The rest of August

The joys of three-year-old photo shoots:

At least Nora is (almost) always ready to smile.

Apparently it's a pretty painful experience...

There we go.

Teresa always makes us sing these books. Come to our house and you will almost 

definitely get to sing them too. 

Nora was pretty excited to realize she fits in the baby doll stroller. Too bad she bailed out as soon as she saw me with the camera.

Reading time with Daddy: 

Teresa found this little toy iron at a garage sale a few weeks ago, and has been busy with it ever since. Mimicking Daddy, of course, as he is the iron-er in our house. 

You can see the lovely dry-erase marker decorations Nora added to our wall in this next picture.

I love how crazy Nora looks in this picture. Blue is the only color she knows, so it's always the one she picks when she has a choice. 

  

We had Teresa in for her yearly visit to the Hemangioma Specialist.  An hour in Baltimore traffic and 45 minutes in the waiting room all for seven minutes with the doctor. He told us pretty much what I expected: It's getting smaller and lets watch it for another year. He did say if we felt the societal pressure was too much we could come back and he would find us a plastic surgeon, but I really don't think that will be a problem. She really doesn't have much trouble with it. She was running around with some kids at the gym the other day and I saw them stop and one little girl was pointing at her neck. They were too far away for me to hear them, but after a few moments started up their little game again. I questioned T about it later and she said they asked what was on her neck. I asked what she told them and she said "I just said that is my neck!". She didn't seem bothered by it.  She's a pretty confident little gal, I think she'll be able to hold her own without some unnecessary cosmetic surgery.

Marc had his foot surgery on Tuesday. They removed the loose piece of bone and reattached the tendon, which makes me squirm to think about! 

He's laid up on con leave for the next three weeks, and then will be in a hard cast for another six after that. Then three more weeks in a boot and hopefully back to normal (well, better) after that. We went down to Annapolis to get the stitches out today, which was an ordeal all in itself. Such a small incision, but has been incredibly painful, poor fellow. Especially when Nora is not too mindful of where she is walking...

Fairies

We spotted some cute little fairies in our backyard today!

At first they were a little camera shy...

  

But once they decided we weren't a threat, they started to show us what kind of fairies they were.

There was a mischievous little fairy.

And a super-strong, weight lifting fairy.

We even caught sight of the elusive house-cleaning fairy! I sure wouldn't mind if she visited more often ;).

  

And, of course, some biker fairies.

All that hard work resulted in one tired little fairy.

I'm sure they'll be back tomorrow.

Things They Say: 7

Looks like it's time for another round of things they say! Nora is talking more and more, and I love it, she has the sweetest little voice. Things we commonly hear from her:

"I did it!!!!" - she is so proud of herself when she does anything on her own, she will throw her little arms up in the air and proclaim "I did it!!!".

"I comin'!" - anytime we ask her to hurry up, or to come up the stairs and catch up with us or anything, she says, "I comin', I comin'" in the cutest little voice.

Whenever she sees me putting her plate on her high chair tray she comes running over and says "alriiigghhhht!".

She used to say "No! Not!" in response to any one doing something she didn't like. Lately she's merged the two together so now she says "Note!" instead.

Every time she lies down to get her diaper changed she says "Ewww, goss!" (gross). I guess we are a little too vocal about how nasty her dirty diapers can be.

She's getting to be a pro at bugging her older sister - she likes to just say "Teresa, Teresa, Teresa" over and over again. It drives T nuts, she'll keep saying "what Nora?" and N will just keep repeating her name.

Speaking of repeating names, she also will just repeat her little bff's name over and over sometimes. We were in the car today and she was just chanting "Da-wi-a, Da-wi-a, Da-wi-a" (Dalia) all sing-song-y.

Teresa keeps us entertained, as well. She is a funny little thing, and she knows it, too. One day in the car the girls were making each other giggle in the back seat. I think they were making silly animal noises or something. I guess T noticed that we were laughing at them because she piped up with "Okay guys, get ready to laugh!" and then did her same little animal noises again.

Last week I asked her if she thought I was a mean mommy or a nice mommy and she responded "You are a nice Mommy, but sometimes you are a mean Mommy". I pretended to be offended by that so she quickly back tracked "Just some little times you are a mean Mommy, but mostly you are nice". The rest of the day she kept reassuring me "Mommy, mostly you are nice. It's just a little bit that you are mean".

She told me her first knock knock joke today! It was as fabulous as a three-year-old joke could be.

"Knock knock.
    Who's there?
Teresa.
    Teresa who?
Teresa cow!!" *Cue hysterical toddler laughter*

When she gets in trouble, she just does not want to talk about it at all. One day last week she was getting out of time out and I told her she needed to apologize for whatever she had done. She kept saying she didn't want to, and when I finally got her to tell me why not she said "If I say I'm sorry, we're still going to talk about it!!!". She just wants to do her time and forget about it, I guess.

And what's a post without pictures? T will generally only tolerate letting me do her hair if I'm doing princess braids, so when Mina's mom offered to braid her hair she jumped at the chance. I was a little jealous of how perfectly still she sat for her, and how super obedient she was. She loved this hairstyle, I seriously need to learn how to do cool stuff like this to her hair.

  

Of course when Nora noticed T getting her picture taken she wanted in on the action, too. We were glad to oblige.