Clapping

Cora started clapping while ago (March 16th), but we've had a hard time getting it on video. Here she is displaying her ball rolling skills and clapping too.

Outdoors

We made smoothies last Sunday and went outside to drink them. Cora didn't have any smoothie, but she did like the grass! Kevin says that we won't have to mow the lawn this summer if we take her outside enough to play. (Just so you aren't worried, the pieces of grass were so small Cora rarely could get them to her mouth, and when she could, we intervened!)

Stats

Cora had her nine month appointment with the pediatrician yesterday. She is 16 pounds 4 ounces, still in the 10th percentile. She is 27 inches long, so still about average for height. The doctor said Cora most likely wouldn't hit 20 pounds by her first birthday, so she'll be riding backwards in her carseat for a while yet! ... make that 'she'll be riding in her carseat rear-facing' -- not strapped in backwards!...

Stats

Cora had her nine month appointment with the pediatrician today. She is 16 pounds 4 ounces, still in the 10th percentile. She is 27 inches long, so still about average for height. The doctor said Cora most likely wouldn't hit 20 pounds by her first birthday, so she'll be riding backwards in her carseat for a while yet! ... make that 'she'll be riding in her carseat rear-facing' -- not strapped in backwards!...

One Noisy Flower

Cora and I play shadows almost every morning!

Cora's newest accessory-- her flower headband. She doesn't seem to mind it, and it was too cute for me to pass up in Target's dollar aisle. She's only pulled it off to eat it once! Cora has also been talking quite a bit lately-- she's got mamamama, dadadadada, yayayayaya, and nanananana down pat! She's also quite the little screamer, she especially loves to scream at herself in the mirror and to kiddies we pass by on our walks.

Cora was wearing wearing the headband when we took our family walk last night, and was yakking up a storm. One of the guys working on a new house we walked by remarked that she was sure a noisy little flower! She got lots of compliments from the neighbors too.

New Things

Cora has made all kinds of new discoveries in our house. She loves looking outside through our pack door to the patio (if you look closely you can see her drool mark on the window too!)

The computer cords are a favorite area too.... she likes to unplug! But now they are all blocked by pillows, so we're safe for a while till she figures out how to moves those. She also loves the scale-- must be how shiny it is, and she thinks it's grand when we set her on it-- it isn't a very reliable scale, but she's been weighing 16.5 pounds pretty consistently! We'll see how accurate it really is when we go to the pediatrician at the end of the month. Cora is still fascinated by doorstops, we've had to remove most of them in the high traffic areas, but she still likes to try for the one behind our closet door, but gets mad when she can't quite reach it because of the storage unit that makes the area narrow.

Cora is loving our walks more and more. It's so nice outside, there are lots of kids out playing, and she also studies each car going by very intensely.

Here is Cora with Auntie and Grandma feeding the ducks. Cora liked looking at all the duckies down in the lake fighting over the bread... and trying to sneak some bread from Grandma when she wasn't looking!

How much is that baby in the window?

Cora loves to look at herself! When she's in our room, she always makes a beeline for the mirror. She loves looking at herself in the mirror, on her blog, when we're on the webcam, and now, on the dishwasher and oven too. She thinks her reflection is pretty cute! Or maybe like the Baby Blues comic said yesterday, she's just going over to play with that other baby and wondering why there's always a window between the two of them!
I used to keep my makeup behind the mirror, so she always looks for fun things to play with back there, but since Cora has become more mobile, I had to find a new storage place!

A New Low

Last night Cora pulled herself up to standing in her crib several times... so this morning it was time to take the crib mattress down to the bottom notch! She is growing up so much!

Battle Wounds

Cora is crawling faster and faster every day! And she's starting to explore more, in addition to following me around the house. She loves sliding on her tummy on the tile too, and especially loves the coffee table-- which is bad because although it is pretty, it's a head bonk waiting to happen. She has some bruises on the crown of her head due to learning to balance and trying to pull up on things (she's not strong enough to make it up yet, she usually falls and bonks her head), and some roughed up knees too. She just keeps going though, and it doesn't seem to phase her much!

Cora's new-found "toy"

I think she likes the 'boing' sounds she can make with the doorstops! She seems pretty fascinated by them. Cora hasn't been nearly as interested in her baby toys since she started crawling and discovered all the other cool toys in the house-- like the phone charger cord, my make-up basket, and the garbage cans. I'm learning every day the ways our house is not baby-proofed yet!

Another way to play with the exersaucer....

Cora, Grandpa, and the Big Blue Ball

She gets around

Cora crawled for the first time yesterday! She must have wanted to impress her visiting grandparents-- she got those arms to move and got truckin'. She requires a lot of motivation for all that effort-- paper, a water bottle, a tower of blocks, but with the proper end goal, she'll show off her skills. Check it out in this video (the banging in the background is Kevin and Pata working on the basement). We better get that baby gate up! I don't think a pillow in front of the stairway is going to cut it anymore.



And, Cora also started making a new sound during Kissie and Pata's visit too! dadadadadadada. It's pretty cute. Now we have to get her working on mamamamama too!

Sweet Potato Make-up

Cora has been experimenting with blowing raspberries while I'm feeding her. She seems to think her raspberries are bigger, better, and much more fun if they are accompanied by green bean puree! Here she got an especially big blow into her sweet potatoes... that combined with a diaper blow-out got her an unusual mid-day bath, which she loves. Hopefully that won't encourage her messy behaviour!

Family Pictures

One highlight over the Christmas vacation was doing family pictures in Boise. It's so nice to have new ones with all the additions going on in the extended family!

Our little family.

Our big family!

Pata and Kissie. And they are coming to visit on Wednesday! We're so excited to see them, and shop, sew, work on the basement, eat, and play games together!

Won't you be mine?

Cora's stylin' in her V-day pj's from Queenie and Pata.

Cora checking out the teddy bear. She especially liked his ribbon bow around the neck, she spent quite a bit of time inspecting it.

Momma's sweetheart.
She's got skills! She's still figuring out how to use them though. Maybe she'll be crawling in the next few weeks. She can't seem to figure out how to get her hands to move, even if she does laugh at me while I try to crawl around by her and show her!

Also, we found out that Cora might be a UNLV fan! We took her to a BYU basketball game, and it was just too loud for her... she cried everytime BYU scored and the Marriot Center erupted in cheers! So Kevin and I took turns with her in the hall. It was a fun game though, but I think we'll wait 'til next season to try again and see if she's true blue or not.

New Discovery

Cora usually hangs out in our bathroom and plays with toys while I shower in the mornings. This morning, for the first time, she was by the vent when the heater turned on. She loved feeling the warm air on her hands and face!

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.