Today Lauren turns 27.

Also, today is the first birthday for our sweet little niece (and Nora’s cousin) Faith! They’re celebrating over here.

She’s just about mastered the first stage of crawling. Nora presents: The Army Crawl.

Nora is almost 8 months now. Ridiculous.

Here’s some of the things she’s doing now:

She whispers “dadadada” very quietly to herself. We’ve decided that she’s practicing because she knows the first Dada needs to be delivered well. We’re all planning on it being a big moment.

She has an impeccable ability to know exactly which objects around her are within reach. I have to clear a wide circle before we begin any meals or else I’ll be cleaning sweet potato smudges off everything she touched.

Any time she’s playing on the floor and is suddenly quiet, she’s definitely getting into something she shouldn’t be. Such as the printer. Which, by the way, has an extendable paper tray. I did not know that until she extended it.

She pitched her first fit after a two year old friend took the empty lint brush roller from her. (Despite being surrounded by actual toys.) She was very, very upset. Hunched shoulders, balled up fists, wailing- the works.

She gives “kisses” when requested. She puts an open mouth on your cheek and breaths loudly.

Still no crawling, but she can roll herself around and will eventually end up where she wanted to be.

Josh is recovering from a cold and anytime he sneezed, coughed, or cleared his throat, she burst into tears. This was happening several times every hour. It got to the point where Josh was throwing out neck muscles in attempts to muffle his sounds.

She’s showing a new interest in books beyond chewing the corners. (Although she still does that.) Now she yells at the pages. Not sure what to make of this one.

Her favorite game is knocking over towers of blocks. She starts flapping her arms in excitement as soon as she sees one going up. She grunts in frustration if you hold her back while you finish a particularly tall tower.

As she falls asleep, she rolls her left foot from side to side. The more tired she is and the more desperate to sleep, the faster her foot moves.

When she thinks something is funny, she’ll look at you with a big smile to make sure you’re in on the joke.

She bobs her head like she’s rocking out. Or agreeing wholeheartedly.

Nora usually eats apples with no problem. But the other day, for who knows what reason, she was firmly anti-apple.

Poor Remy hasn’t gotten much FSI time lately. But fear not, he is still loved. Especially by Nora. He and she are BFF. Anytime Nora is playing on the floor, Remy’s right there. Planning a way to get close enough to launch a lickfest all over her face and hands. I’ll turn my back for one minute, pick Nora up, go to kiss her cheek and smell doggy-slobber on her face.

He’s a great, great “baby dog.” Very gentle, allows Nora to pull out clumps of fur, and doesn’t seem to be all that jealous. If anything, he’s happy for the new playmate. He doesn’t seem to grasp her abilities though. He continues to drop his tennis ball at her feet and has not given up that one of these times she’ll pick it up and throw it for him. Any day now.

Here’s a random story from this past week that I hope you enjoy.

A few nights ago, I woke up and felt the bed shaking. My first thought is that we were having another earthquake. That didn’t seem to pan out since nothing else seemed to be moving. My second thought was that Josh was moving around in his quasi-awake state. (It’s been known to happen. Remember the air guitar incident?) But no, he was fast asleep. I rolled over to check on my other side and there was a brown face locked on mine.

Of course, I gasped even as I identified that it was Remy. He was staring at me with his front paws shaking on the bed. And right then, I knew exactly what was going on. I dragged myself out of the bed, stumbled into the living room, found my purse, dug around for my cell phone, crawled under the desk to get the phone charger, plugged it in, and dove back into bed.

Because Remy’s greatest terror on this earth is the sound my phone makes when it’s dying. This is the fourth or fifth time he has done this. The alert scares him so much, he comes into our room, walks around to my side, and just waits for me to wake up. He doesn’t bark, he doesn’t paw at me, he simply trembles with an agonizing fear until I realize he’s there.

The very first time this happened, our door was shut. He jumped against it, ran his nails down it, and leaned against it until we finally let him in. He circled the bed a few times, antsy and anxious. We had watched a suspenseful movie that night, and I naively assumed that he sensed I was still tense and was eager to comfort me. He had no idea what caused the sound he found so terrifying and had no way of knowing how to make it stop.

We have both become wiser.

I’m still trying to decide if this story shows how intelligent he is, or if it reveals that he’s a little nonsensical. On one hand, he shows some problem solving that he knows how to make the noise stop. On the other hand—why on earth is he so petrified of the sound of a phone battery dying?