s relationship with our resident feline, Sophie. As Nora’s grown and become more mobile and interactive Sophie hasn’t missed a beat. She still follows Nora around the house from time to time looking for attention and, sometimes, abuse. It was a bumpy ride but Nora is gentler than ever with Sophie. It’s an every day occurrence for Nora to crawl/walk over to Sophie and rest her head on her (hugging) or go nose-to-nose with her (kissing). One of these days the camera will magically appear for that.

Happy Holidays!

As I finish this post it’s Christmas Eve. Nora’s sleeping soundly in her crib, the kitty’s curled up next to me. Mommy just finished up baking some delicious Christmas cookies. My how things change! We couldn’t be happier — we hope you all are, too. Happy Holidays, see you again in the New Year!