Big-time Birthday Blowout Bash!

Friday was Norah's 2nd birthday, and I apologize for not putting something up then, but Fridays are hectic around here. So now it's a lazy Monday, and we had the party over the weekend, and that means pictures!

So. Norah at two. According to Mia's occupational therapist, Norah is a bit ahead of the curve in terms of fine motor skills, but she's still not talking much. A friend of Krys's came to the party with her 20-month-old, who used more words coherently than Norah did. It's interesting looking at the different ways kids develop. We're not particularly worried, because she uses plenty of words, but she doesn't initiate a lot of things. So we're keeping an eye on her for now.

It's amazing how quickly kids grow at this stage. A year ago she wasn't standing up, and now she's zipping around like crazy. I'm sure next year I'll be thinking about how weird it was that she wasn't talking because when she turns three I bet we won't be able to shut her up. But she's doing very well, and she's behaving very well. I'm a bit worried, because a few months ago she was behaving rather poorly, and I thought her Terrible Twos had begun. But these days she behaves pretty well, unless Krys is around (poor Krys - the kids whine to be with her and then cry when she pays attention to them). I really hope that this continues and doesn't devolve into the Terrible Twos. We couldn't be that lucky to have experienced them already, could we? Probably not.

She's also very helpful around the house. I decided to stop cleaning up her toys, because she understands me and she can walk, so she needs to get on it! She has no problem whatsoever cleaning up - in fact, she starts saying "clean up" before we eat dinner most nights, and gets a bit cranky that she has to wait. This is another aspect of her behavior that I'm sure will change once she figures out that cleaning up is work, and not play. She'll say, "What the heck?" and that will be the end of that. But for now, she's very willing to help, and when we're done, we wrestle on the floor while Krys sits with Mia and watches. Norah is very excited about the wrestling.

We had a nice party on Saturday for her, despite the fact that not a lot of people came. First of all, we have no family around, so they're out. Second of all, Norah doesn't know many people. She's two. Third of all, we don't have many friends in the area, and the ones we do have live far away and it's hard for them to make it over here. It turned out that most of the people who showed up were connected to Mia. But that's okay - Norah had fun, and she liked playing with the 20-month-old who was here. We weren't sure how she'd interact with a kid her own age, but after some initial reluctance, she enjoyed it. So that was cool - Krys has already spoken to the girl's mother about coming over to play occasionally.

Let's check out some pictures, shall we? I didn't take a lot because I thought I was filming it, but it turned out I hadn't pressed the "record" button. Yes, I'm that stupid. Mia's pre-school teacher filmed some of it, too, so we'll have to get the footage from her. But we did get some nice photographs.

This is Saturday morning. Norah likes climbing in bed with Mommy. Mommy is less enthusiastic about it.

Here she is in her birthday party outfit.

We had a whole Elmo theme going on for the party, including the cake. Damned fine cake, that was. Even Mia ate some, which is kind of surprising.

Norah looks suspicious of the man with the camera!

Since I didn't get any pictures of her opening presents, I thought I'd take a few of her playing with her new stuff.


In that last picture, she's chewing on plastic fruit. At least it's representative of something you can eat!

I realized while looking at her birthday post from last year that I linked to a lot of the significant posts about her life in her first year. Well, I'm not going to do that this time, because I'm lazy. I will point out that the post about her birth remains one of my favorites. So check it out if you haven't already!

Man, she's two. It's all downhill from here, isn't it?

Norah's boo-boo

Norah got her first real boo-boo this past weekend. She's had some bruises as she bangs around the house, but Krys took her to the mall on Saturday and she fell down in the parking lot, skinning her knee. Krys said she didn't cry at all, because she's super-tough! Then she got her bangs trimmed and screamed like a banshee, apparently.

I mentioned to Mia's PT about how easily she bruises. He made the point that she doesn't get around very much and doesn't catch herself when she falls over, so her skin doesn't get tough like it should. It's a pain in the butt, because she bruises from things you would never think of. We try to be careful with her, but she still gets bruises. Norah, apparently, is right on track to get her skin toughened up. She was very impressed with her boo-boo, and has been pointing it out all week. Two-year-olds are easily amused!

The Wiggles made my daughters cry

Krys recently bought two Wiggles DVDs for the children. The kids don't watch a lot of children's television (I don't let them), but back in the day, Mia enjoyed the Wiggles, and we figured Norah would too. Well, they love the one DVD. They ask for it all the time, they want to watch it multiple times during the day, and they get a bit upset when they don't get to watch it (until they get into whatever I actually let them watch). The other one ... not so much.

I put the second DVD in one day. All went well for a while. At one point there was a sequence with the Wiggles on stage singing "live" (it's all lip-synced, and I don't even know if it's Greg, Anthony, Murray, and Jeff singing). During one song, Captain Feathersword, the friendly pirate, started crying. It was very exaggerated and fake, but it apparently got to Norah. She started crying, and when Norah cries, it's very loud. Many times Mia just watches her cry and isn't affected at all, but for some reason, this time it made her upset. So I had two girls bawling their eyes out because some stupid pirate was weeping on the television. Of course, once he stopped, they were still upset. Luckily, they soon realized that he was no longer crying and they calmed down. Still, what's up with the captain upsetting my girls? Damn you, Captain Feathersword!!!!

Needless to say, they haven't watched that DVD since. Maybe some day I'll put it back in and see what happens. Norah's just too darned sensitive, I guess!

"He wants you too, Malachai!"

Norah tried corn on the cob last week. The results were mixed. She dug the taste, but not the difficulty of getting the confounded stuff in her mouth. Still, it's nice to see her being adventurous!



One of the six or so regular readers of this blog yelled at me last week for not updating. I apologize. It's summer, which means both kids are home most of the time (summer school for Mia takes up four hours a week), and with Mia's lack of sleeping these days, even my afternoons are taken up. I'll try to be more consistent. Actual parenting is hard, man! Can't these kids raise themselves yet?

Norah gets a big-girl bed!

Over Memorial Day weekend, we went to IKEA and bought Norah a bed. Krys had been thinking about it for a while, because Norah really seemed to enjoy lying in our bed (not while we were sleeping; we haven't encouraged that, nor will we ever) and we figured she was probably old enough to handle it. Krys shopped around and found a good one at IKEA. So we were off!

For a big piece of furniture from IKEA, it was remarkably easy to put together. Krys also bought a gate to go across her door so that if she got out of bed, she wouldn't be able to get out of her room. There's plenty for her to do in there! She took a nap in it last Sunday and seemed fine. She doesn't sleep on the pillow yet, instead curling up like a comma and sleeping almost horizontal to the length of the bed. I also don't think she's been using the covers, but it's summer, so that's not a big surprise. Krys bought a bed rail like the one Mia has, but it isn't long enough for the length of the bed, and so she placed a step at the bottom of the bed so Norah can climb out. Norah knows it's there and uses it when we enter the room in the morning, but I don't think she's figured out that she can use it when we're not around, because she hasn't done so yet. That's fine, though - it's not like it's all that important.

She has taken to it very nicely. On Tuesday she actually slept until 7.30 in the morning, which is very late for her. She's back to waking up around 6.45, but she still sleeps well. She goes down for her nap in the afternoon with hardly any fuss, which she didn't do in her crib. She was getting better in the crib, but she would still scream for a few minutes before she realized it would be much nicer to nap. Now she just gets in the bed and I leave, and she has hardly made a noise. It's much more comfortable than her crib, obviously, so we think she's really digging it.

We're very proud of her, as we usually are. My mom was surprised she was in a bed so young (still a month shy of her second birthday). Is that young? I have no idea. Why should she be in a crib when a bed is so much more comfortable? We're waiting to see what happens on the weekend, when Krys and I aren't up puttering about making noise. We think that wakes one or both of them up, and they tend to sleep longer on the weekend (that 7.30 which is late on the weekdays is about standard on the weekends). It will be interesting to see if she gets up and gets out of bed or if she just sits there and bawls. I would hope she could figure out that she can just get up and play. We'll see.

She's such a big girl! Where did our babies go?????