I promised to make a post about the things Nora has been doing and saying lately. She turned 23 months on July 18, so she is headed full speed ahead towards her second birthday! We have been talking to her about birthdays and trying to explain that hers is coming up, but I'm not quite sure she gets it yet. A friend of hers, Ruby, had her first birthday party a couple of weeks ago and that's probably been Nora's most memorable experience with a birthday so far. She thought that was really neat and I'm sure she will love her own party when it happens in a few weeks.
I think that Nora's a great little communicator. I'd say that I understand her the best since I spend the most time with her. She can express most of her basic wants and needs and usually speaks in 2-4 word sentences. She'll say things like, "Yo Yo Baby (yogurt) yummy, Mommy!" or "Car seat hot, no!" She likes going to church and knows that's where we're "Quiet, shh!" although actually being quiet in church is more of a challenge. She has a whole cast of characters she plays with at home, mostly stuffed animals. She has names for all of them, but with a few exceptions the names are pretty simple - Pig ("Peeg!"), Rabbit, Bunny, Baby, etc. Puppy Knee is a stuffed puppy she got from Build a Bear a few months ago. She also has Mommy Puppy Sam-u-el, which is my old toy, Samuel Spaniel. One night last week she woke up screaming "Mommy Puppy Sam-u-ellllll!" over and over again. Jason went in to her room, changed her diaper, and found MPS and gave him back to her. This was the wrong thing to do because she freaked out. I think she'd actually had a bad dream about MPS, but she couldn't really explain that to us. We brought her to our room and she spent the rest of the night with us, sleeping peacefully.
Another thing she's been doing recently that I think is neat is recognizing places out of the car window when we're driving. She can point out the library (and she knows that's where we go to get books), the church, home, and Daddy's work. She has also recognized places, like my grandmother's house, in photos. She loves looking at pictures and will ask to see pictures of "No' baby" (she still can't pronounce "Nora") with some of her favorite people. She loves books and has a nice collection now, plus we take a few books out from the library every week. Some of her current favorites are Yoko, Flora's Blanket, Hop on Pop ("Hop Pop!"), and Goodnight Moon. I was pretty stubborn about not letting her watch TV when she was younger, but I have been letting her watch some shows on PBS Kids lately. Her favorites seem to be Super Why, Curious George, and Between the Lions.
Brag time: she started learning her ABCs in mid-April and had them down by the end of May. She can now point to any capital letter of the alphabet and name it, and recently she's started to learn the lowercase letters. We simply checked out a book from the library about the ABCs and she got very interested right away, wanting to read the book over and over again until she had learned them all. She can do a little bit of the ABC song, but she's not much of a singer right now. She's starting to learn to say her numbers; we've heard her go up to six or eight, but I don't think she really understands "counting" yet. She's also starting to learn the sounds that letters make, like "Buh" for B, etc. Like all parents, we are very proud of our little girl! It's so fun to watch her learn more about the world. You often hear about the "terrible twos," and there are definite times of frustration for Mommy, Daddy, and Nora. We get tantrums sometimes, and she seems to have inherited a stubborn streak from one or maybe both of her parents. :) But overall, we are really enjoying having a toddler. She brings us so much joy, every single day. We are so glad that Nora is our daughter.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Saturday, July 26, 2008
July 2008
It's been a busy summer! It's not over yet, but let's talk about what the Glass fam has been up to so far.
The summer started off with a bang when my parents visited for Memorial Day Weekend. My dad joined me in running/walking my second 5K, the Save Our Skin 5K at Perimeter Center here in Atlanta. I did my first race in April, and shaved about a minute off of my time at the Save Our Skin. I am still doing far more walking than running (and my "running" is very slow!), but I feel like I am making progress. I had originally hoped to do one race a month, but got a little gunshy when it got REALLY hot here in Georgia. (Who would've thought that summers would be hot in Atlanta?) I have my eye on another race for mid-August, and I am looking forward to fall weather when I can really start enjoying the outdoors again.
The weekend after my parents visited, my best friend Jessie came to town with her eleven month old daughter, Penelope. We were totally thrilled to see Jessie and Penelope. They live in Connecticut for now and we hadn't seen them since Nora and I visited the Emersons in August 2007. Unfortunately, all of us moms and kids were sick for the better part of the weekend, but we still managed to have a good time just enjoying each other's company. Jason mostly escaped illness, but Nora and I ended up having cold symptoms for the better part of two weeks.
We have stayed busy with activities. Nora took swim lessons at the YMCA in June and she did really well! She put her face in the water and learned to blow bubbles and "kick kick kick!" Sometimes she practices in the bathtub at home. We took a break from lessons in July since we knew we would be busy with other things, but I think we are going to continue in the fall because she learned so much in such a short amount of time, I want to keep the momentum going. We have attended a lot of fun playgroups with friends this summer. We also discovered Leapin' Lizards, the local "bouncy place" as we call it, which Nora loves. We bought the "Toddler Express" card so we will probably be going there a lot. We are on a break from The Music Class for the summer, but we will start back up in August. Nora saw (part of) her first movie in the theater, a free showing of The Bee Movie. We didn't stay for the whole thing, but it was fun! Finally, we attended Vacation Bible School at our church, Druid Hills United Methodist. Nora was the youngest of the 6 attendees (we're a small church!) and she had a great time. The kids will be performing some of the songs they learned in church on Sunday. Nora doesn't really sing yet, but sometimes she does the hand motions!
We visited Mobile and Pensacola around the 4th of July. We had a great time seeing friends and family, but we weren't able to see everybody we wanted to see. We did get to go to the beach, and Nora loved it! It was a beautiful, calm day and we sat at the edge of the water and played in the sand. She has been talking about it ever since. On the 4th, Nora's grandparents had a cookout and we went to see the fireworks at Bayfront. The fireworks were beautiful, but I think Nora enjoyed running around on the green lawn in front of the Gulf Power building more than she enjoyed the show.
In mid-July, my other best friend, Dara, visited with her family. It was a short trip, but we got to go out to dinner one night and have family time the next morning. We are looking forward to seeing all of them again when they come up for Nora's birthday party next month! I also saw my Columbus, GA-based friend Rebecca one afternoon. I can't believe I've known Rebecca for 10 years now! We met when we started at Barnes & Noble in 1998. We're hoping to see Rebecca again next month, too.
This post has gotten really long. Later, I'll try to post about some of the cute things Nora has been doing and saying lately.
The summer started off with a bang when my parents visited for Memorial Day Weekend. My dad joined me in running/walking my second 5K, the Save Our Skin 5K at Perimeter Center here in Atlanta. I did my first race in April, and shaved about a minute off of my time at the Save Our Skin. I am still doing far more walking than running (and my "running" is very slow!), but I feel like I am making progress. I had originally hoped to do one race a month, but got a little gunshy when it got REALLY hot here in Georgia. (Who would've thought that summers would be hot in Atlanta?) I have my eye on another race for mid-August, and I am looking forward to fall weather when I can really start enjoying the outdoors again.
The weekend after my parents visited, my best friend Jessie came to town with her eleven month old daughter, Penelope. We were totally thrilled to see Jessie and Penelope. They live in Connecticut for now and we hadn't seen them since Nora and I visited the Emersons in August 2007. Unfortunately, all of us moms and kids were sick for the better part of the weekend, but we still managed to have a good time just enjoying each other's company. Jason mostly escaped illness, but Nora and I ended up having cold symptoms for the better part of two weeks.
We have stayed busy with activities. Nora took swim lessons at the YMCA in June and she did really well! She put her face in the water and learned to blow bubbles and "kick kick kick!" Sometimes she practices in the bathtub at home. We took a break from lessons in July since we knew we would be busy with other things, but I think we are going to continue in the fall because she learned so much in such a short amount of time, I want to keep the momentum going. We have attended a lot of fun playgroups with friends this summer. We also discovered Leapin' Lizards, the local "bouncy place" as we call it, which Nora loves. We bought the "Toddler Express" card so we will probably be going there a lot. We are on a break from The Music Class for the summer, but we will start back up in August. Nora saw (part of) her first movie in the theater, a free showing of The Bee Movie. We didn't stay for the whole thing, but it was fun! Finally, we attended Vacation Bible School at our church, Druid Hills United Methodist. Nora was the youngest of the 6 attendees (we're a small church!) and she had a great time. The kids will be performing some of the songs they learned in church on Sunday. Nora doesn't really sing yet, but sometimes she does the hand motions!
We visited Mobile and Pensacola around the 4th of July. We had a great time seeing friends and family, but we weren't able to see everybody we wanted to see. We did get to go to the beach, and Nora loved it! It was a beautiful, calm day and we sat at the edge of the water and played in the sand. She has been talking about it ever since. On the 4th, Nora's grandparents had a cookout and we went to see the fireworks at Bayfront. The fireworks were beautiful, but I think Nora enjoyed running around on the green lawn in front of the Gulf Power building more than she enjoyed the show.
In mid-July, my other best friend, Dara, visited with her family. It was a short trip, but we got to go out to dinner one night and have family time the next morning. We are looking forward to seeing all of them again when they come up for Nora's birthday party next month! I also saw my Columbus, GA-based friend Rebecca one afternoon. I can't believe I've known Rebecca for 10 years now! We met when we started at Barnes & Noble in 1998. We're hoping to see Rebecca again next month, too.
This post has gotten really long. Later, I'll try to post about some of the cute things Nora has been doing and saying lately.
Welcome to our blog!
Here we are! We Glass family members decided it would be a good idea to start a blog so we could keep in touch with our out-of-state friends and family members.
It's likely that I (Blair) will be writing most of the posts, but Jason has the ability to contribute, too, and I hope that he will. We won't be posting many pictures here; we're still using Flickr and updating at least once a week or so. At Flickr we have the ability to control the privacy settings on our photos. If you'd like to become our contact on Flickr, please email one of us and we will send you an invitation.
Thanks for reading, and check back soon!
It's likely that I (Blair) will be writing most of the posts, but Jason has the ability to contribute, too, and I hope that he will. We won't be posting many pictures here; we're still using Flickr and updating at least once a week or so. At Flickr we have the ability to control the privacy settings on our photos. If you'd like to become our contact on Flickr, please email one of us and we will send you an invitation.
Thanks for reading, and check back soon!
