Doctors, doctors and flowers

So on Monday Norah went back to Shriner's for a post surgery follow-up. The nurse removed her bandages for the first time in 10 days. Her poor arm and hand were so dry and shriveled from being covered but her fingers looked great.

Norah was so amazed when her hand was free she just kept flipping them back and forth and staring and wiggling them all.

"Wow, a hand!!! Dad are you seeing this?"
"OMG, my THUMB!!!!"
She was soooooooo happy. She started grinning from ear to ear and clapping excitedly. She smiled at the doctor and nurses and cheesed.
Clapping and more clapping.

Her hands finally made the smacking noise she was missing so much.


Dr. Strecker gave her the A-OK and we don't have to go back for another 6 weeks. We will continue doing daily bandage changes until the scabs have healed and then we get to start on the lovely scar massage. The next surgery we were going to have on her left hand was going to be in early September but since we are going to FL in October we don't want any chance of infection that would keep her from swimming so we have agreed to postpone until early November when we are back.

"Amazing!"

Then nurse Lauren came in and showed us how to do the daily bandage changes. Norah was sooooo pissed that we bandaged her hand back up and she was no longer free. She has been doing really well this week with the changes though and practically launches her hand into the peroxide water dip. She is such a good girl.
Oh yeah, and here we go again with the table eating again.
Daddy was the recipient of this nasty look. It is good to know it is not just for me. =)

Tuesday we had our second post placement visit with our social worker and all went well. We are getting excited about starting our second adoption shortly. We will write more about that later. Then on Thursday Norah had a well visit appointment with her pediatrician. She had 4 more shots and was a real trooper. She now weighs 18 lbs 8 oz (20th percentile) and is 28 in tall (35th percentile). She will soon be transitioning to milk and sippy cups. She is right on track developmentally. Everyday we are amazed by how big she is getting and the things she is doing. She is cruising so well now and tripoding on the floor, trying to stand on her own. She will probably be walking in a month. It is just crazy. I don't want my baby to grow up!

Bed head.
Saturday we had a birthday party for a co-worker's daughter. Norah was cheesing it up again before we left. The funniest part of this cheese was that she was doing it so over the top that she kept opening her eyes just the tiniest bit to see if we were paying attention.

Norah saying hi to her day care buddy, Dylan. She tried to steal his bink 5 seconds later.
Riding the carousel. Barn was very upset at how much interest she showed in the pole as opposed to the rest of the ride. After all, it is daddy's job to keep his girl off that pole!


She also got her first taste of a chocolate cupcake (sans icing). At first she just made a funny face and slowly chewed and then leaned in and attacked it.

Yummmmmmmmmmmmm.
What cupcake?
Then on the way out I wanted to get some pics of her in the sun but again, she hates the sun and she was overtired by that point. I was a little disappointed that I didn't get "the" picture. You know the one but she was sweaty and starting to pass out and daddy was done too.

A pretty butterfly. There were a ton of them and lots of different kinds, possibly escapees from the butterfly house.
This week Norah starts back to daycare after 2.5 weeks. We are hoping that she will re-adjust quickly and accept her new teachers as her old one left while she was out. And most importantly, we hope she will SLEEP there. She has been so good about napping for the last few weeks while she was here with us. No one wants a cranky baby!

Evil Eye

Again I find myself two weeks behind on posting. I just don't know where the time goes these days. So 2 weeks ago when I was off I took 1 million pictures. Norah was great for the first half of the week. She started giving high fives and kisses to both of us. She was being exceptionally cute and crazy. Maybe it was the codine, maybe the change from not being in day care. Whatever the case in the later part of the week she really began to test me and I had to really set the "no" boundary. Up until that point we would say no a few times and then remove her from the situation. All of a sudden it started clicking with her and she got M.A.D. She started giving me really dirty looks. I had to call Barnabas at work and tell him and then just to make sure he knew what I was talking about I got the camera out and snapped away.

Happy girl.
Here she is screaming some baby obscenity at me.
Tippy toes.
Okay, this is where it starts. We do not want her chewing on the coffee table anymore. It surpassed cute a month ago and became annoying. Our pet bunnies live in the basement because at some point we were sick and tired of the furniture being eaten, and since I can't put the crazy baby in the basement she must learn NOT to eat the furniture. So at this point she is being okay and just gibbering to me...
Then she tried to eat the table (I missed that part) and I said "NO".

And she started yelling more nasty sounding gibberish at me.

What a face. I really had to try hard not to laugh.
And she goes in for another bite but fakes me out.
Then, not 5 seconds later, she is all smiles.

And blowing raspberries.
And giggling at god knows what.
Mom, look how cute I am!!

And then she is back at that damn table. She somehow thinks licking it will not result in me saying NO... she was sorely mistaken.

The mother of all evil eyes. Dude, seriously? She is 11 months old!
WHY WHY WHY do you keep doing that crazy baby??
Peeking out from level 2.
Obviously still testing the boundaries.
NO NO NO NO NO

UGGGH ARRRRRRGRRRRRR UHUHUH YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

So then the next day we started out in a good mood again. I don't know if I have mentioned it on here but Norah has some weird obsession with Landon Pigg. He is a singer, not very popular, but back in March about a month after we got home from Viet Nam I downloaded his video "Falling in love at a coffee shop" onto our TIVO. Anytime I played it she would completely stop what she was doing in her Exersaucer and turn to watch the TV. She would not make a sound the entire time and go back to whatever she was doing the minute it ended. It was nice to be able to leave the room for 4 minute stretches to rotate laundry or go to the bathroom. Then it turned into a good distraction for when daddy left for work or when she was crying during a diaper change. It calmed her down immediately. Now she is obsessive about her Landon. I downloaded a second video a few weeks ago and every time she hears the TIVO bleep she fixates on the TV. If I do not play the video she screams at the TV or beats it. If I do play the video she crawls to the TV and attaches to it like glue. She goes ballistic if I pause the video for any reason.
Here she is glued to Landon.
She is totally in love with him. I have no other explanation for it. I would love to see what happen if we could meet him in person. After 5 months one would have thought this fascination would have dwindled but it is just as strong as ever.

Being cheeeeeesy.
And here we go again with the table eating..
This day I got nasty words, dirty looks and a temper tantrum.
She made this face and then looked at me to see if I would suddenly allow the table eating. No such luck.

For Pete's sake!
Then later that afternoon, friends Liz and Mikey visited. Again we had happy Norah.
Always trying to rip off noses.

Speed crawling.


And finally on Friday the 18th Norah and I went to my company picnic. She was tired and hot and not in the best of moods, big surprise.
Picking grass and trying to eat it.

Making new friends.
Visiting with co-worker Terri. I think she was the only person who Norah allowed to hold her besides myself.
Terri distracted her with jewelry.
And then happy again to be home in the air conditioning.