Visit From Pop and Sharon

On June 26th Barnabas's dad and step-mom, Sharon flew up from Texas to meet Norah for the first time. She was pretty cautious at first. I still think she is in some sort shock after leaving day care but she warmed up after an hour or so.

Norah meets Nana Sharon and Pop.

And then settles in for some serious play time while the guys go get dinner.
The next day she started pulling up on the coffee table. She was very proud of herself, especially when she discovered all the wonderful things she can pull off of the table... yippie...
Oh yeah, and then there is the tasty table itself which is now a giant chew toy.
We went out to Thai Jasmine again (we just love that place) where Norah figured out that if she screamed at other diners she could get their attention. This was a GREAT new game for her. This is a very small restaurant, like 6 tables, and she was very very LOUD. She yelled and hollered and then gave her cheesiest grins to everyone. She also flung quite a few toys on the ground for kicks. At least she was looking adorable and was happy as a lark eating edamame.
Yelling loudly.... and daddy thinks it's cute.

Cheesy grin.
Practicing her clapping. She does it on cue now when you say "yay Norah". Much clapping ensues.

Mommy is telling her to use her inside voice. She is already testing me... a lot... and when I say "NO" and she gets mad, instead of screaming she yells a bunch of gibberish back at me. When those start to be real words we are in trouble. She has a lot of attitude! Posing with Pop and Sharon.
Getting those family pictures in for the homestudy follow-ups. ;-)Playing with mommy when we got home.
Overall it was a good visit and maybe next time we can have some nicer weather so we can hit the zoo or something!

Week 2

Week 2 went much better than week one despite the fact that Norah remains a giant snot monkey. Daddy stayed home with her on Monday because she was still running a fever. This is how she woke up from her nap Monday morning... still pathetic...
The rest of the week went much better. According to her teachers she was the best behaved in the class. I have a bit of a hard time believing it but they swore they were telling the truth. They said other than drop off time the only time she was really crying was when one of the other babies would wake her from her nap and it would piss her off. This I can believe, she HATES being woken up. On Wednesday she tried her first real meat... she had mac'n'cheese and turkey kielbasa. The noodles were yummy and then came the meat...
And she put it in her mouth and then smiled really big.

And then tried to feed me repeatedly.
YUM FOOD!!!
It was all super cute. She ate a ton. I tried leftovers the next night but she put it in her hair and then smashed it on her tray and the kielbasa was squirting me. She quickly got put straight in the bath. No one wants a baby that smells like meat.

Then on Saturday we made her a mini ball pit in the laundry basket. She was puzzled at first but soon came to have fun with the balls.
Daddy tried to juggle for her. Failure.
She attempted to throw them at the cats... that is Addison's tail as he made a quick escape.
Then of course, the balls were more fun outside of the basket. (Look at all those toys! How many kids do we have again?!?!)
Oh yeah, and on Friday afternoon the daycare called to tell me Norah had fallen while climbing and busted her lip open. It was not as bad as they made it sound but it did leave a mark.

Then she helped me sort the junk mail.
On Sunday she played with her new ball popper.
And chased her kitty, Aiden.
And bounced in her jumper. It is pretty much too small for her but she still loves to go in there. Sorry about the potty in the background.
She also started clapping her hands this week. The first time she did it was when daddy walked through the door. I got some pics but they will have to go on next week's post. It is late and there is laundry to be folded.

Starting Daycare

Well, the week started off innocently enough. Norah had a good weekend last week spending every second possible glued to daddy unaware of what was about to happen come Monday. Here she is getting ready for a bath.
And tasting soy milk for the first time. She wants everything that comes in a glass!

YUMMY!!! Then the dreaded Monday morning. We were the first one to arrive at her school and she was pretty bewildered by the whole thing. She was still sleepy and kind of out of it.

Norah's room & crib. See, it does not look like a horrible place....
Barnabas and I gave her kisses and told her we loved her and would get her later. She of course, had no idea what we were talking about. We were just trying not to cry so she wouldn't get upset.
Then I set her down in the ball pit to play and we snapped a few more pics and then snuck out the door.
Oblivious to the fact we were about to leave her there....
Well, it didn't go well which was expected. We only called twice on the first day and that was super hard since every single person I spoke to at work was asking about her. It is hard to put it in the back of your mind when people keep bringing it up. So on day 1 they pretty much said she was "fussy" which I am pretty sure really meant she was screaming her head off. When Barnabas picked her up she had mentally checked out. She would not make eye contact and was very quiet. He said she was just shell-shocked. Day 2 was worse, she knew what was coming when he dropped her off and then would not sleep at all that day. She came home acting slightly better but very fussy and exhausted. Day 3 I think was better than day 2 but again she was not sleeping, only "resting" in the ball pool. Barnabas said that she reached for him the minute he set foot in the door and was in a much better mood that night, even smiling a little for me. Then on Thursday she woke up snotty but acting normal so back to school she went but I picked her up that day and she was practically comatose. She was in the swing when I got there and would not look at me at all. It was pretty much like Monday all over again except it was with me which made me have a breakdown when Barnabas got home and Norah would not let me hold her. I feel upset again just writing about it. It is incredibly hard going from being with her 24/7 to only seeing her maybe 1.5 to 2 hours a day and those are not even "quality" time. You know, she might be in the room playing in her high chair while I cook dinner or something and I talk to her but she is staring off into space because she hasn't slept more than 30 minutes all day. By the time dinner and clean up are over it is bed time for her, if she can manage to stay awake that long. I am hating the whole thing. I know it will take some time for her to adjust but I really hoped that it would go a little more smoothly. Anyway, back to Norah. So she cut BOTH her front top 2 teeth on Thursday so for me, that explained the snottiness of the a.m. Then on Friday they called me at 11:30 and told me she was running a temp. of 102.7 and it was steadily increasing. I rushed out of work, got her and by the time I got home her temp. was at 103.3. I gave her some Tylenol, fed her some Yo Baby, changed her poppy butt and put her down for a nap. By the time we got into the doctor's her temp was down to 100.5. Doc said it was just a virus but her throat was so red and she was hoarse (undoubtedly from crying all week) she ran a strep test anyway which came back negative. So Tylenol was it and we went home to relax from this stressful week.

And what does one do to relax?

SWIM of course!! Norah was better Saturday morning, yakking away and a temp. under 100 so we went ahead with our plans to spend some time at friend, Tracy's house. I just thought that floating in a pool was probably just the same as sitting in her Exersaucer, not physically taxing and the nice cool water might even help a bit. You know, sunshine and fresh air and some lovin' from mom and dad ... =)

Well, it went like this...

Get me the HELL out of this THING!!
So, I think the water was just a little cool for her there at the beginning. But soon she chilled out and floated with dad all over the pool. Tracy got some better pics, I had to put the camera away because Barnabas did not think that digital SLRs belong in a pool. Grrrr.
See, not so bad...

And the mandatory froggy towel to dry off....

And when we got home and put her down from her nap she went right to sleep.. or so we thought and then 5 minutes later she was jabbering at the top of her lungs so I went to check on her and she was standing in her crib for the very first time. (Jabbering kinda like she is now...) Unfortunately I did not get a pic and today we dropped the crib to the lowest level so I am not sure she will do it again soon.

But she woke up a snotty whiny baby today on Father's Day... she how pathetic she looked....

P....A.... T.....H....E....T......I.....C !!!

I also noticed she is getting ready to cut another bottom tooth.
STOP TAKING PICTURES OF ME!!!
Ooh and my art project Tracy helped me with on Saturday is below. This is Norah's binder for daycare. They put all of her "art" projects in it all year for us. I always thought I was too much of a perfectionist for scrap booking but this was fun. Maybe I will give it a try...
Here's hoping week 2 goes better than week 1.