Updates

Here are a few new things Cora has been doing lately:

~First instore tantrum! We've had little ones with trying to get her to sit in the shopping cart, etc, but our first major one was at Deseret Book last week. It was the first time in a long time I've taken her in a store where she wasn't in a stroller or a shopping cart. She loved it! She loved all the books and wanted to pick them up and take them around. But when we had to leave, she threw herself on the ground and started shrieking. Not that fun, but it did make me laugh (inside!). I guess it's a milestone!

~Kissing it better. Cora has picked up on the idea of having her owies kissed better and loves it. Sometimes I can't figure out where her owie is, but she'll always show me and it works for her!

~Stringing words together. She has a bunch of phrases down, like "Where did it go?" "There it is" "Daddy come home" and some shorter two-word ones, like "Let's go" and "go outside". It's fun to see her put it all together and see how much she understands and can verbalize.

~Elmo. One of the great loves of her life. If we are in a store and see an Elmo item, immediately the whole store hears "ELMO!!!". We were shopping at the Gateway, and everytime she saw one of their Elmo posters (for the Children's Museum exhibit), the whole street knew about it.

~Cora has successfully jumped a few times now-- achieving lift-off of both feet at the same time. We talk about bunnies --"What does a bunny do?" and she responds "Hop!" and then she tries to hop too.

~Babies. One of the other great loves of her life. We went to the Church History Museum last week, they had a children's exhibit called "I Am A Child of God" with lots of hands-on activities. So well done! And free! But we needed to walk through the exhibit backwards-- the babies were in the very first part, and I don't think Cora really saw too much else of the cool activities they had there. They were pretty big babies, the hard plastic kind, and she had to carry the baby, blanket, and bottle everywhere with her. This was quite a feat for such a little girl. That baby sure got fed and cuddled a lot. And there were some tears when we had to leave.

~More baby stuff. My cousin Monique let us borrow the family cradle again for this baby. Cora loves it! She put all her babies in it, rocked them, and told us "shhh" because they were sleeping. Hopefully she likes this new baby too! We have been reading a few big sister and baby-prep books that she really likes too.

~Learning new songs. We've started to add more songs to our repertoire, The Wheels on the Bus, Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam, and a few others. She loves doing the actions, and sings along sometimes. She's got about half of the ABC song down too, but we might be the only ones who understand it so far.

~We've been doing family scripture time every night for the last few months, just 5 verses a night. I'm sure Cora doesn't get a whole lot out of it yet, but it's a good habit to start. We know she is listening some though, when we read a set of verses that mentioned the Jews several times, she started demanding her juice.

~We've successfully weaned her tv time down again, not an easy task after using it as a comfort tool when she and I were both sick for those few weeks. But she still likes to watch Curious George off our DVR most days. I always know when the show is done because when the screen goes black I hear a loud "Oh No!" and she runs to come get me.

~Popcorn is a new favorite snack. She loves watching it come out of the air popper and fill the bowl. This morning she woke up saying "popcorn, popcorn".... I didn't think she would notice, but she must have smelled the (burnt) popcorn smell from my snack last night!

~Kevin was teaching Cora how to hop on the ball in the backyard. She picked up on it pretty well and was having fun with it. Cora LOVES to play outside, no matter how cold it is, or if it's getting dark, she'll point out the window and say "outside? Elmo bubbles? bubbles?". We've been lucky to have a bunch of nice days in a row, but it's going to cool down here again this weekend.