A blog for me

Full of memories made with my happy little family...


Friday, June 3, 2011

Our Little Rebel

We have a house full of toys. Our living room is already inundated with an exersaucer, a tiny tot kitchen, a music box, and an activity table. There are "go to" toys that I pull out in the kitchen to keep her entertained: a basket full of bibs, a container full of cookie cutters, a set of stacking cups. Her bedroom includes a pile of stuffed animals, and there is a shelf with organized baskets of linking beads, rattles, linking rings, and squirty toys.

Yet lately Cora's "favorites" are those things that she really isn't supposed to play with.

Here is some proof:

 A hair brush (OK, so this one is technically OK for her to play with, but she loves when she is able to get her hands on my hairbrush, and she has already started to pull-up on the drawers in our master bath, reaching in for my things while I am getting ready.

The recycle bag. Here, I stocked the bag with items she could safely play with and let her have at it.

 Our sneakers. She loves our sneakers.

Anything from a kitchen. Here, we were over for dinner at Anne & Dave's. I committed a "Mommy Failure" and didn't pack anything to contain Cora while we ate (like her Bumpo seat). Anne came up with a way to strap Cora to a dining room chair - she loved her perch!

Landon has had nightmares over this one!

The kitchen chairs. They slide with her, but yet she keeps going back to them.

Her car seat. She loves to play with the straps on her car seat.

Yumm Goodness!!! She loves to eat sand!

Grass and leaves.

One of the big problems is that she has a heck of a grip. We call this the "Sneaker Rodeo".

Sunday, May 29, 2011

More Learning

Aunt Heather came to town last night, and we practically went straight to Poe's Tavern for dinner. When we eat out, I always pack a "snack catcher" full of puffs, even though she hasn't been able to get her hand in the snack catcher to get the puffs out herself... at least she wasn't able to until last night.
I saw that she was working hard to figure it out, so I grabbed the camera. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGzeSuiDI8M&feature=youtube_gdata

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Learning

We are loving Cora's new tricks, and she seems to be developing new tricks almost daily. Her little brain was particularly active the day after mother's day. It was like she woke up with new neurons firing.

She was suddenly babbling, and now dadadadada is the music we hear in our house.
She caught-on to "touch and feel" books, and now eagerly reaches for the pages, especially"Little hands love soft, cuddly bears" and "That's my kitten! It's tummy is so soft" (two of her very favorite lines).
When I left her at daycare, she had recognition that I was leaving and started to scream.
All new tricks for Cora, and all appearing overnight.

Other new tricks in the past month:
She is starting to take a couple of steps while holding on to furniture.
She is crawling through and under things, like through her exersaucer and underneath tables.
She discovered the spicket in her bathtub, and loves to sit under the water.

With every new thing that she learns, we celebrate.




Our little sack of potatoes doing her morning calisthenics.

We are so happy to see Farmer's Market season return. Last summer, I looked like I had stuck one of those watermelons under my shirt.

It was one of Cora's first times to try watermelon, and I was snapping a pic of all that she had captured in her bib. When I opened her bit to snap the picture, her little hand followed mine and she started grabbing pieces out and eating them.

Makes sense - I ate about a half a watermelon a day during the last month of my pregnancy.
Hanging in the pool with Amy.



If you look closely, you'll see the foreboding teeth in through the window. Don't get too scared... it was just Luke Cangelosi hanging out with Pearl on our back porch. Cora was fascinated.

Oh Mother!

Who says Cora is too little to give me a gift? This year, Cora made me a mother. That is the best gift I've ever recceived!

We were lucky to have Mia & the Grand Poobah here for Mother's Day Weekend.
One, Two, Three... UP!


With Dad and Mom both looking at Cora in this pic, it might seem like this picture was posed. It wasn't - this is pretty much how they look all of the time.








Cora caught her first fish... a shark!

Ready for the derby!

We were loading up for dinner, and this is how I found them. Landon wasn't going with us, so if you do the math, that means there were 3 adults and one baby. That left the front seat without a passenger. They rode around like this all weekend...

Happy Mother's Day!


I just love her expression in these pics when she laughs and reaches for me.



I got to sneak in a nap after church, since it was mother's day. I woke up to find Cora curled up with Landon under a blanket in the hammock. I am not going to lie - I would have preferred Landon's nap with Cora over my nap alone!



Our Little Beach Bum

We spent the weekend with Joy and Dennis in North Myrtle Beach. Dennis was a groomsman in our wedding, and Landon was the best man in their wedding, and we felt really lucky that they invited us to stay with them, baby and all.

What a nice, low key, relaxing weekend!

Helping Mommy pack for our trip. Cora is in a huge shoe phase right now. Hers, mine, Daddy's. All shoes are fair game, and if Cora spots them even from across the room, she starts crawling speedily towards them. We've never been people who put our shoes in the closet as soon as we come home... Cora is changing our habits.




So so tired from packing.

Cora and I woke up early on Saturday and slipped out for a nice beach run.


This was the first day that Cora spent a significant amount of time on the beach, and experienced different types of sand (dry, hot, wet, etc.). For Cora, it was like a smorgasboard of tastes... we haven't broken the sand-eating habit yet.


After the beach, Cora wouldn't nap. We tried everything, and so we finally just gave up and let her play. She was playing with Joy, fussed for just a second, and then practically collapsed on her chest. Joy was so sweet to lay there and let Cora nap on her... and so I snuck a nap too.










She looks so grumpy here... but she was being so silly right before this. In fact, she clapped for the first time while sitting on my lap under the umbrella.

Joann Kent & Linda Bradley McKee have been saying a nursery rhyme everytime they see Cora.
I had never heard it:
"There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good she was very very good. But when she was bad she was horrid."