Dear Nora,
Happy Half-Birthday, my little one! You are six months old today.
Time is flying. All parents say that when it comes to raising their kids, but it’s just so… true. I can’t believe it was six months ago that you were born (and I’d like you to know that my tailbone is FINALLY completely healed, thankyouverymuch).
The word of the month is ATTITUDE. You’ve got one. I have no idea where you would get that from, as your dad is a pretty mellow guy, and it’s not like I have an attitude about anything. Nope. Not me.
Anyway, I’ve always described you as a laidback and sweet baby, and it’s not that I’ve been a liar. But I guess you’ve always liked to do certain things your way, and it’s become very obvious in certain situations this month. On the weeknights, when we get home from work and daycare, you really like to be held. If we put you down, WATCH OUT. You scream your little head off. And while it’s never pleasant to hear you cry, we can’t help but laugh a little bit, because the scream is so clearly a pissed off scream. You’re not in distress. You’re not in pain. You are simply saying, “HEY! I DO NOT LIKE THIS ARRANGEMENT!! PICK ME UP!! PICK ME UP NOW!!!!” This is made even clearer because of the way you are able to turn it on and off. If we start to walk toward you, you immediately stop crying. If you become distracted by a toy, you immediately stop crying. You are such a stinker.
Overall, you’ve continued to be a good sleeper this month, but you’ve changed things up a little. Sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night or very early morning just to “talk” to yourself. Other times you cry until we come in and put your pacifier back in and help you turn back onto your stomach. If it happens, it’s usually only once a night, so still, we cannot complain one bit. When you wake up in the mornings, you’ll usually coo and “play” happily in your crib for quite some time before we come to get you.
The biggest milestone this month has been FOOD! You’ve started solids. Your pediatrician recommended that we start you on a little baby cereal sometime between five and six months old. At first, we tried to give you a little oatmeal, but you were not thrilled with it. After a few tries, I thought maybe you would enjoy something with a little more flavor, so we began to mix in some homemade baby foods—sweet potatoes, pears, or bananas. We never pushed you; we were just consistent, offering you a little food every night. Eventually, you started taking bites—sweet potatoes were your initial favorite. Bananas were OK, and with pears, you would make a hilarious “tart” face. But at your best, you would still only take maybe 5-6 bites.
Then, last weekend, it all “clicked” for you. Starting with breakfast on Saturday morning (bananas with oatmeal), you polished off the whole bowl. You’ve been a champion eater ever since. Now, you not only love sweet potatoes, but you seem to love pears, bananas, and butternut squash, too. You’ve also eaten avocado, but while you’ll finish it, you don’t seem to enjoy it as much as the others. I can’t wait to make other foods for you to try. It has been a new adventure!
These days, it is easy to see when you are excited. You wave your arms wildly, kick your legs, and coo or squeal. Quite simply, it is adorable. You have this thing you do with your right arm in particular; you lock it at the elbow so it is perfectly straight, and you move it up and down repeatedly. It is so funny to watch you gain control of all of your movements. You grab things with purpose. You rub your eyes when you are tired.
Daddy and I swear that you give us open-mouth kisses. You have to be in the right mood, but we’ll say, “Nora, give me a kiss!” and pucker up, and you lean in and put your mouth on our puckered lips. We LOVE this and cannot wait until you do it “for real.”
At daycare, you and your playmate, Amelia (she is your age—just a few weeks younger) have discovered each other. Mary says that you stare at each other and interact. You grab at each other, touch each other. She says it is just the cutest thing. I’m so glad that you’ll have someone to grow up with at daycare. Knowing that you’ll get to share your life with a little “friend” makes it just a tiny bit easier to leave you there every day.
We won’t know what you weigh until Monday, but I would guess you’re maybe around 13 lbs.? You are wearing 3-6 months clothes, most of which are still big on you. In fact, I just packed up your 0-3 month stuff this month, because up until a few weeks ago, you were actually still able to wear most of them. We went shopping for some spring/summer clothing for you, and it was difficult to decide which size you would be wearing. It’s hard to imagine you’ll ever even fit into the 6-9 month stuff, but I know you will.
I have a feeling you are going to sprout your first tooth this month, but it’s just a guess. It looks to me like your lower gums are getting a little bit white in color, like your teeth are starting to push to the surface. You are also chewing on things and like to put everything in your mouth, and drooling, although it’s not at the point where it’s excessive. I guess only time will tell!
Just when we think you couldn’t possibly get more fun, you do. So I guess that means that with month #7, we’re in for the best one yet!
I love you every minute of every day.
XOXO
Mommy
I’ve never been a big “believer” in organic foods.
In reading about them, I kept turning my back on organic for a few reasons:
1) It’s always been my understanding that the word “organic” is largely unregulated, meaning that just about anyone can choose to put it on their packaging. It’s a “buzz word”–a trend–that people are buying into. Therefore, food manufacturers and suppliers are all trying to compete in this market, and who knows what kind of shenanigans they’re pulling in order to do so.
2) Because of the whole unregulated factor, I’m distrustful. How do you really know something is organic? For instance, when I’m in my grocery store, and I see organic pears, they look the same as regular pears. They have an organic sticker on them, but how do I really know? Someone could just be slapping an organic sticker on a piece of regular ol’ fruit and charging me a premium for it. I mean, seriously. How do you know?
3) The cost. For crying out loud, THE COST. A regular gallon of milk = $1.89. An organic gallon of milk = $5.99. A quart of regular strawberries (in season) = $1.50. A quart of organic strawberries (in season) = $5.99. I really don’t know what else to say about that, except OUCH.
4) Related to the cost, it’s like I almost can’t bring myself to buy organic because I’m just against the principle of the whole thing. If organic farming is that much better for all of us, WHY ISN’T IT THE STANDARD? If that’s truly the case, don’t even offer me tainted, hormone-laced milk for $1.89. Honestly. And I know we’re in America and it’s all about being able to make our own choices, but DAMN. If we don’t make it cheaper for people to eat healthy in this country, we are never going to combat the issues we have with our healthcare system. Period.
I will totally admit to not being very educated on this subject. That’s kind of the point of this post. I’ve willingly kept myself in the dark about a lot of this stuff, because truthfully, there is part of me that just doesn’t even want to know. To date, I have refused to watch Food Inc. because LA-LA-LA-LA! I’d rather stay here in my little bubble where I do not have to think about how the “healthy” food I’m eating is actually poisoning me.
So, as I said, I’ve never been a big believer in organics.
But then I had Nora.
And now I’m terrified of hormones and pesticides and antibiotics in food. I guess it’s the parental line of thinking that is kicking in–I want the best for my baby. I want her to be healthy. I don’t want her to start puberty at the age of 8. I’m interested in knowing why there seems to be this huge increase in the prevalence of cancer, and I want to do my part to FIX it.
Lately, I’ve found myself in the organic sections at the grocery store. I’ve found myself prioritizing, figuring out which organic things we can afford, and which we’ll have to do without. I’ve been reading up on the “Dirty Dozen” and “Clean 15.” I’ve been talking to my coworker (a fellow mommy) about the types of organic snack foods she feeds her kids.
Have I made a complete lifestyle change? No. At least not yet. Because I’m still struggling to see how it will be possible with the sky-high prices of organic foods. But I’m interested to check out our local farmer’s markets this summer to see what kind of organic treasures we can uncover.
What say you, readers? Are organics a must in your house, or do you still believe it’s all hype? Does anyone have any great resources they would recommend for me (and others) to get better educated on the subject?
P.S. For those who read blogs through a reader of some sort, you are probably seeing this post show up twice. Sorry about that, but I was having some problems with my blog feed. I deleted the duplicate post, so if you try to click through to the blog using the second link, it will likely take you to a page that says “Page Not Found.” However, if you try the second link, you should be able to click through like normal. I apologize for any inconvenience.
Short on the sides + long on the top = CRAZY CUTENESS.
As an added bonus, when we take the ponytail out at night, it looks like this:
She looks like Ace Ventura.
We had dinner with my family tonight, and Hunter was (as always) obsessed with Nora. The kid loves babies; it’s adorable. He points to her eyes and says “eye!” and points to her pacifier and says “baby binky!” and pinches her little nose between his thumb and forefinger and says “honk honk!” It’s too cute.
He also doles out a healthy number of smooches, complete with long, drawn-out “MWAAAAH!” sounds.
For some of the kisses, he even put his hands on the sides of her face to pull her toward him. *LOVE*
Or something.
We didn’t get the house.
As some of you may have seen on Twitter, we put in an offer on Tuesday. After much debate, we decided to go in with a contingent offer at almost full list price. Although we qualify to be able to carry mortgages on both our current home and a new one, we are not keen on the idea of having to pay two at the same time. We can do it, we just don’t want to do it. Still, the seller’s realtor hinted that they would not be happy with a contingent offer, so we considered going in noncontingent… but ultimately just couldn’t do it. As much as we love the house, it was just not worth the risk right now.
As we discussed with each other and our realtor, we all figured that it didn’t make any sense for the seller to ignore our contingent offer. They don’t have any other offers on the table right now, so why not look at and deal with a contingency? Even if they accept it, they still have the right to continue to market the house to noncontingent buyers, and should they receive a noncontingent offer during our contingency period, they have a right to “bump” our offer (at which time we would also have the right to remove our contingency). Seems like a win-win situation for them, right?
Well, it would be for sellers with a brain. Apparently, this seller isn’t one of those.
Less than an hour after submitting our offer, we received word that they had rejected it. “They loved everything about it,” we were told. “Except the contingency.” The sellers said that they couldn’t emotionally handle a contingent offer. I guess that’s their prerogative, but…
Whatever.
We were really disappointed. Our realtor was downright pissed. She says that they are ignoring the whole purpose of the contingency system, and she thinks that their realtor is being irresponsible with her advice to her sellers.
Now, as much as it pains us to do so, we are attempting to move on. We’ve kept our eyes on the listings, and we actually went to see another house yesterday, but we found ourselves comparing it to the one that we lost. It’s hard to believe that anything will ever pop up that was as good a deal and in as good condition as that one was. It’s a real bummer.
Of course, we could change our minds and go back to them with a noncontingent offer and still get the house. But, although it is very likely that we WILL sell our current home before we would be in a situation in which we have to pay two mortgages, it’s a very hard pill to swallow. Right now, our only glimmer of hope is that perhaps we will get someone in here that will love our place and we’ll get a nice noncontingent offer of our own that will put us in a position to be able to go back and make a (substantially less risky) noncontingent offer on the house WE want–but obviously, all of this would need to happen before someone else puts an offer on the house we want. *sigh* We had a showing yesterday (they won’t be making an offer), and we have another scheduled for tomorrow (pleasepleaseplease).
I’m trying to keep the faith that things will work out like they are supposed to, but I’m not going to lie: It’s hard.
About
I'm Heather. I'm 33 and have been married to Michael for seven years. Together, we have two beautiful little girls we love more than anything, and a miniature dachshund who drives us crazy. I'm a full-time working mom who has very little time for my own "stuff" these days, like home improvement, cooking/baking, cake decorating, and photography. Despite the team not making the playoffs since 1999, I'm STILL a Buffalo Bills fan, which I think speaks to my loyalty AND sense of humor. I can't wait to pick up the pace with travel again some day... you know, when we're done being ruled by tiny fists. Welcome to my blog.
