Yet another precious month has come and gone. I’ve never taken so many pictures in my life, let’s not even talk about how much video we’ve got. Call us crazy, but we’re trying to capture memories so that next month Trish and I can look back on them some evening after Nora’s gone to bed and reflect on how much bigger she is.

If I was a betting man I’d wager a fair amount of money that our little nuglet has some teeth starting to come in. Lately she’s taken to stuffing as much as she can possibly fit into her tiny little mouth. Screw the thumb, she wants an entire hand with some extra fingers on the side. Hold the ketchup.

Nora has always taken an interest in the Sophie-cat, until now it’s consisted of stopping whatever she was doing and watching her walk across the top of the couch. Sophie was the one thing in the house that wasn’t overjoyed when she came home from the hospital, it was business as usual in kitty land. Although she’d never say it, I suspect Nora was be a bit resentful toward the kitty for that. Sophie’s always been accepting and curious, I’m happy to say that friendly relations are beginning to blossom between them. Sophie’s got it coming to her, though, the day that Nora wraps her death grip around Sophie’s tail is going to be a Very Bad Day for their relationship.

Yes, we’re feeding her! There are two interpretations of this picture – either we’re lying or that kid’s got some incoming teefus’. As I noted before, she’s taken to stuffing anything, everything, into her face. Or at least trying to :-) It’s difficult to watch her at times, she just hasn’t developed the coordination to get things in there on the first try. Difficult and totally hilarious. What she lacks in fine motor control she makes up for with a superb ability to keep trying, she’ll be gnawing on everything within reach in a matter of weeks.

As I type this the day is Easter Sunday! Finishing these posts often takes me a few days, that gives me plenty of time to think about what to say and get some sweet new photos :-D

For Nora’s first Easter (out of the womb!) her Mimi found the perfect little dress. She’s lucky her Mommy and I didn’t eat her for breakfast, she was overflowing with unparalleled cuteness. I think that you’ll all agree that Easter is better (really EVERYTHING is better) with her out here. We had a great day, a mostly nice drive out to The Larsens’ in Hampden and back. No Easter egg hunt just yet, maybe next year. I can’t wait to walk along with her as she finds all of the neon and pastel eggs stuffed with little goodies and treats! Like dried berries, graham crackers – you know, the good stuff ;-) Nora got passed around like a hot potato between all of the relatives she hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting yet. So much fun, it was an Easter to remember.

Lastly, we’ve finally snapped a decent picture of Nora and her Daddy. Speaking of Daddy, I swear I’ve heard a faint ‘da-da’ in her mumblings on the changing table and in the Jumperoo (expect a video of that any day now). Any one of these days I swear she’ll actually be communicating with us. We’ve picked up a book on American sign language (yeah, apparently sign language isn’t universal, go figure) and we’ve started doing some simple signs as we go about our day. We’ve got our hopes up that she’ll start picking up our communication attempt soon. We’ve even made one up to represent ‘Nora’!

Again, it’s been a wonderful month. This little girl’s personality is shining brightly, we’re discovering new things about her every day. If you haven’t been for a visit in a while, give us a call, Nora would love to have you over for an impromptu concert performance!

Love, Our Little Leprechaun.

Ch ch ch ch cha chaaannnges

That’s what we’re seeing, every day. This is insane! I still remember the day Nora first smiled at me for a reason other than pooping or because she was about to spit up. It was surreal, I didn’t think that it was an actual smile. When she started doing it more often and, apparently, on purpose I was convinced. Now she’s smiling at the drop of a hat, I think I even heard a chortle early this morning. Slowly but surely she’s becoming a real human

It’s the small stuff

These days it’s really the small things that amaze me. For example:

How did she know I was going to be taking her picture? She hates the flash, especially when she’s getting some beauty rest. And speaking of beauty rest, she probably seems like she’s getting plenty, right?! Not so much, on the contrary unfortunately. We’re still working on the magical touch for putting her to sleep. Any tips would be much appreciated :-D

Opposite of small is big. This baby isn’t small. She’s big. She’s in the 89th percentile for weight (yikes) and the 84th percentile for height. Like father like daughter, I suppose.

Sleep? We’ll have none of that around here.

Like or love it, this kid doesn’t know how to sleep! Of all the things to have to learn, her only vice is being able to fall asleep and, once asleep, stay asleep. It may seem trivial to you, just appreciate the fact that you have no problem falling asleep at night. Unless you do in which case you’ve got a pal in Nora.

We take shifts, though Dad admittedly gets the easier and shorter shifts. Weekends are a little easier because we can split the overnight duties more equally. Man, it’ll be nice when this is over.

Someone should’ve told me

How much I’d love this kid. This month has seen many ups and downs. We couldn’t be happier despite the few bumps in the road. Our little girl is happy, healthy and growing like a weed! We’ve put up a few more pictures to our photos section, I’ve got more to do. Wanna order pictures from our site? Yeah, that’s coming soon.

With four weeks and a day having passed in our life with Nora we’re loving life. Nora’s been growing and changing; sometimes I think that she’s a different person in the evening than she was just that morning. She’s more alert, looking around on her own, following us with her eyes from across the room – it’s absolutely amazing to think that just under a month ago she was still an unborn baby!

Trish has made an amazing recovery! Now that we’re starting to establish somewhat of a schedule our lives are really coming back together. I suspect that things will get even more regular once I go back to work. It’s been reeeally nice having all of this time off to spend with my new daughter! I really love what I do for a living but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t dreading having to leave the house in the morning. :-/

Last but not least, we’ve got galleries!. This blog is powered by an open-source system called Mephisto. Fortunately for me it’s based on Rails (shocking, that’s why I chose it ;-)), so I’ve been working on on this gallery module for a few weeks. It’ll let Trish and I create photo galleries for friends and family to peruse at their leisure. With any luck I’ll have the time to integrate with an online photo service so you can order prints directly from our blog.

That’s all for now, we hope that everyone had a wonderful New Year. We spent ours napping (Nora) and playing a somewhat short game of Monopoly. And yeah, Trish won. Soundly. Happy New Year!

Nora Jane Sterner, born 12/4/2008 @ 10:23 pm. Weighing in at 8 pounds .5 ounces, she’s a pretty fair compromise between Mommy and Daddy. Good thing, too, because Daddy’s a giant and Mommy isn’t.

This entire experience has, for us, been utterly surreal. We’ve cried uncontrollable tears of joy, felt the snowballing anxiety of concern over out daughter’s future in an uncertain world and enjoyed countless minutes and hours (going on days!) staring into our new family member’s eyes. I wouldn’t waste my breath trying to explain this emotion to anyone who hasn’t experienced it for themselves. It swipes the air from your lungs.

It all started at 3:30 am on 12/4/2008. Trish woke up with contractions that felt like Braxton Hicks contractions with some extra kick. She decided to take a long hot shower to try to help relax, then laid back down to rest her eyes. Something about the sensations told her that this was going to be a long day!

We went into the hospital at around 9 am on the recommendation of the OB’s office. After being admitted Trish was given a quick examination to determine if her water had already broken. Much to our surprise—it did! This was it, we collectively had the realization that we weren’t going home without a child in our arms. Next stop:

Trish’s labor was an amazing experience to watch from my perspective. I was able to observe how the contractions consumed her entire being in her body’s reaction to its own attempt to push our child out from its home for the previous 39 weeks. It was, at times, a nerve wracking experience. I would’ve taken a bullet or voluntarily lost a limb to take away her pain. My concern for her health and for that of the baby was always in the back of my head; thankfully both of them made it through the process with zero complications or concerns from any of the excellent medical staff. At 10:23 pm we were greeted by this beautiful face:

Since then, she’s been visited by many of our family and friends. Her Mimi and Grandma Peg were the most important, of course. Her Mimi:

and her Grandma:

Things are moving so quickly right now that it’s difficult to find the time to make updates here, but we’re going to try our best. Little Nora has already changed so much, I feel like I’ve got a full time job trying to keep up with her. This is just the beginning! Some more pics: TBD.