Ah shhh...

Yesterday morning I was carrying Cora when I ran into the bench in our foyer.

I won't say what I said, but it caused Cora to echo "Ah shhh".

Landon is so thankful that this happened to me, not him.

Back to that New Year's Resolution to change my vocabularly...

Cereal and Cuddles

I was hesitant when Landon started letting Cora eat cereal and bananas with him on the couch, but after seeing their cuddle time this morning, I get it.

When Cora gives people bites, she always opens her mouth, like she is coaching them through it.

 Daddy acted like he was going to give me a bite, then he stole that puff and put it in his own mouth!

 It was reeally funny.

 Hey, he did it again!

 Stop, stop, you are too much!

 Seriously, stop that!

Thanks to Miss Gabby (at daycare), Cora had her first pigtails when we picked her up today.

I'll allow my couch to be covered in bananas if it means these happy cuddles every morning. Someday, I'll miss those little crumbs and banana stains. She is growing up too fast.

That is a heck of a first shiner, kid

Have I mentioned that Cora is an "active" sleeper?

She's always woken up screaming a lot in her sleep, especially when we travel. Not a typical wake-up either, and not the type of screaming that is satisfied by walking in to pick her up. Most of the time, rather than being relieved when we came to get her, she instead screamed even more. At times, I even worried that she would get hurt during one of those screaming sessions - I worried that she would kick or wiggle so hard that I would drop her, especially as my belly has grown this year. On several occassions, I had to just sit her in the floor and try to stay as close to her as she would let me, until she calmed down. Landon and I, without diagnosing the actual problem, started to recognize that these events lasted a lot longer when we went to comfort her. By going in, we realized that we were disrupting her in some way, causing her fit to last much longer (sometimes for an hour). If left alone, we recognized that she would calm down and be back to sleep in minutes, allowing us to go in and check on her once all quietened.

When we have house guests, or when we are house guests, I have anxiety about the screaming. It's really hard to not go to her when there is a housefull of people, or when she's sleeping in the same room as us. AND it's especially hard to convince other people to not go to her when we don't (I can't blame them). Which caused me to start to look into the cause of the screaming...

One day in January, when we went to pick Cora up from daycare, Miss Gabby mentioned that Cora was doing the same thing during naptime. She described two different types of Cora-naptime-behaviors: 1) Cora sits up, screams like she's falling off of a cliff, kicks and thrashes for a couple of minutes, and then settles down and returns to sleep, or 2) Cora sits up, climbs off of her mat, walks around the room really dazed for a few minutes, and then settles on her mat and goes to sleep. Gabby's mom described it as "Cora's badness catching up with her" in her sleep! On her own, Gabby had also concluded that the best thing to do was just leave Cora be during the episode.

Hearing Gabby describe it, it all makes perfect sense. Sometimes at home, we also hear a loud thump in her room, like she's bumped herself hard in her crib, but then all is quiet. It makes sense now... she is sleep walking. And, when she wakes up screaming, she is having a night terror. Disturbing her only makes it worse...

All of this leads up to the point that Cora got her first shiner this week. It's hard to see the little bruise on her cheek in this picture (in the eyes of her parents, this little boo boo was a HUGE injury), and it's even harder to see that the bruise turns into a (admittedly very tiny) scrape that skips into her hairline. She stood up for her naptime trek around her classroom, her feet became tangled in her blankets, and she didn't try to catch herself as she slammed into a table.

This is a pretty minor injury, yet Landon and I both said if we had of been with her when the bruise first started appearing, we likely would have taken her in for an examination. And, I admit, we went in to check on her several times throughout the night. I'm not sure how I'll manage when Cora or the Messal Watermelon experience real injuries!

Mia came to town Thursday night! My visit to the doctor indicated that my body is progressing towards labor, and afterwards, we all (Mom, Dad, Landon, and I) admitted that we were experiencing anxiety about what we would do with Cora when the fireworks begin. We have so many friends who have offered - and I'm positive that they are all good for it - but I found myself every afternoon at 4PM trying to determine if the contractions were Braxton Hicks or something more, how far apart they were coming, and whether or not I needed to go ahead and put someone on standby for getting Cora from daycare (followed by making lists in my mind "Is there a spare carseat in our foyer?" "Who has a key to our house to get it?" "Who can I call that knows how to install it?" "Where is Eric today? Can he get from North Charleston in time?" "what if all 90 of our friends are sick/busy/on James island?" "Where is Landon at this moment? Should I call him and alarm him?" "Should I leave now to get Cora? What if I get stuck on Sullivan's Island when the bridge is drawn?"). As I've been having fairly active contractions, this routine was happening every single day. Landon said he was doing a similar routine: Would he be able to get Cora settled with friends and get back to me in time? Labor with Cora was so quick... When the doc indicated that I should probably take every minor sign of labor seriously given Cora's quick delivery (even nausea, minor back pain, regular Braxton Hicks contractions), Mom was on the next flight out of Huntington, WV. Here we are, 3 days later, all of the laundry in the house is complete, Mom swiffers the floors every day, I haven't unloaded the dishwasher since she arrived, Landon feels like he is on vacation from housework, we've watched a movie or two, and Cora is taking full advantage of having Mia in town! What's the hurry? Why try to rush labor? This is the life! (Just joking, Mom!).

Here, Mia and Cora took the cart to get the mail. Cora is really into this hat. I was watching from my desk in the office as they made their way across the cul-de-sac. A big wind came, blowing Cora's hat off. Her reaction was so funny. She looked like a grumpy old lady as she accepted it back from Mia, put it back on her head, then stood there stubbornly in the street holding onto the rim with both hands.

It is hard to see, but these shoes are two whole sizes too big. They are leopard mary janes. I picked them up on clearance for next fall. I was showing them to Mom when Cora saw them and insisted that she wear them. It took us several hours to wrangle them off of her feet, despite tripping several times.

In this hat (vintage Reese), with these shoes, I could totally see her serving as a rural route post lady!

Cora usually toddles between my bathroom and closet as I get dressed in the morning. She always chooses shoes for me. On THursday, her selections included these black strappy shoes, followed by these red heals. I'm not even sure why I have these red ones! I think that I've worn them twice - once when Joy and I hosted a redneck party, and a second time when Joy, Taylor, and I were at a conference over Halloween so we threw together 80's gear for a costume contest. Two days in a row, Cora insisted that I wear these, throwing herself in the floor screaming when I tried to put them up. On Friday, the fit was only satisfied when Mia agreed to put them on. She really likes shoes...

And she really likes make-up. I've been keeping my make-up bag packed, as I don't want Landon to have to try to pack it once I am in the hospital. I turned my head for just a second, and she managed to pull the bag off the counter. Fortunately, she hasn't figured out how to roll that lipstick up out of the tube!

Stealer of my heart...

I wrote down something that my dad said to me once. I was leaving, probably with my car loaded-up to head back to UTK, when he said, "So long my babies. Stealer of my heart, and half my groceries". It made me laugh so hard that I wrote it down, pinned it to a pillow in my sewing kit, and I see it everytime I pull the kit out of the closet (which, admittedly, is about twice per year, almost never to actually sew anything but mostly to find a safety pin to keep something mended until Mom comes to visit...).

Anyways, our tiny valentine stole our hearts this year!

Mia made this little monogrammed dress for Valentine's Day. I had trouble catching her for a pic, but her initials are monogrammed across the front.

 I came across these matching shoes.

Cora consistently stacks blocks by size - and she notices if you add one of mismatched shape in the middle.

Your eyes aren't deceiving you - her legwarmers are mismatched here. It was crazy sock day at school, and fortunately, Grandma M had just sent a couple of pairs of funky legwarmers our way.

Walkin' a mile in Papaw Jim's shoes...

On Valentine's Day, I treated Cora to a huge Elmo balloon from the grocery store. As you can imagine, Elmo was her main squeeze for several days. Here, we had just arrived home from the grocery store and she tried to pull Elmo into her Cozy Coupe. Are we bad parents? Rather than running to help her, we grabbed the camera to capture her fight to get Elmo in the car with her.

The next day, I had meetings and Landon dressed Cora for school. He's learned to snap a pic when she is wearing something tht will make me cackled.

 These boots (Vintage Reese) are on the verge of being too tight for her feet, but she loves them!

Grandma M got Cora this dress over Christmas Break. Today was the second time she has wore it - but today, when I went to get her dressed, I found her bloomers still attached underneath the dress. Oops! I was trying to get a pic of the front her, but this little lady was very still through church (we were able to stay in the pew almost the whole time), so she was on the go, all the time, once we came home.

Today, over brunch with the Groeber's, we were discussing the gender of Messal Baby #2. They joked that we were going to be the people to keep our kid's gender neutral as long as possible (like the story that was recently in the news about the family that didn't reveal their child's sex for 5 years). Have you looked at the way Cora is dressed lately?!?!? Nope, there isn't much unisex about this kid! In fact, I was cleaning out Cora's crates of clothing in prep for the new baby. The newborn size gowns and onesies were mostly gender neutral. Beyond that, in all of Cora's clothes and all of the sizes, 0 months - 18 months, there is only enough gender neutral attire to fill ONE under-the-bed size storage box. That's it. Everything else is super girlie.

Maybe I should be wishing for a girl!

Put your right foot in...

When I was little, Mom enrolled me in ballet with Miss Snookie (practically every little girl in Paintsville did ballet with Miss Snookie). I wasn't much of a dancer, but I loved the classes, and I especially loved when we turned our fingers into legs and practiced dance moves. We'd all hover around the mat on the floor, and Miss Snookie would tell us how to make our little fingers do the Hoakie Poakie.

Similarly (and probably around the same age), my Papaw Dennis could cause me to erupt in giggles by turning his hand into a "spider" and threatening to tickle me while I sat next to him on a stool at dinner.

Tonight, Landon and I were both upstairs giving Cora a bath. Landon turned his fingers into legs, and those legs ran up Cora's arm all the way to her neck and tickled her under the chin. She loved it. And then she stood up, came to me, and pointed her index finger down on the edge of the tub. She poked me on the arm, and then the shoulder, and then under the chin, and then she erupted into giggles.

It won't be long before our tiny dancer is ready for a dance class. Time is flying!

I'm telling you, she loves this hat, and she loves the purse that Aunt Feather left here for her. She looks like a little bag lady in her fuzzy footy PJ's, her hat, and her purse, along with her shopping cart full of her most precious belongings (Baby Mia, her lovey, and her sippy). We're a little concerned that she's aspiring to be a bag lady, but we're hoping that she's merely eccentric.

This is a game that she likes to play with Landon. Landon goes to put something in the closet, she closes the door behind him, and then she stands outside laughing until he comes out roaring. I happened to be trying to snap a pic of her morning attire when Cora took the opportunity to shove Daddy behind the door.

Sunday Funday! Cora was all ready for the Super Bowl party wearing something super comfy - an outfit from Grandma M made of bamboo. Bamboo!

I love that we have to roll the pants up tight around her bottom to keep them up - and that the shirt is all tight around her belly. 

 When you have a husband who is trained in turfgrass, pulling the "bad" grass out of the "pre-emmergent" grasses is a Sunday priority. I was a little alarmed when I learned the "bad" grass is bluegrass. Hold your horses, Mister! Leave that grass right where it is!

I don't think Landon minded the interruption.

 I love this pic. It is so random, but this is Cora's back-up as she poises herself to have a seat in a lap. Anytime one of us is sitting on the ground, this is the treatment we get. I'm not sure what had Landon laughing so hard, but I bet that she had just attempted to sit down and missed, and had popped-up and was trying again.

And, a little belly action. Yardwork is exhausting!