Rolling

Well, the beginning of last week, Cora figured out rolling! She's rolled both front to back and back to front before, but not frequently. But last Monday she took off! Now she rolls to get across the room, rolls to reach toys, and rolls back and back just for the pure joy of rolling! Cora is also making progress on crawling attempts. She lifts her tummy off the ground, spends a lot of time on her hands and knees, and rocks back and forth. She wants to crawl, but just hasn't figured it out quite yet.

Cora expanded her toy collection quite a bit last Christmas. Her favorite toys now include Leapfrog letters that she passes from one hand to another, musical toys that she loves pushing buttons on, and the blocks from a sorting toy. She's also shown 'girly' preferences already-- she loves a doll my great-grandmother made for me, and a doll my dad brought back from Japan for me when I was little.

Cora has tried a whole variety of baby foods now: green beans, carrots, peas, peaches, pears, bananas, squash, and sweet potatoes. She doesn't seem to like green beans much, but other than that she's pretty happy to eat anything and is usually frustrated that I'm not getting the food to her fast enough!

I keep thinking her upper teeth are coming so soon--since she keep gnawing on whatever she can get in her mouth-- and usually that's her fingers she's chomping on! But it may be awhile yet, I can't feel any real swelling in her gums yet.

We haven't been doing much in the way of exciting activities, it's just been too cold! Maybe next week will warm up a bit so we can bundle up and go walking outside!

A couple of Boise Christmas pics

After true Christmas in Portland, we were in Boise for New Year's, and did Christmas again with my family.
Thanks to my mom, Jen, Liz, and I got to do girl-bonding over pedicures. Unfortunately, mom couldn't come... but it's a great tradition we'll have to repeat with everyone next time!
Our pretty toes!

Daddy's little girl

Bathtime

Cora loves her bathtime! She especially loves her turtles that her cousin Emeline got her for Christmas. Cora watches the turtles float around her, studies them really hard, and makes a grab for one when it comes close. Once she's got it in her tight grip, she tucks it under her belly so it can't possibly escape. It's pretty funny to watch!
A couple of times she's caught more than one turtle, and while it doesn't last long, she looks pretty amazed at her capabilities!

After she has sat up and played a bit in the bath, we lay her down to give her some splash time. She can sure make the water go high with her arm and leg splashes! After she splashes and gets washed up, it's out of the tub, which makes her so sad she often cries (she especially hates being lathered up with lotion!) until she's all dressed for the night.

6 month appointment

Cora had her well baby 6 month appointment this morning. We drove through the snow to get there--it's really coming down! Cora weighs 14 pounds 6 oz and is 26 inches long. She's pretty skinny compared to average I guess--she's in the 10th percentile, but the doctor said that's fine for now and we wouldn't have to do anything special about it unless she drops more. She's 50th percentile for height and head measurements. Everything else is looking good too!

Cora can sit without support pretty solidly now-- she usually only falls over if she gets too excited about something and looses her balance. She's trying so hard to crawl, and can almost tuck her knees up under her--but is just moving backwards so far. She doesn't do a lot of rolling over yet, her primary mode of transportation is still arching her back and scooting along on her feet and head!

6 month pictures

Here are some of our favorites from Cora's 6 month portraits!

Christmas in Oregon

We went to Oregon for Christmas to see Kevin's family. We had a lot of fun! Here are some pictures from Christmas morning. Cora loves paper! So Christmas morning was full of fun for her. Though I'm not sure I can approve of her preferred method for opening presents -- eating them!

Cora loves the sounds she can make with tissue paper! I think she would have been happy if all she got for Christmas was a few sheets of it! Here she is helping dad open his cool remote control helicopter.

Cora is constantly chomping on her fingers! We think her upper teeth must not be too far off!

Santa Baby

Fun with family

Grandma, Grandpa, and Cora

Grandma, Cousin Kylee, and Cora

Dashing through the Living Room

Grandma and Grandpa had a perfect size sleigh. Now all we need to do is tie a rope to the sleigh and to Pup and off she will go.

"I'm too old for this."

Our Little Diva!!!

Cora loved being tickled by the purple feather boa.

Peas Please!

Cora tried her veggie yesterday-- peas! While she made a couple of disgusted faces at first, she ended up really liking them and opened her mouth wide for each bite!

Snow Days

We had a bit of snow yesterday morning, but we woke up to a bunch of snow this morning! It was Cora's first time in the snow. I'm not sure she got what was going on, but she's pretty cute anyway! Next year will be more fun for her.

Cora the snow bunny.

Cora's snow print.

Getting ready to go outside--Cora was pretty tired and went down for a nap right afterwards--but you can see the teeth!

Our front walk.

Our expert snow shoveler.

Ornament Party

We hosted the annual Ellis Ornament Party this morning. Pretty fun! Lots of good food and fun ornaments to exchange. It was nice to see everyone, visit, and celebrate a bit of Christmas with all the members of my mom's family in the area. Thanks to everyone who came and helped out! What a great tradition.

Me, Cora, Shad, and Jen in front of our Christmas tree! Cora, in her "My First X-Mas" outfit. She was wearing a cute Santa dress from one of my coworkers, but unfortunately she dirtied that up right as the party was starting! It's in the wash, so she can wear it next week.
My Aunt Zeann and Uncle Bob, with their granddaughter Addysan.

Merry Christmas

Here's Cora's Christmas picture. Merry Christmas everyone!

Kevin's Handiwork

Kevin did such a great job on our Christmas lights. I'm so glad he's so good at it, because I hate ladders and would probably faint before I could put any up!
And here's today's pic of Cora--grabbing at her moccasins on the changing table. I was trying to get teeth pictures, but no such luck!

Christmas at Our House

We don't have tons of Christmas decorations, but I thought I'd share how Christmas looks at our house. We have our Christmas tree, decorated with ornaments we (and other family members) have collected on our traveling vacations. Our Christmas star wouldn't work on our new artificial tree, so I experimented with bow-making for the first time, and it doesn't look too bad--especially 9 feet up!












The light is bad, but here are our neighbor Christmas goodies with my new snowflake tablecloth (I finally found one that is festive and matches our blue plates!) and a centerpiece of New Year's party poppers. The poinsettas from Costco are so huge and pretty so Kevin got one for our entryway.








With no fireplace, our stockings are hung (with 3M tabs!) in the entryway with care. And I have my Christmas picture books, story advent book, and this cute puzzle nativity (that also stands up for display) that I painted in Boise on our last visit. The 'winter' letters and the snowman tile are Super Saturday projects (the source of all my crafty projects!).














And, one of my favorites, the olive wood nativity from Jerusalem from Mom and Dad. It always reminds me of the wonderful semester I spent there.

Second Tooth

Cora's second tooth came in today!

A few more pictures....

Cozy cozy girl

Cora spent a whole hour this afternoon just entertaining herself with her toes! Wow!

When she's not playing with her toes, Cora loves rattles. This little bird rattle has three companion birds and a soft birdhouse they live in. Pretty cute!

What's for dinner mom?

Baby Update

New Cora Fun Facts:

* Paper is Cora's favorite new thing! She loves to grab at newspapers, books, post-it notes, you name it! She gets so distracted by EVERYTHING while eating now, and paper is the most distracting, so I've given up trying to read while nursing.

* The Tooth-- is coming up more and more each day. It's so cute!

* Cora started oatmeal cereal a few days ago. She seems to like it. We'll do cereal for the next few weeks, and start veggies with the new year.

* Cora can now put herself to sleep with no crying (usually). We just wrap her up, stick in a binkie, and put her in her crib and she's out. It's been a few weeks now, and it's the greatest thing! And the side benefit is that her naps are much longer now. Instead of 6 30 minute naps a day, she takes one long nap and 2-3 one hour naps.

* Cora wants to crawl pretty badly. We'll see how long it takes her to get all her coordination together to scoot along. She turns around on her belly, but doesn't really get anywhere. She is trying so hard to pull her legs up under her, but she can't pull her belly up yet. She'll work on it, and then we'll have to put our baby gate up!

* Since she hasn't mastered crawling yet, Cora's main mode of transportation is arching her back and scooting along on her head and feet. I'm not sure this is a good thing! Her bald spot in back had almost gone away, and now it's growing.

* Cora has been a little bit more difficult to take pictures of now! She sees the shiny camera and gets a really intent look on her face as she's trying to figure out how to grab it, so it's a lot harder to get smiley or candid pictures. I need to recruit Kevin to help with pictures in the evenings so she has a fun distraction while I'm snapping pictures!

* Cora's been stylin' in her new pair of flare jeans-- they are so very cute!