Nora
Where’s the sugar and spice?
Mar 30th
Sugar and spice and everything nice. That’s what little girls are made of. Right? Wrong! At least in my case. My soon-to-be eleven month old (how the #%&@ did that happen?) is a bull in a China shop. If something is in her way she will do whatever she can to just barge right through it, this includes her sister. Nothing is safe when she is around. Her favorite thing to do is rip and tear. I have to be careful not to leave important papers or Brinley’s drawings within Nora’s reach because if I do, they will end up in teeny tiny pieces all over the floor.
Another one of her favorite pass times is taking laundry and throwing it all over the room. She loves when I bring up a freshly washed basket of laundry from the dryer. She sits down and empties it at lightening speed. It’s cute to watch but becomes problematic when she does it to fresh laundry that has just been folded. She likes to do the same thing with boxes of tissues. She just keeps pulling and pulling them until they are out of the box. I’m thinking about having her try out for the game show Minute to Win It. Taking all of the tissues out of a box in under a minute is one of the tasks on the show.
I’m not trying to imply that my little Nora is not a sweetie pie. She is. How could I ever say that this little face is not sweet.
But she is totally a devil in disguise. People are always commenting on how adorable she is, usually complete strangers. She’s got the most precious smile, the cutest button nose and makes the most adorable sounds. So when we’re out in public she is quite the attention getter. Little do these strangers know what a handful Nora can be. We’ve fondly nicknamed her “Nora the Destroyer”.
So where’s my sugar and spice? I think I got the snakes and snails instead! At least I’ll never have to wonder what it would have been like to have a boy.
How did this happen?
Mar 16th
Who took away my baby and replaced her with this child??
She doesn’t look like a baby anymore! 
I can not believe how big she looks. She’s walking all over the place, eating “real” food and just growing so much. I feel like the past 10 and a half months have gone by so fast. I feel like I was just in the hospital having her. This is just craziness!
Oh and what about this one??
She has somehow transformed from my baby girl into this “kid”. I have no idea how it happened. Just last night Scott and I were looking at pictures of her first days of preschool this year, from September. She looked like such a little baby in those pictures. Since then she has completely lost her little baby face. I can’t believe she is already three and a half (and she acts much older, most of the time).
It’s been quite a ride watching these two grow and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I’m really sad that the baby days are behind us, but I’m extremely excited for what the future has to bring for both of them.
I get around, ’round, get around…
Feb 7th
Nora seems to be taking after her sister in the crawling department. Brinley never learned to crawl before she walked. She would get around by squirming on the floor and doing an army type crawl but never mastered the butt in the air, hands and knees crawl (you know, the normal one). Nora is following suit. She never was and still isn’t a fan of being on her belly. She rolls over just fine but is still working on the crawling thing. Don’t be fooled though, she can get around just fine. She slides all around on the hardwood floor and tile though she usually goes backwards. The other day I put her down for a second so I could get Brinley’s jacket on her as we were heading out. Withing seconds, she was under the kitchen table.
She gets frustrated not being able to move around faster but just can’t seem to get her butt off the ground. Although Brinley and Nora have been completely different as babies, this might be one thing that they have in common – walking before crawling!
Learning Table
Feb 5th
Nora is all about standing these days. If she’s sitting down, she’s trying to pull her way up to stand. She’s able to hold on to tables and the couch and cruise around a bit. Here is a side-by-side of Nora at nine months and Brinley at nine months both standing at the Learning Table:
Here comes trouble
Jan 30th
Before Nora was born I often wondered if she’d be like her sister or not. Everyone always said, “Watch out! The second child will be a handful!” I never really believed it and just assumed that my girls would be similar. Boy was I wrong! Nora is indeed a handful. I know you’re not supposed to compare your kids, but its really hard not to.
In two days, Nora will be 9 months old but she acts more like she’s already at least a year old. She’s not crawling yet, but I think she might just walk first, and soon. All she wants to do lately is stand up – whether it be holding on to our hands or hanging on to the furniture. She has no fear and just wants to GO! Brinley was always content to be sitting and playing with her toys and could entertain herself for short spurts of time while I got things done. Nora will have none of that. She has to be a part of the action, whatever it is.
Eating is another area in which the girls are very different. Brinley always ate baby food well, but had a hard time transitioning to “real” food. She gagged on pieces of food early on and was still eating pureed baby food at nearly a year old. Nora is already eating grilled cheese sandwiches! Tonight for dinner she had some of the veggies that I cooked with our pot roast and she just loved it. She will try just about anything and is always looking for food.
There is no denying that both of my girls are beautiful but it is just amazing how different they are!
