Adventures in straight hair

Last week I asked T if she wanted her hair straightened and she agreed to let me do it. It helped that Mickey Mouse was involved. It actually wasn't too much work, I had put her hair in braided pigtails the day before, so when I took them out the next morning all her curly-ques were gone and her hair was mostly just crinkly.

I think it made her look soooo different! And older. And just different - her hair is so long, and it looked quite a bit blonder when it was straight. I was jealous of her gorgeous natural highlights. We thought she looked cute, but Marc and I agreed we were ready to have our curly girl back when it got washed that night.

We tried to take the girls to a park for some pictures, but T is very anti-picture taking right now. It was apparently really traumatic for her, and frustrating for the rest of us. It was pretty chilly out but T refused to wear a sweater and cover up her "pink dress".

At least Nora was happy most of the time.

Luckily there was a see-saw to make up for all the photo drama.

The straight hair kept getting in her face a lot more than her normal hair, she was getting annoyed about having to push it out of her eyes so much.

I love this little Nora sequence:

And of course they both love the swings.

Things she says: 5

- Yelled from the backyard while Marc and I were inside: "Hey guys, I'm making the wrong choice!".

- T is so contradictory. All. the. time. One day in the car she was all decked out like Tinkerbell, and we had the following conversation:

T: "I'm Tinkerbell"

Me: "Yep, you're Tinkerbell"

T: "No, I'm not Tinkerbell, I'm a kangaroom" (kangaroo)

Me: "Oh, are you a kangaroo?"

T: "No! I'm a kitty cat"

Me: "Okay, you're a kitty cat"

T: "No! I'm a fairy!"

And so forth.

-If she's dressed up like a princess she will call me "Princess Mama", and if she's dressed up like Tinkerbell she calls me "Fairy Mama". For some reason, Marc doesn't love it when she calls him "Fairy Daddy". A few days ago we were all "Punzels", as we left the house T said "come on you three Punzels" (Rapunzel), and then after Marc buckled her in she said "thanks Punzel Daddy!".

- One day when we came in from running errands Nora was complaining and crying a ton because we couldn't get her out of her car seat right away. T was trying to calm her down by telling her a story, and it was so cute I had to pull out my laptop and record it as she was talking.

This is what I got:

"Mama, I'm telling Nora a story about Daddy and Jesus, the Prophet, and the father goes outside and it's raining, and he SPLASHES in the rain. And splashes. And Jesus and the Prophet, and I love you SO much Nora. And the Father, and Jesus and the Prophet have some fun and SPLASH and have so much fun and I love you so much Nora. And Jesus and the Prophet and come on pretty girl, jump, and clap, and hop like a bunny rabbit. And shhh. shhh. Mmmm, I love you so much (gives kisses) and the Prophet, and Jesus! Mama, get Nora out Nora's stuck!

Nora was giggling her little head off while T told her this.

And then later during N's diaper change "and Mama, Heavenly Father and Jesus help Nora not be sad and stop crying and get a bandaid"

- We frequently call Teresa 'Tressa B' in reference to her middle name being Brigid. I called her that the other morning and then went in the kitchen to do some dishes. A few minutes later she came bounding in to the kitchen saying "Mama! Mama B!"

-When she's frustrated about something she'll put the back of her hand over her eyes and say "This is essasperating!" (exasperating). Thank you Donald Duck.

-Last week she called me "little lady" pretty much all week. She would hand me something and say "here you go little lady".

-She calls her purse her "person" and her slippers her "slippery-s"

And just a few pictures of N - Nora got herself under the slide - she looks a little awkward, but I promise she was having fun.

Some things about Nora

Nora turned nine months old this past Sunday. I can't believe she's been out as long as she was in! We love her so much, and are so very blessed to have her in our family. She had her nine month check up today and passed with flying colors.

We had her in to the doctor about two weeks ago for a diaper rash and found out she had dropped to the 10th percentile for weight, she was only 16 lbs 1 oz. The doctor and I had a little chat about fattening her up, so operation 'chunk Nora up' commenced. I was hoping to get her up a pound by this appointment, but we only made it up to 16 lbs 12 oz. Still pretty good. She's 27 inches long/tall.

Some things about our nine months girl:

She has four teeth. The two on bottom and now two on top - the ones on either side of where her front teeth would be.

(She wore T's first Halloween costume when we went trick or treating, it was warmer than her Piglet outfit)

She's working on climbing the stairs. She's only made it up three in a row so far, she keeps trying to sit and turn around when she's on them. But she's very determined, I think we'll probably end up finally getting a baby gate there.

She can stand up! Holding on to things, but also on her own for a few seconds at a time. She likes to stand up while leaning on me, and then will tentatively let go until she loses her balance and has to grab me again.

Nora is an all or nothing kind of baby. She's the happiest, smiley-est little thing, until she's not, then she's just screaming. Usually with no build up. And she screams much louder than I ever remember T doing. The same with food, she will be totally fine and then all of a sudden decides she is starving, and yells and complains and eats like she never has before until she's full and then she just stops.

She is so smiley. When we're in church I will catch her staring people down until they look at her and then she will bust out a huge smile for them.

She wakes up screaming. I always hear about babies that wake up cooing and babbling and being all cute, but that is definitely not Nora. She wakes up and immediately starts shrieking for us to come get her. It's pretty effective.

Nora thinks Teresa is just the funniest person in the whole world. She adores her and always wants to be wherever T is.

She loves to be right in the thick of things. When we go to playgroup or romp n stomp, or anywhere with a crowd Nora has to be in the middle of whatever is going on.

She still has a big ol' mop of hair just on the top of her head. The sides and back are all normal length, but the top of her hair just keeps getting longer and longer. It seems to have some curl to it, so it's looking like we might end up with two little curly girls.

She's full on crawling now, unless she wants to get somewhere fast, then she reverts to her army crawl.

And a picture of Teresa, because we love her too!

Highlights from this week*

This is a terrible photo, but our two girls were so cute tonight. T had been promised an ice cream cone, but had been instructed that she had to eat it at the table so Nora wouldn't see it. But after a major meltdown about being ostracized from the rest of us (you know, she was waaaay over in the "dining room"), I let her come eat in the living room. It was just too sad seeing her sobbing at the table holding her ice cream.

Anyway, she was really good about sharing with Nora, but after Nora would get a bite T would say "where's my ice cream?".

I also like this picture because there is absolutely no way I would have let one drip of that ice cream in T's mouth when she was Nora's age! Nora has definitely been introduced to refined sugar way before Teresa was. One of many differences in second children. But honestly, there was no way of keeping her from it once she set her sights on it. Little persistent rascal that she is.

And, in case you weren't sure, here's some evidence that I'm pretty much the awesomest mom ever:

Sometimes when I see Teresa doing things I'd rather she didn't I pretend not to notice so I don't have to make her stop. She was having so much fun stripped down to her diaper decorating herself with highlighters the other day. When she came over and wanted to do my face I decided to let her. And then almost forgot about it when it was time to leave the house a few hours later. Good thing we have a mirror right by our front door...

*because sometimes puns are too hard to resist

Kindermusik and Things She Says 4

We enrolled the T in a Kindermusik class here on base for the month of October. Basically it's just a little half hour class of singing and dancing and making some noise. Right up Teresa's alley. She surprised me a bit by getting all shy when we first got there, she just sat on the floor and folded herself up, but after a few minutes she decided it was fun. There were probably eight kids in all, with half the class being all her little friends from church. Nora loved it, too, she loves to be right in the thick of things. Marc was able to go with us to one of the classes so we got some cute videos.

(the pictures aren't the best quality b/c they're from Marc's iTouch.

Each week they would have different little shakers or instruments to play with. I was pretty bummed I didn't have my camera the last week because one of the 'instruments' was a little bell attached to a clip. T immediately grabbed two of them and clipped them right to the front of her shirt and ran off jingling around the room. Her placement of them was just...awkward. It was pretty hilarious.

In Things She Says news, T has been keeping us amused, as usual.

-A few weeks ago, picking Marc up from work we had this conversation:

"Mommy, you tink Daddy is a bunny?"

"Yeah, I do think he's a bunny, do you think he's a bunny?"

"Umm, no (laughs) I tink he is a pony."

-In response to Nora crying about something "Shh, Nora, be patient!"

-During family prayer this week "And please bless Mommy and Daddy and Nora and Teresa to go to Texas"

-When Marc brings me Nora in the mornings T will say "here's your little baby Mama!"

-She's in to all things princess-y now so when she's in dress up mode she calls me 'Princess Mama'

-She calls Nora 'precious baby' and 'sweet girl' all the time, and today when Nora was nursing Teresa came up a kissed her a bunch and said "I need some baby kisses!"