Nora – 26 Months

 

Weight: Still holding strong at 27.5 pounds

 

Length: 26 inches and getting taller everyday!

 

Clothing Size: Mostly 3T and size 5/6 diapers

 

Eats and Treats: Nora continues to LOVE food. Her list of favorites include: BBQ chicken, strawberries, grapes, yogurt, bell peppers, peas and asparagus. Halloween brought a big bucket of candy to our house and it seems like suckers have won her little heart over. She will also drink just about anything we give her, but she has found a new love during the cold weather in hot chocolate. The funny thing about Nora, is that she doesn’t like any of her food or drink hot, it has to be barely warm or cold. We love watching her blow on her food, even if it’s freezing cold ice cream 🙂 Her favorite snacks are fruit snacks and Gold Fish.

 

Sleep: Daylight Savings Time was actually good to us this year. Nora goes to bed between 8-8:30 every night and sleeps until 8:30-9 the next morning. She loves having (multiple) books read to her before she goes to sleep and must have no less than 10 stuffed animals tucked in beside her. The past few weeks, Nora has been having “bad dreams.” She hasn’t had any more since we stopped letting her watch Jake and the Neverland Pirates, as her dreams were about Captain Hook, so I am hoping we are past those scary nights. Poor little dear, it was so sad.

 

Play: Nora goes 24/7. She loves to play “apple pie” (aka playing kitchen and baking pies and tea) and loves to serve us all kinds of wonderful dishes that she cooks up. She loves to play outside, especially at the park. She has finally started to enjoy drawing and crafts in a new way. I draw her lots of outlines of pictures, mostly of pumpkins and birds, and she then colors them and puts stickers all over them. She has also recently enjoyed me cutting out different shapes and her coloring them and telling me what they are. Nora continues to enjoy trains, gives us “doctor’s check ups” and plays with her dolls and stuffed animals. She has the BIGGEST imagination and I LOVE watching her mind expand everyday.

 

General Learning: We have a little song bird on our hands folks, she loves singing songs (even on key, thanks to her Daddy’s genes!) and doing actions along with them. Her favorite song is still “Happy Day” and we sing it all the time. She can count to 20 and is well on her way to knowing all of her ABC’s. Nora loves to point out shapes and colors wherever we go and loves it when she can see a rainbow in the sky and start shouting out the colors. It’s truly fascinating watching her learn.

 

Adjusting to Andersyn: Nora really hasn’t acted out towards Andi in a negative way. She gets more frustrated when Andi screams (which is a lot) and will try and scream or fake cry above her. Nora loves to give her doctor check ups with her doctor’s kit, bring her toys and blankets and lay on her play mat and dangle toys above her head. Just yesterday, Nora was playing peek-a-boo with Andersyn and she was smiling and cooing back at her. It warmed my heart so much, I started crying. Nora is really sensitive and walked over and patted my back and said, “Don’t cry Mommy. Be happy.” Such a sweet girl. I think Nora and Andi are going to grow up to be great friends.

 

Hard Stuff: Every kid has hard moments in life. The past two months have mainly been hard for Nora not having her Daddy around and having to share me all the time – that is a HUGE adjustment! But things have gotten SO much better! Nora’s favorite word right now is, “No!” and she sure knows how to throw a tantrum. The way that we have been working through these tantrums is something new for us. I found myself getting frustrated and raising my voice at her a lot, which is unlike me and she wasn’t responding to it at all; it actually made things so much worse. So I have been trying a new approach of calmly talking to her and combining that with physical touch. Whenever we are working through a tantrum, I am either holding her hand, having her sitting on my lap or rubbing her back. She really responds to the physical contact, and I think that it gives it a much gentler approach to disciplining her, so she reacts totally differently. Spanking is a last resort, and we usually don’t have to go there very often (whew!).

 

We continue to be SO in love with our sweet little girl. She is absolutely precious, keeps us on our toes and makes us hysterically laugh with every little thing she does. She is so independent and stubborn, yet has the most compassionate little heart and is so attentive to people’s emotions and body language. I think the thing that gets me the most right now is when she says, “Mommy, please come play.” She says it, literally, all day long. It shows her desire to be close to me; to have a relationship with her Mommy and for me to be a part of her day. It’s something I have always longed for, her wanting friendship with me. And no matter how tired I am, I love spending my days playing on the floor with her, usually with her baby sister in tow.  What an awesome thing to say that my daughter is my little best friend. Love you, sweet Nora Sue!