Performing

Teresa loves to sing. I really hope she keeps it up, and that she got her dad's singing ability instead of mine. She is really good at remembering tunes, and being able to make up her own words to specific tunes and stuff like that.

Lately she has been requesting lots of princess songs for bedtime. Her favorite is the song from Sleeping Beauty, but she also requests the Belle song, and the Cinderella song.

Today she was dancing around singing them, and I was surprised by how well she knew the words. I was even more surprised by how much she was willing to perform for the camera!

Here's her performance of Sleeping Beauty:

We've only seen Cinderella once, so I don't know any of the songs well enough to sing them when she asks for them. Here's what she came up with instead. It gets pretty repetitive, so don't feel obligated to watch the whole thing. But if you listen at the beginning she's singing it to the theme of Winnie the Pooh:

And, oh my goodness, the internet did not want you to see this next one. I maxed out my weekly upload limit on Vimeo, so I tried for two hours to just upload it on blogger. And was reminded why I switched to Vimeo in the first place. I was finally able to get Photobucket to work, but not without huge amounts of effort. So. Here is T's version of Beauty and the Beast:

No babies were harmed...

No babies were harmed in the making of these videos:

I love to watch them play together. Oh, and she was fine after that little fall, she actually got herself back up and set up for more rounds.

Nora took her first steps about a week before her first birthday. She is getting more daring by the day, and it is so cute to watch her figure it out and get more stable. She still mostly crawls, but now she will usually start out by taking a few steps towards where she is headed and then crawl the rest of the way once she falls down. I think she's maxed out at about ten steps in a row so far.

Sorry again about the sideways videos! I'm so ticked that I couldn't get them turned!

Dress up and potty news

Like most almost-three-year-olds, Teresa loves to dress up. We've gotten to the point where she fights me every time I try to get her to wear pants. I can usually convince her to wear some when we leave the house but only with the promise that she can take them off as soon as we get home. And then the whole time we are out she says stuff like "we will go home and I will take off my pants" and "guys, I'm pretty sure when we get home I'm gonna take my pants off". She even complains about wearing leggings under her skirts, little rascal. I'll be glad when spring is here so I won't have to insist on the pants wearing all the time.

This Sleeping Beauty dress was supposed to be for her birthday, but I was really excited when it got here, so I gave it to her early. Now you know why Marc has banned me from doing any more birthday shopping until closer to May.

It's way too long, but she is in love with it.

Marc's mom sent the girls some cute dresses, and T's came with a matching one for her doll. She was thrilled! She had to wear it right away, and lots of days since. The one nice thing (and I really do mean the ONLY nice thing) about having church so late this year is that now we have time for photo shoots before church when the girls are all dressed up. These pictures were taken the day before Nora's birthday

Modeling is hard work sometimes...

Nora gets really excited about dresses, too, more than T did at her age, I think her big sister is rubbing off on her!

I'm in love with this one!

And here's T in her brand-spankin'-new Belle dress that she earned by finally going poo on the potty all by herself.

This was the big bribe for quite awhile, she would repeat daily "Teresa will go poo on the potty and then she will get a Belle dress!", and yesterday she finally did it. And now she is a pooping pro, I'm so proud of her.

Monday morning she just woke up ready to be done with diapers, the first thing she asked to do was pee on the potty and she has been doing awesome since. I guess we really did just have to do things on her time table. I do think that all the encouraging and begging and making her sit on the potty leading up to her decision helped her get ready for it. But once she decided to do it, she has really committed. She's only had one tiny accident in the past three days, and even when I've put a diaper on her to go out or at bedtime she has stayed dry and waited until she can use a bathroom.

Tonight when we went to get her dress was the first time (besides a small trip to the park) that she wasn't in a diaper away from home. In the car I reminded her that big girls don't pee in their panties, and she said "I know, I will only go pee pee in the potty and not in my panties".

I told her the other day that I was really proud of her, and that she was so awesome for using the potty and she said "wow, that is really nice of you to say that!".

Valentines/Birthday Party

We had a little combined Valentines/Birthday party the day after Nora's birthday. We invited all of T and Nora's little friends over for some Valentine's Day treats and to decorate cookies. Teresa was so excited all week about her friends coming over. She loves to have people over, anytime we paint or do any crafts she asks if her friends can come do it with her, so this was right up her alley.

Nora and her little buddy:

Just a little hair bow envy...

Teresa loved Nora in her little birthday dress. She kept calling her Princess Nora, and complimenting her on her princess dress.

Nora got her hands on a sucker, and Ian was more than happy to help her out:

Aren't they so cute together? He loves her, Nora always gets lots of sweet hugs and kisses from him. I was standing by his mom and he just leaned over and put his arm around Nora. She happily returned the gesture.

Seriously, I just think they are so adorable together! We pretty much already have the wedding planned :).

My tired babe. Or maybe she's just bummed that Ian left?

Some more little cuties:

Jealous Nora had to sit in my lap when she saw me holding Dalia:

Mina's mom always gives her the coolest hairstyles, isn't this one so cute?

T was excited to get her hair done the same way. She sat so perfectly still for Mina's mom to do it - pretty much the exact opposite of how she acts when I try to do her hair.

The next few days she kept saying "do I have hair just like Mina's?". I seriously need to practice doing it this way myself, it looks so cute, and I love how it keeps the hair out of her face!

Anyway, the girls had a great time at the party. Nora was a little overwhelmed with all the people at first, but she warmed up quickly and really enjoyed herself. Teresa keeps saying "did my friends come over and decorate cookies with me?".

In related news, Nora had her one year check up this week. She weighed in at 17lbs 2 oz. She was 16lbs 12 oz at her 9 month. I was really hoping she had gained more weight, but I guess somewhere in the midst of her FOUR bouts with the stomach flu she just had trouble packing any weight on. She seriously eats like a horse most of the time, but it took her about two weeks to get her appetite back after her last little stomach bug, and I think that totally sabotaged her. Unfortunately her lack of weight gain led the doctor to officially diagnose her with "abnormal weight gain" and "failure to thrive".

Seriously? Failure to thrive?

I just think that sounds a little harsh. Poor little thing had to have her blood drawn (from both arms!), and they're running all the tests they need to in order to determine if there is a reason behind her "failure".

I honestly think Nora is just a petite little thing, and there is nothing wrong with her, but I guess it will be nice to know for sure once we get the results back. I'm probably 10% worried that there might be a medical reason, but that's just my parental paranoia coming through. She did say if everything came back clean she would stop bugging us so much about Nora's weight, or lack thereof. In the mean time she suggested I inundate Nora with whole milk and a bunch of other animal products, which is mostly not going to happen. But I do have lots of other plans for fattening her up. I'll let you know how it goes.

Nora turns one

Our little Nora turned one this week. I really can't believe how fast this year flew by, despite my resolutions to savor every second of Nora's babyhood and not rush her along her milestones like I did with T. Turns out babies just keep getting older no matter what you do, I guess. Nora is so awesome, I was laughing at myself the other day for how worried we both were, right before she was born, that we wouldn't love her as much as we love Teresa. How could we not?

For her actual birthday we took her out for a first birthday pancake. Since we did that with T on her first birthday we decided to make it a tradition. She loved it!

T was funny, she was sooooo excited for her pancakes, until Marc and I got our food, which had broccoli on it. As soon as she saw it she started begging for our broccoli and wouldn't eat any more of her pancakes. She did take a nice big slurp of straight syrup, though, so I think that made up for it ;).

Drinking "birthday smoovies"

We had Nora's first present set up for her to find when she came downstairs in the morning. After seeing how much both girls loved Aoife's ball pit, we knew it would be the perfect gift for Nora's birthday.

The T helped me decorate Nora's cake. She actually did a pretty good job with all her squiggles and such.

She did all the squiggles and candy placement, and I just went in with the border and Nora's name and the hearts.

And of course Nora loved it. She mostly ate the frosting and then made a big mess out of the rest of it. And then rubbed as much of it in her hair as possible.

And the videos:

After a quick bath it was present time!

Teresa was a big helper.

Nora has had some serious baby envy for the past few weeks. She was always trying to get T's baby doll (Zoe), and when we took her to the store to look at them she got so excited about this one. It's the same as T's only in a blue outfit - T keeps calling it Nora's 'blue Zoe'.

She loves it! She's been sleeping with it since, and just gets the biggest smiles when she sees it.

T got to open a big sister present too.

Here she is sporting the extra braids from her Rapunzel doll.

Overall I think Nora had a pretty good day :). Teresa kept randomly giving her hugs and saying happy birthday to her, it was so sweet. We sure love our little Nora.