5 Months Old!

I’ve been super busy since I started my job at the day school! I now have a total of 32 students!!! So I hope you will excuse my inability to keep up with the blog!

I know I say this all the time, but I really can’t believe how big Norah is getting. Where did the time go? I still feel like I just had her.

Norah is now:

Grabbing at things! She yanks my hair and pulls at my shirt constantly, especially while nursing. She will grab ANYTHING within reach, and it goes straight into her mouth.

Almost sitting on her own. She can do it sometimes, but can’t keep her balance for long!

Very interested in food. We’ve given her TINY tastes of several things: whipped cream, ice cream, yogurt, mashed potatoes, hummus, sour cream, the filling from a crepe at IHOP… and probably a few others. I also let her suck on a piece of apple today (don’t worry, I had a firm grasp on it)! We are waiting another month to actually start feeding some foods. I plan to make homemade baby food. I’m excited – I think it will be a blast to see her reactions! And I know she’ll love it.

Intrigued with her feet. She plays with them all the time, especially when I’m trying to change her diaper.

Super friendly! She always has been, but lately we keep getting compliments on that, and people ask, “Is she always this happy?!” And the answer is yes! (Well…MOST of the time).

She’s been laughing on occasion, too, which is SO cute! Usually though, we’ll find something that makes her laugh once, and after that it’s not funny anymore. L

We left her in the church nursery for the first time last Sunday! She did great, but we missed her!! We brought her in there for the second half of the service just because she wanted to be talkative. She wasn’t crying or anything. It was strange sitting in the service without her!

My 26^th birthday was last Friday. Oh, funny story about that: recently a woman was admiring Norah and talking with us, and suddenly realized that I was the mom. She said, “Oh, I thought you were her sister!” And then as she was leaving she said something like, “Babies are just precious…but just wait till she gets to be a teenager!” I felt like she was referring to me as a teenager, but I let it go. People keep telling me someday I’ll be glad I look so young. Someday. J

I had a great birthday! I wasn’t able to get my whole family together at once, which was disappointing, but I spent some birthday time with everyone and got more gifts (mostly money!) than I could have hoped for! Travis was SO sweet and made me a whole birthday dinner (fondue with apples and bread, pot roast with veggies) AND a birthday cake in just two hours, while I was teaching! All from scratch! My mom also came to visit, which was really nice. I was glad to have some time with her, and glad she could spend some time getting to know the new Norah! She hadn’t seen her since she was 6 weeks old, so she’s a totally different baby now!

One of my sisters asked me what I’ve learned this year. It was a tough question to answer! So many things! But the one that sticks out is patience. When you have a baby to take care of, there’s no, “I’m annoyed with you, I need some time by myself, see ya later.” In general, when I’m frustrated, I’m best left alone for awhile so I can come back later with a better attitude and a clear head, etc. I’ve gotten better about keeping calm and working through the situation when I can’t seem to figure out what Norah wants, or when she seems to be crying for no reason, or when there’s nothing I can do about it (like when we’re driving down the road and she wants out of the car seat NOW), or when I’m in a hurry to get somewhere and as soon as I’ve got her buckled in, she poops. I hope nobody thinks I have horrible maternal instincts when I say this, but I have to make myself remember that Norah is just a baby, and getting bent out of shape isn’t going to help. You just have to take it all in stride and learn to laugh when things don’t go as planned, because building a loving, trusting, secure relationship with your children is more important than anything else you could possibly be doing with your day.

Here are some photos from the past MONTH! I still have more videos to post, but they were delayed because I couldn’t get the videos from Travis’s phone to upload, and I still can’t. I’ll just have to leave them out. L I’ll get the other ones posted as soon as I can.