Nora’s getting to be more and more fun every day!  She has a few little games that she loves to play.  One of them is “not in the bathroom!” where she crawls down the hall, and I say, “Where are you going?”  Then she cracks up and frantically heads for the bathroom door.  I chase her down and say, “Oh no! Not in the bathroom!” and move her back down the hall while she laughs hysterically.  Jonah really loves watching this, too, and often requests that I start playing it with her.  She also enjoys playing with balls and likes to have a ball rolled to her.  She’ll grab it and squeal and then hand it back for someone to roll to her again.  Fun times.

On her own, she often crawls over to the bookshelf to pull out some of her books to look at.  With Jonah around, she certainly sees a lot of reading during the day, and seems to like books pretty well herself.  There are a couple of specific ones that she will try to find when she hears someone talk about them, like her Itsy Bitsy Spider book.  She also loves opening cabinet doors and drawers to play with the bowls and containers in the kitchen.  I’ve caught her on several occasions stashing away a bunch of refrigerator magnets in the drawer under the stove.

We notice her continuing to understand more and more words and phrases.  She knows stand up, sit down, come here, look up, put things in/take them out,  open/close doors, go outside.  (She loves going outside.  If I open a door just to let in light or air and we don’t go outside, she has a meltdown.)  As far as signing goes, she does definitely sign ‘more’ while she’s eating, and she understands at least a dozen others.

Food continues to go well.  She enjoys eating and can now feed herself chunks of food like cooked carrots or cut-up peaches and bananas (or pieces of Jonah’s lunch that he drops on the floor).  She’s tried some of those baby puffed rice snacks and likes those a lot.  Jonah always wants to put them on her tray for her and tries to get away with sneaking her three or more at a time.

Nora is super fast with her crawling now and is also going through a biting phase.  It is not unusual for me to be standing in the kitchen, making lunch, when out of nowhere her little hands and knees come slapping along the floor and she takes a bite out of my calves!  I say it’s like living with a crocodile.  She has all eight of her front teeth, too, so it actually really hurts sometimes.

Standing is a new skill, and she’ll pull herself up to stand on anything she can and she’s able to stand for longer and longer before getting all wobbly.  She likes crawling/climbing over things, too.  Sometimes it seems like she’ll go out of her way to take the toughest path to something she wants just so she can go over some object or squeeze through a tight spot.

Nora’s back to sleeping through the whole night, but she’s still an early riser.  Since she’s waking up about 15 minutes before Sean usually plans to get up for the day, he’s been giving her her morning bottle and spending time playing just with her before he gets ready for work.  They both love their special alone time in the morning.

With Jonah starting preschool this month, Nora also gets two mornings of alone time with Mom as well.  After we drop off Jonah, she takes her short morning nap, and then we have some time to play and read in a calm house.

Oh, and just last week I went into her room to get her out of her crib, and she was sitting up!!  That means she can actually roll over now.  I have yet to see it, but if she’s getting from lying on her back to sitting, there has to be some rolling happening somehow.  I was beginning to think she’d walk before she rolled over.  :)