Happy Valentine's Day

At last, here are the pictures I promised last week. Nothing big is going on, and it's chilly outside, so these are all of Nora playing in the house. We have been going to a storytime program at the library that she seems to like, but no photos from that. She helps me with the shopping, and when she can get her hands on a "baby cart" at the market, I noticed her practice with the toy shopping cart has really paid off. It used to be like shopping with a tiny drunk person since she was more interested in watching the little shopping cart move rather than watching out for people/ displays in the store.

We're getting Nora's "Big Girl" room ready and hoping to have her practice sleeping in the bed (generously lent to us by Grandma and Grandpa Longton!) in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, laying in the bed is one of her favorite activities:

In the vein of working on all things "big girl," we're planting the seeds of potty training, and to support her practicing hand-washing, I bought that Kandoo foaming soap for kids. She was totally enamored with the "two soaps," carried them all around the grocery store, wouldn't let me put them on the belt in the checkout lane (the cashier was nice enough to scan them quickly and give them straight back to Nora), and she played with them all day yesterday (ALL DAY). The best, though -- she asked me to take a picture of herself with the soaps:

We've been brushing her teeth for a long time, but recently started having her practice "rinsing" and spitting afterwards. If she just doesn't swallow the water and spits it back out (or lets it dribble back out of her mouth, which is the more accurate description), it's a good session. Needless to say, we'll be using the fluoride-free toothpaste (swallow-safe) for the forseeable future. This is her making the "monster teeth" face so I can scrub the fronts of her teeth.

Backwards cowboy hat:

Fork mustache:

We're reading lots of books about new babies coming home, and so far that's going well... Nora likes the stories and also likes babies. I think that will translate into 1.7% less resistance to a new baby in the house. The baby continues to grow well and we're scheduled for our big ultrasound a week from tomorrow. If we get any good pictures, we'll post them on the blog.

Thanks again for checking in!
Love,

Sarah, Brett & Nora

PS: We're already preparing to move onto the next holiday... Brett showed Nora a leprechaun today and taught her the word. Somehow, though, she is pronouncing it "SAH-puh-KAH-KAHN" instead. Pretty funny.

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Quiz

Whoa- it's been a long time since that last post. We just wanted to give you plenty of time to read all of that! :) I'll try to post again immediately with some new pictures of you-know-who, but in the meantime, here's a quick quiz to see how well you can interpret and translate Noranese, the language of two-year-olds (to her credit, her talking is coming along very well, she just has some random words that are way out there):

1) "Hepacocker"
2) "Hosh"
3) "Hep-hup"
4) "Cake Yong"
5) "Yo-E-Yo"
6) "Ree-rup"
7) "Ning Nyong"

Answers: (Don't cheat!)
1) Helicopter
2) Turtle... though she's starting to correct herself and say "turtle." We have absolutely no idea where this came from or why "hosh" became the word for turtle for so long! Give yourself 5 bonus points if you got this one right
3) Ketchup
4) Cake Song -- give yourself some bonus points if you figured out that this is the Birthday Song by the Beatles ("You say it's your birthday!...") It is far and away her favorite song, and she cannot hear it enough. When we play it I just put the CD on repeat, but have convinced her that I am magic. When the song is ending, we wiggle our fingers towards the radio, say "MORE CAKE SONG -- KAZAAAM!" and -- tadaahhh!-- it starts over from the beginning. Every time this happens Nora says "It works!" and keeps dancing.
5) Radio
6) Syrup -- yep, she gets some with her waffles, but she eats a ton so I don't feel too guilty about it.
7) 1000 points if you figured this one out: Dirty Laundry. Again, no clues where this came from or why it has stuck. Nora's job after a meal is to throw the bib into her dirty clothes hamper, and then we give high fives all around for a job well done. For a while now, she has referred to this job and the dirty clothes as "ning nyong." Is she bilingual?

If you got any of these right, write to me and let me know (or post a comment). We'll be calling you the next time Nora is crying and talking unintelligibly and you can translate for all of us. :)

Merry Christmas and all that comes with it!

We have had a great couple of weeks (not to slight the weeks preceding when I was STILL not updating our blog!) Christmas preparations were fun and interesting... I thought I had one more "free" year of shopping with Nora and her not really noticing what I was buying. Her expanding vocabulary, though, quickly showed how good her memory is, so I had to steal out in the night to get a few critical gifts while she was asleep! She was with me, though, when we bought other gifts for other people and does not understand the idea of keeping a secret! She kept talking about the mixing bowls we bought for her Aunt Amanda ("bowls! 'Manda!") and even tried to tell Brett about some running socks we bought for him ("yock! Daddy! Shh! Shh!Daddy, yock!"). My brother Andy's girlfriend Tristan threw him a surprise party for his birthday and Nora knew about it... she kept saying "Party! Andy!" but fortunately not when he was around.

So, with my little not-such-a-good secret keeper, we hit many stores all over town and got a lot of errands done. The weekend of December 15th, we packed up and headed to Kalamazoo for my sister Clare's graduation! She got her Bachelor's Degree from Western Michigan, though she's continuing straight on for her Master's Degree. It was fun to celebrate this big milestone with her, and my in-laws were kind enough to take care of Nora during the graduation ceremony, get her dressed up when she woke from her nap, and to deliver her to the restaurant where we celebrated afterward. Brett and I went out to the car to get Nora, and she seemed fairly excited to see us... until Clare came out of the restaurant too. Nora yelled "CARE!" and elbowed me in the throat in her hurry to scramble over to her aunt! We also had a side celebration to acknowledge Genevieve's Master's Degree too... she finished her Master's in Education during the week leading up to Clare's graduation ceremony. All in all, Nora was very happy all weekend to see Yavellos at dinner and to spend the night at Grandma and Grandpa Longton's. We were even lucky enough that Great-Grandpa Riggs came over for a visit on Sunday. Lots of love for this little girl.

The next weekend, we packed up again, this time for Christmas visits. In an effort to keep from being up all night on Christmas Eve, we were up way past our bedtime on Friday night trying to pre-prepare as much as we could. I was a little tired the next morning, so we just HAD to stop at the Loony Baker for a coffee and a cinnamon roll on our way to the west side (I would live off of cinnamon rolls if it were even minimally nutritionally acceptable!) That was just the ticket, and we were in high spirits when we got to Brett's Dad's house for a Christmas celebration with Grandma and Grandpa Huffman and Diane's daughters Kelly (and her friend Jeff) and Kim (and her husband Steve and daughter Daphke) {what a poorly constructed sentence... I just wanted to get everyone in there!} We all had a great time, and Daphke was wonderful with Nora... Nora so loved being around a "big kid" and I spotted her copying off of Daphke the whole afternoon and evening. Though when Nora went down for a little nap, Daphke decided that was a good idea and took a little snooze too. Both girls got new baby dolls from Grandma Di, complete with bottles... the bottles were initially the bigger hit with Nora, but now she's playing with the baby as well.

We spent the night back at Brett's mom's house, and awoke very early the next morning to an unexpected sound. I thought it was torrential pouring rain, but Brett said "no, that's wind." Wind! It was relentless!! Sure enough, a short while later it woke Nora up and we then realized there was no power in the house. We rallied and got ready for Mass (I mistakenly washed my hair in the shower with no power to dry it... brrr!), and on our way to the church we saw the culprit... a huge tree had fallen and was pulling the power lines almost down to the ground. The power company's initial estimation was that power would be back by noon the NEXT day (Monday), so we were starting to think we might have to cut the visit short and go home... the house was getting chilly. After mass, we stopped for a warm brunch/lunch and on our way back to the house -- HALLELUJAH! -- we saw the power guys working on the problem spot we'd seen earlier! We bundled Nora up for her nap (onesie, long-sleeve t-shirt, tights, full footed fleece pjs, and a sweat suit [thank you Kelly!]) and just as she was going down, the power came on. It still took a while to heat the house up, but the visit was saved!

Monday we had a nice day of hanging out and then Brett's Grand-pa (Great Grand-pa Riggs to Nora) came over for a great dinner and some present opening. When it came to opening presents, Nora turned out to have the attention span of a gnat. We almost had to tackle her to the ground to get her to focus on opening her last few gifts. But she was thrilled with all of the wonderful gifts, particularly the little grey cat that came with her new Duplo building blocks. As a surprise, Casey showed up after we had dinner (he'd come straight from work) so we got to have some time with him as well! Too soon, though, we had to pack up the car and head home so Santa could find Nora asleep in her own bed on Christmas Eve.

[wow, this is becoming quite the long narrative! If you're tired of all this, feel free to duck out at any time... no hard feelings! If not, we'll plow on...]

Christmas morning was great! Nora slept in a little and woke up very cheerful if not confused about why this day was more special than any other day of the week. We got her a fresh diaper and brought her out into the living room, where she IMMEDIATELY said "Bike! Bike! Bike!" She went straight to the big chair behind which, it turned out, Santa had hidden a brand new Red Ryder Tricycle! We still don't know how she found it so fast... maybe Santa snuck in her room and told her where to look while we were sleeping. :) Taking a cue from the previous present openings, we wrapped gifts in groups so there were fewer packages to open, and things went pretty smoothly. If you were friends with us (the Yavellos) when we were kids, you might remember that we had this little house that slipped over a card table. I made one for Nora this year and it was, thankfully, a big hit! Not as big a hit, though, as the jar of fake pickles that Santa left in her stocking (it's been five days now since she got that, and she still has it with her all the time).

"Towel puppy." She loved this so much that we almost didn't want to unwrap and use the towel puppy as an actual towel.

After a breakfast of cheese strata (mine needs work... not as good as the traditional fare at Mama Yavello's) and warm peaches, we spiffied ourselves up and headed to Divine Child to meet the family for Mass at 11. It turned out that we were the ONLY people who "knew" mass was at 11... everyone else decided it should be 11:30. Luckily, the family was just a few blocks away, so we spent a half an hour with them before returning with the rest of the parishoners for Mass. Read on to the bottom, and I'll tell you something funny about that half hour. Back at Grandma and Grandpa Yavello's, we dug into the presents! It was a little chaotic, scratch off lottery tickets were being scratched off left and right (the Huffmans didn't win this year... but Gen and Clare both won a few bucks), wrapping paper everywhere, and a whole lot of fun. Our Aunt Judy and Andy's girlfriend Tristan joined us for an early dinner (and Nora took a nap, which was nice timing), and a good time was had by all. After Nora got up, and dinner was over, we packed up AGAIN and went over to my Uncle Harold's house to throw out a Merry Christmas to my mom's side of the family. After a very long day (traumatic too-- when Nora saw us packing up her toys she started crying, not understanding that we were going to take them to our house), we got home to spend 2 hours trying to get our wound-up girl to sleep.

The next day we tried to find new homes for all the new toys, and were excited to see Lon, Diane, and Diane's Uncle Bob stop by for a little visit... they brought MORE presents, this time Birthday, for Nora. She loves her new little sled, now we just wait for the snow. That evening, my friend Beth came over to babysit Nora for the first time. Nora thinks they're best friends so she was thrilled to see Beth come in, though she tried to play it cool. After a quick tutorial on diaper changing and a run down of the bedtime routine, Brett and I left the girls with all the new toys and went to Andy's party. It was a fun time, he was surprised, and we got to meet a lot of the friends of his we always hear so much about! We got home to find out things went pretty well with Beth's first babysitting adventure here... a little bit of crying for mama, but Nora talked Beth through it. Haha, so hilarious (it's late at night when I'm writing this first draft, so please cut my bad jokes some slack!) Obviously, it was Nora who cried, but my favorite part came after Beth settled her down and got her all snuggly for bed. In my review of the bedtime routine rundown, I had forgotten to add that Nora sleeps in the dark, so Beth initially left a little dim light on for Nora. As she laid Nora in her crib, Nora started to cry/ whine a little, and then put her head up and said in an indignant sort of voice "Lights Out! Lights Out!!!" I laughed so hard when we heard that... if we've talked to you in the last few days, you've already heard this because Brett and I both thought it was so funny!

The 27th was a recovery day for us and our house... and then the big Birthday was upon us! Nora turned 2 on the 28th. Again, she didn't understand why this day was a big deal, but as soon as Brett played the Beatles' birthday song ("You say it's your Birthday!") she went nuts! She listened to that song ALL day and danced like a maniac every time. I have a video of her dancing in the highchair the first few times she heard it at breakfast... if I can, I'll post it on here. The rest of the day was pretty normal (with breaks for more birthday song dancing), and then a bunch of people came over for dinner to help celebrate: Grandma and Grandpa Yavello, Grandma and Grandpa Longton, Great Grand-pa Riggs, Brett's Aunt Pam, Uncle Warren, and cousin Josh, Great-Aunt Judy, Aunt Genevieve, Aunt Clare, Uncle Andy, and our friends Angie & Tom and their boys Ethan & Cameron (little newbie! He arrived Dec 6th!). Nora had an absolute blast, and played hostess for a little while serving pretzels to our guests (but not before taste testing each one by taking one bite out of it first). She got even MORE presents, each of them so thoughtful and generous. A standout for entertainment value was one of the last she opened (so she was pretty wound up)... it was a Tickle-Me Elmo. Once she recognized his laugh and realized who was in the box, she was a little worried and wanted to get him out right away ("Help! Help!"). Once she saw him do his thing, she laughed almost as hard as he does! It was fun for the adults to see her have so much fun with this laughing toy! Amazingly, at the end of that big night of birthday fun, she went straight to bed without complaint, and slept right through the night.

losing focus...

Nora has embraced all the big-girl-ness that comes with being two. A few weeks ago she started counting up to nine with pretty decent regularity. Today, she spelled Nora for me once I got her started with the "N." She is talking more and more and will recount stories for us one to three words at a time, much to her own amusement!

I think the remainder of Brett's vacation (through New Year's Day) will be pretty low key and relaxing. Brett finally had a chance to get us down to the Wayne County Festival of Lights on Hines Drive, and was right... Nora loved it. We're having a great time just hanging out with each other and with our extended family while people have been in town. With the hustle of the days before Christmas, we never did get Christmas cards out, so here are our wishes to you... Merry Christmas, and a very, very happy new year!

Love,

Sarah, Brett and Nora

You're still here? Wow, a gold star to you... this was a very long post. Since you've been so loyal and persistant, here's a surprise for you. It turns out 2008 will be a year of adding on for the Huffmans:

The funny story I mentioned above about the half hour before we got to Christmas Mass was that it turns out my mom, Genny and Clare have all suspected that someone new was on the way for a little while now. They were comparing notes ("did Sarah drink at Thanksgiving?" "I saw pre-natal vitamins at her house!") and yet, there was still no announcement. When I left Nora upstairs at my parents' house with Genny and Clare, they pounced, and asked her "is Mommy going to have a baby?" (way to pump the 2 year old for information, figuring she was the weakest link!) For once, Nora did NOT spill the beans... she said "No." So later, when all the present opening was almost over, we gave my parents a card signed "Sarah, Brett, Nora, and Someone New." My mom didn't notice it right away, so I asked "did you see who signed the card?" As she lifted the card to look at it again, Genny and Clare jumped up out of their seats and each yelled "I KNEW IT!!!!!"

So the info we have so far: this little person should be here sometime in mid-July. So far, everything has gone very well. I've been feeling queasy and very tired (pretty typical) and we've taken that to be (hopefully) a good sign since I felt the same way when I was pregnant with Nora. She is starting to learn that we have a new baby coming to our house, but I seriously doubt she understands exactly what that means! We were already planning to move Nora to a "big girl" room this year... this pretty much confirms it. We would certainly appreciate any and all prayers for a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby!

Long time, no post

We have a technical problem here at the Huffman house that has contributed to my hiatus from blogging... our computer is in the basement, and it is freezing down here in the winter! But tonight I'm armed with a fabulous fringed fleece blanket of Nora's and will try to get at least a mini-update posted.

The first weekend in November, Brett's Aunt Pam and Uncle Warren brought his Grand-pa Riggs over for a visit on their way back to Kalamazoo from Brett's cousin's football game in Ohio. We had a really nice visit and Nora really warmed up to Grand-pa Riggs!

With the colder weather here we're still trying to get outside, but haven't been very consistent. Nora was initially highly resistant to bundling up, but is getting into it more now. She learned how to say "mitten," which somehow translates into her being more willing to wear them. And she has this fabulous snowman hat. She gets compliments on it all the time and in a pinch, I can use it as a puppet to keep her entertained, so she's willing to wear the hat, too.

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. The weekend before we had visits from Lon and Diane (Grandma and Grandpa Huffman), Beth and Chris (Grandma and Grandpa Longton), Aunt Marilyn and Di, and Nora's Uncle Casey! In there we had a birthday dinner for Brett so that his birthday wouldn't get lost in the turkey-day shuffle. That week Ethan came over to play a few times, and did great with us until Brett showed up! He must have just been surprised to see Brett come into the house and was very nervous about it, until we all sat down to eat something. Brett won Ethan over by pretending to noisily gobble up dried cherries while Nora panicked that her treats were being eaten by her dad! Thanksgiving morning Brett and Genny braved the chill and went downtown to run the turkey trot. That night we had dinner with the Yavello crew, where Genny and Clare tried to teach Nora how to hang a spoon on her nose. She did a pretty good job of getting it to dangle from her lips instead.

The day after Thanksgiving we took Nora to see her doctor because she had a little rattle in her chest, and she got a prescription for Amoxicillin (sp?) You remember it... it's the pink stuff. My friend Amy came over for a great visit that weekend and asked for a sniff of it, just for the memories... I did the same thing! Happily, Nora thought it was "yummy" and took her dosages all ten days with great gusto. She also keeps reminding me of Amy's visit, because Amy brought a butterfly magnet ("Pretty!") and a cupcake ("Cake? Yummy!")

We put up our Christmas tree last weekend... yes, it's the fakie. We've already gotten the cold shoulder from our real-tree-enthusiast friends and family, but man, was that easy! Nora was thrilled about the whole event before she could even tell we were going to have a tree in our living room. As Brett unloaded the box she kept saying "Wooo! Wooo! Wooo!" Once the tree was assembled and the lights turned on, it was almost too much for her! We waited a day to put up the decorations so that she wouldn't blow a circuit. They are, of course, a giant hit with her, and we've instituted the "one finger" rule. She's allowed to touch the ornaments, but with one finger only... when it works, it keeps her from grabbing the ornaments.

Otherwise, we've been filling our time with Christmas preparations and general silliness around the house. Nora has one of those Hallmark singing penguin things from last year, and calls it her radio. I already replaced the batteries once... we hear the song A LOT. But it's great because she makes up new dances to go along with it all the time! She also has been practicing "sneaking," which just involves walking with her knees half bent so she's sort of crouched down, and is trying out more new words all the time. We color with her crayons all the time, you should see her artwork in a gallery near you soon. Her output is tremendous.

Yellow seems to be her favorite color, or at least her favorite color to say. She's getting better with a few other colors. On the color note, she knows that red means "stop" and green means "Go Go GO!!!"

At dinner, we never know if she's going to eat or refuse ("No... table" is her new answer when dinner just doesn't look like anything she wants on her tray). But she's also working on perfecting the art of the dinner mustache. She's tried it with anything from a fork to a noodle, but has had the most success with the humble green bean:

Thanks for checking in. I'll try to get a video of her dancing with her radio (she can be camera-shy, so it's tough), and one of her practicing the sign of the cross... it's getting pretty good! For some reason, though, when we get to the shoulder touches for "Holy" and "Spirit," she wants to reach around to touch her shoulder blades or the back of her neck! Still, I give her points for trying.

"Thanks for checking out my website... YEEEOWWWW!"

Introducing Marissa

Here she is... little Marissa! My Aunt and Uncle are in Guatemala right now and were able to get her yesterday. They posted some pictures of Marissa on their own blog... she's a smiley little lady! Nora is already fascinated with Marissa, giving the computer screen kisses. When I asked her this morning if she wanted to see more pictures of Baby Marissa, Nora reminded me that she was sleeping (as she was in the first picture we saw of her).

GREAT NEWS!!!

I just checked my e-mail and saw a message from my Uncle John... they got the call they've been waiting for! He and his wife Ellen are going to Guatemala this weekend to pick up their little girl, Marissa! Say it with me, now -- HALLELUJAH!!! We've been praying for the adoption paperwork to be processed quickly, and now ask you to join us in praying that everything goes as quickly and smoothly as possible finishing the last of the arrangements so they can bring her home by the end of the week. She has two brothers at home who, I'm sure, will be anxiously waiting to meet her. Thanks to all who have prayed for this family so far.

Halloweenie

Happy Halloween! Finally, weeks of pumpkin and ghost excitement culminate in the big day... and Nora cried. She liked being a cat. She was fascinated with the cat nose I drew on her, as well as the whiskers. She loved eating pizza for dinner (which she calls "baht-ass" for some reason). She was pumped about going outside for a walk after we ate. But when it came to walking up to people's houses, no matter that these were all friendly neighbors she sees fairly regularly -- WITH TREATS -- she wanted no part of it! We only went to four houses total... the fourth only after a long break on our own porch. Once the trauma of trick-or-treating was over, she got a huge kick out of hanging out on our porch and handing out candy to the other trick-or-treaters. She also practiced her halloween laugh -- a pretty respectable "HOO HA Ha Ha Haaaaah." We ended the night on a high note, with a halloween tattoo of a pumpkin, a bat and stars on her forearm, Popeye-style. She promptly learned the word "tattoo," fell in love with her ink, and cried when her pjs covered it up. We had to give the tattoo a kiss good night, then tell her it was going to sleep and would see her in the morning to get her to go to bed. Here are the pictures:

I also have some catching-up to do... here are pictures of Nora and Ethan with the dads at the Pumpkin Carving Party (a huge success and overall good time!), Nora at the Marathon with her peeps (and their medals), at the Detroit Zoo with me and my Aunt Judy in the butterfly house, enjoying tea and jammies after a sleepover at Grandma & Grandpa Y's, doing a shake-shake-shake kind of dance on my birthday, and sporting a hot new look for fall -- the purse/hat. It's all the rage. The zipper must be worn in the front, otherwise, don't bother. :)