The six-month old: Halfy Birthday!

Well, it's time I did the bloggy thing again. Nora turned 0.5 on Wednesday. A party was not had, but we at least acknowledged it.

Nora has two teeth, probably about a month faster than Lily got them. She's doing  other things faster too, like growing and stuff. She has loads of fun in her exersaucer, which Lily was too small for forever.

The girls sure do love each other. If Nora is busy hollering we can yell at Lily to babysit her sister, and she happily proceeds to read Nora a book or otherwise entertain her.

Lily last used her bib in June. Yeah, we're nitpicky parents who hate a mess (well, more me). I suppose it was time we let go. So, the bib went straight onto Nora!

Hanging with mom.

Lily has two years of "school" under her belt, which she really enjoyed. Now it's off to grade one, which she seems to be adjusting to well enough.

Off the bus on the last day of kindergarten.

Lily wrote a note to her teachers and her bus driver. Here's the bus driver one:

Off to real school -- uniform and all!

It's a long time ago, but early in the summer Lily finished her ballet classes and had a recital. Fortunately this ballet school didn't charge an arm and a leg for the recital costume. Here's a link to the video of her performance. She was so dolled up I had trouble picking her out.

Trampoline fairy

Early in the summer we said goodbye to our local MP buddy again. He treated a bunch of us to a private Parliament tour. Here's Lily in the Speaker's chair. (Career track?)

Spring update

I'm afraid I'm not taking nearly as many photos of Nora as I did of Lily as a baby. Second children, eh? But I've scrounged up one or two. And added other topics as filler. You're welcome.

Nora is quite a happy baby and for the most part quite pleasant to lug around. Other than the fact that she's built like a tank and I now suffer from pulled back and shoulder muscles! A previous post showed her as a scrawny kid. Not any more! At 3 months, she's 15 pounds and looks quite the opposite of Lily at that age. Lily didn't hit 15 pounds till she was 8 months.

Petite Lily at 3 months (top) and Nora (bottom).

We're applying for Nora's passport. As expected, it's not easy to get a photo of a baby at this age. Since Costco won't do passport photos for babies this young, we tried CAA. The first attempt was rejected by the passport office because Nora's big ol' jowls created too much of a shadow. (Obviously that would make her a security risk on any flight!) So back we went for another try. I gotta say, these CAA folks are a dedicated bunch. We had a whole team of them trying to create that perfect photo of our quite content kid.

Lily is being a wonderful big sister and loves Nora to bits. She can't wait for Nora to be old enough to do stuff, but in the meantime there are other friends...

Being a weirdo all by herself passes the time quite well too.

I went and bought a trailer recently. Took a while to arrive, but finally the day came.

What's this now?

I ordered it from out of province, and it landed on the other side of town, so I took the car to grab my loot. The shocks didn't like it much, but I got it home. Oh, and stopped by the motor vehicle branch thing on the way home. Denied due to unacceptable paperwork of course.

I wanted a folding trailer, and I bought this thing from afar because it was galvanized and had a greater capacity than most. The deal I found happened to be in Saskatchewan.

Some effort later, tada! Nice and compact, to be tucked away nicely when not in use.

Unfortunately, it wasn't too useful as is, so I bought some lumber (the car roof had to suffice, since the trailer wasn't registered yet) and built it some more.

It took two more trips to the motor vehicle office to finally get it registered, but it's done(ish) now. This trailer will see lots of dirt and mulch and camping trips. I even bought a nice custom-sized tarp for it. The Corolla may just revolt, seeing her usefulness dwindle by the day. Speaking of...

We bought a new car. I was all gonna pick out my Suburban when we discovered Carrie could barely lift the baby seat into the back of the thing. This also disqualified pickup trucks, so here's our new Subaru Outback. New to us... only 9 years old!

So yeah, I don't know what the Corolla did to her overnight... pulled a Herbie or something, but a mere 22 hours after we bought the Outback, it pretty much stranded Carrie somewhere in town. Sigh... all our due diligence and then this? Anyhow, our dealership is super amazing and got it all sorted so we are happy again.

Carrie found a set of six old dining chairs on Kijiji for next to nothing, so her hobby these days is refinishing these babies. Unlike our current old fashioned set, these ones are very solid and will look very nice in our dining room one day.

Happy summer! Oh and don't forget... the days will be getting shorter very soon. Yay!

Welcoming Nora Estelle

Thank you God!

Proud big sister

Sleeping baby = happy parents

Practising the grumpy look.

Little miss scrawny legs has a conniption as soon as a button opens when we change her.

Post

Hmm, it's March and no sign of life on this blog. A few days yet and that should change. In the meantime, Lily's taken to writing. A lot. Here's a sample of the unsolicited love notes she likes to share. (Use your phonetic imagination.)

And a rather dated photo from her ballet recital day last year. Yes,I'm terrible at posting stuff in a timely manner.