Raising a Kid(s): October 2011

Saturday, October 29, 2011

One-Year-Old!!!

Today our sweet Norah turns one! We love her so very much and cannot imagine life without her. This past year seems to have gone so fast and I have cherished (almost) every moment with her!

Happy Birthday Norah Mae!

Norah was not so sure about her smash cake. I love how these photos capture the progression of her dismay and how her sister came in to save the day...kind of. I mean there was cake after all! Daddy finally swooped in to save her from the big, bad birthday cake.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Buddies

Sadie and Jack love hanging out. Sadie knows the sound of Jack's knock at the door and she is well acquainted with the responsibilities of how to be a "superhero" with her friend!

Lately, Jack has been on the hunt for additions to his bug collection (which is extensive I might add). The empty lot next to our house has many to spare and Sadie likes watch Jack find his prey...

...but from a distance!

Can this picture be any more stereotypical? Boy is super excited about the "stink bug," while girl cautiously investigates.

Here they are putting on a performance at the local book store.

This may be my favorite. One day they came up with the idea to put as many things into Sadie's bed as possible. You can see they were quite successful. Included: couch cushions, countless pillows, giant stuffed bear, stuffed animals, coats, hats, blankets, & children. This has now happened several times and it doesn't seem to get old for them. We have yet to see how Sadie actually gets in the crib, but I'm pretty sure she and Jack have a system worked out. I don't want to know.

Friday, October 21, 2011

And she walks! ...and climbs.

Things change fast around here. While Norah took her first steps almost a month and a half ago, she is now putting several together and walking! While crawling is still her preferred (read: faster) method of movement, she finally realized it's much easier to transport items while walking.

I'm pretty proud of the walking. It's the climbing I'm not so excited about. Let me tell you...this girl loves to climb. Unfortunately, she a natural. It started with the slide. Then the little pink reading chair. And now everything her little monkey toes reach. She's pretty proud of herself.

Look carefully at her position here. She's just lounging in the crevice...snacking on a necklace.

Omar took this picture of her after he watched her climb into the jumper all. by. herself.

I've already put this grocery cart into hiding. She has no interest in pushing it, but rather sitting and standing in it or using as a step-stool. (I may or may not confess to taking several pictures of her in this position, therefore causing me to be too far away when she fell and got the biggest knot I've ever felt).

So my carefree days are over. Just two weeks ago, I could let her play in the living room while I stepped out to put clothes away, wash some dishes, or use the restroom. Now...I can't trust her for a second. I'm dreading the day she's big enough to crawl up on the couch.

Omar predicts she'll be the one to frequent the emergency room. I'm afraid I agree.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

My Monkeys!

The weather as of late has been incredible. We often play in the backyard after dinner and Norah has made it a goal to climb up the slide. She finally succeeded a couple days ago and was pretty happy with herself.

Sadie wasn't so happy that I was giving Norah so much camera time. She insisted that I take the same picture of her.

Norah has perfected her grass crawling technique. Knees never touch the ground. Don't you love the diaper hanging out the sides?

We usually see this guy flying over us in the evenings.

Do you see what I see here? Yep. A secret watermelon. One day a few weeks ago I noticed a plant pop up in my back flower bed. It didn't look like a weed so I left it alone. It turned into a vine that took over my garden, but also left us with this guy. He's probably a foot long now. We are hoping he'll have enough time to ripen. Sadie checks on him every day. I say, "Look how big it is!" and she replies with great enthusiasm, "It's huge!!!"

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

A Dallas Adventure

We ventured down to Dallas this past weekend for the wedding of Abbey, a former student from Omar's youth-group leader days. She might possibly be the funniest person I know and her simple outdoor wedding was perfect. Sadie loved it because she could dance under the "princess lights" of the large gazebo, eat a wedding cupcake before the bride and groom, and hoard skittles, tomatoes, and pizza.

Other than a brief (but epic) meltdown by Sadie just as the ceremony started, the girls did great at the late wedding. This is truly a blessing because we had a rather long drive down earlier in the day. Not long after our lunch stop, a tire blew out on the highway. Thankfully, Omar was driving and he did a great job getting over and then changing the tire out. I was super impressed. Between and extra long lunch stop (where we randomly ran into friends also driving to Dallas), the tire, and construction zones, our trip was almost 7 hours long. Compare that to the 5 hours it took to get back to Arkansas.

We took it pretty easy during our stay with Omar's parents. Saturday, Omar had to deal with the tires so we spent some good time playing with BeBe and Jedu! Can I just say that Sadie looooooves her BeBe and Jedu...a lot! And I'm pretty sure that is reciprocated in a major way :) Sunday morning we took Sadie to the zoo for the first time and I may have enjoyed it more than she did! It was the perfect family trip on the most perfect of days. And the very, very, very best part....

This totally happened. I cannot express to you how excited I was when I found out we could feed and pet the giraffes. I immediately added it to my "list" of things to experience in my life and then checked it right off. Aaaaaamazing!