It all started early this morning around 6 am. Quinn was crying for an early breakfast. After she ate, I put her back in her crib and came back to my bed. Not five minutes after I got back in, I heard her coughing over the monitor. I gave her a few minutes and went to check on her after she started crying.

She was sitting up in bed and her face seemed awfully reflective in the dim light of the hallway nightlight. Switching on her overhead light, all I saw was wetness all over her face. As my eyes focused a bit better I saw it was a combination of snot (to be expected, she’s getting over a cold), tears, and spit up. A lot of spit up. I actually blame her cold — I think she gagged on some of her sinus drainage. (Stop me if I start getting gross and descriptive, ‘kay?) It was all over her hair, the right side of her pajamas, and in a huge puddle in her bed. Trying not to panic that she’d barely missed choking on her own spit up, I started cleaning her up and changing her sheets. She was super perky for some reason. I think she thought it was time to play.

I convinced her to go back to bed and thought perhaps I could squeeze a few more minutes of rest in. But no sooner did I get back in my bed than I heard Nora get out of hers. Ah well, it was pretty much time to get Nora and Josh off to church anyway. We had already decided Quinn and I would hunker down at home.

After seeing them off, Quinny and I went back to sleep until 10! It was amazing. I felt so relaxed and rested.

It was not to last. I should also mention that before this afternoon, her cold was my main concern. I checked on her at night and during her naps to make sure she didn’t have a fever or was in any other general discomfort. Hmmph. Little did I know…

Quinn and I hung out downstairs until she was ready for her second nap. I laid her down and she seemed all snug and cozy in her little crib. Josh had dropped Nora off and headed back out. I was giving Nora a snack while making Christmas plans with my mom over the phone when I heard Quinn wake up and start fussing. She was pretty quiet about it, so I waited a few minutes to see if she was going to go back to sleep. She started crying a little harder so I headed up the stairs calling, “I’m coming, Quinny!” I opened the door and saw an empty crib.

You read that correctly.

My 8 month old was sitting on the floor next to her crib. Just sitting there. Not really crying, just sitting there. Next to her crib. Not in it. Next to it. I’m pretty sure it was my cry of “QUINNY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” that made her wail. She seemed fine and calmed down the moment I picked her up. I, however, was completely unnerved. Should she be crying? Was she in shock? What happened??? I searched for bruises or scrapes or some sort of injury. I couldn’t think very clearly and wasn’t sure I would be able to reach Josh so I called my mom back in a slight panic.

“Quinn fell out of her crib!”

“Wait, what?”

Exactly, Mom. EXACTLY!

This made no sense. I ended up making my mom come over to help me observe her behavior and watch for any warning signs. Which was trickier than it should have been because, after all, she was getting over a bad cold and wasn’t quite back to her normal self anyway. So we were looking for “normal, not normal, a cold but getting over it” behavior.

I didn’t trust myself at this point. How on earth did she fall out? I felt so guilty and terrible but had seriously not seen this one coming. She has never (before now) pulled herself up to stand as far as I know. Once I walked in to see her holding onto the bars resting on her knees. But never standing, let alone climbing over a railing!(Horrible!) I hadn’t heard a thump or anything. Granted, I had been on the phone, but that’s the kind of noise that would usually send Remy into a tizzy. But he had been calm the entire time, too. Way to go, Remy. We’ve trained him too well to be quiet during naps.

The wonderful, amazing, relieving news is that she seems fine. She even seems to be feeling better from her cold bug.

Nora took the news in stride and calmly told Mom during her observation visit, “Quinny fell out of her crib.” No big deal. I must have done too good a job playing it cool in front of her.

Josh came home, gave her a huge hug and immediately lowered her mattress.

Me—I’m ready for bed.

A few weeks ago, we rolled up our sleeves to attempt Potty Training for a second time. We talked some different strategies and approaches and asked for lots of input. One idea we heard was to have a toy at the toy store that we would go and visit. But we couldn’t take the toy home until Nora was using the potty.

So we took Nora to Target (Is there any other store?) and found a Belle doll. We explained before we even set foot in the store that Belle would NOT becoming home today. We were just going for a visit. So we let her see it, hold the box a moment, and then went home. And stayed home for several days. We put a picture of the doll on the wall and kept pointing to it. “Don’t you want the Belle doll?!?!?” We even had a whole story about how Belle had to use the potties in her castle. Princesses have to live in clean, dry castles and can’t have wet floors. Desperate.

Nora slowly earned pink sticker after pink sticker. One evening around 6:30pm, she earned the last one. Despite the fact that it was nearing bedtime for her and Quinn, we immediately packed everyone up and shipped out to Target.

Heading into the store…

At the end where she’s saying, “Run, run!” it sounds like she was super excited and eager to get into the store. While that was true, it was more because she was very nervous that an approaching car was getting too close for comfort. While I applaud her caution, I promise it was plenty far enough away.

As you can tell, Nora was thrilled to be out of the house. She’d been quarantined for almost a week. FREEDOM IN THE WIDE, WHITE AISLES OF TARGET!!!!!

To the Pink Aisle!

At last!

That night, she proudly tucked Belle in next to her. Under the covers and everything. Best friends.

Of course, after all that, Belle has been taking a nap for a long, long time (as in days) in a doll bed in the playroom . . . I can’t resist- Who does she think she is, Sleeping Beauty? Ba dum ding!

So we went to a number of weddings this past month…

Here are some backdated tweets for everyone who isn’t on Twitter. A few clarifications included. =)

Sorry, Remy, I can’t play with you. I’m working real hard. I will go outside with you later.
(She was very busy gluing buttons onto a piece of paper.)

Quinny, stop crying! (in her high pitched “Quinny voice”) Say please, Nora!

Sometimes I make babies laugh.

Aunt @ampetrella: “Nora, how long was Jonah in the whale?”
Silence.
Aunt @ampetrella: “Was it three days?”
Nora: “No… Twenty minutes.”

My flowers growing pretty well.

Daddy: I want some ice cream. Who’s with me?
Nora: Jesus with you, Daddy.

I can do it all my byself.
(Not a typo. This was a common phrase around here for awhile.)

This boy’s name is Scary Guy. http://yfrog.com/ke575vsj

Nora: Mommy, what’s this?
Mommy: That’s a tie.
Nora: Daddy wore tie to wedding when he was a broom? (We don’t see a lot of ties around here.)
(She discovered his hidden cache of ties behind our closet door. I’m not sure she has ever seen him wear one outside of a wedding. Child of a Googler, am I right?)

Mommy: Wow. 97 degrees. It’s really hot today. Nora: Yes, it is, Mommy.
(I’ve decided this one isn’t interesting if you can’t hear her little, totally serious voice.)

Nora: My baby in my big girl bed.
Mommy: Your baby’s in your big girl bed?
Nora: Just ONE baby.
(She was confusing my contraction of “baby is” with the plural: “babies.”)

If Daddy comes home, he’ll see me put my shoes on all by myself!

Daddy, the (garage) door hit your car? You having a bad day, Daddy?

Mommy: Why are you crying?
Nora: I not crying. I singing “Loooou Loooou, skip to my Looouuuu!”
(In my defense, it totally sounded like she was wailing in her bed during nap time.

(after tripping and falling) I’m a tough girl. I didn’t even cry.

No, Remy, you can’t color. You have legs. I have hands — see?

It’s fall! It’s fall! I forgot how much fun fall is. Last year at this time, I was so preoccupied with packing and getting us ready to move back across the country that I feel like fall passed us by. And it’s such a great season. The leaves are so pretty and the weather is cooler and I start seriously craving cinnamon. Our little munchkins are growing into slightly bigger munchkins.

Nora Praise:

~ She still pronounces her name “Nah Nah” and since she is the person with whom I spend the most hours conversing, guess what? I sometimes call her Nah Nah now too. I’m not sure I can stop. So if you hear that one slip out, whoops. (She pronounces her full name as Nah Nah Pays Teague.)

~ She leaves out the preposition ‘for.’ “Here go, Mommy, this you.” “Wait me, Daddy!”

~ Oh, Little Bear. I could probably write a whole post on ways Little Bear has influenced Nora’s vernacular. Whenever we go for a walk, she will pause every few steps to ask “Are we still going the right way?” It’s something Little Bear asked Cat when they were on a walk and she loved it. How ironic that she’s inadvertently asking a very valid question, given my Superhero Power?

~Another LB: One character on LB uses a walking stick. So now, in any natural setting, Nora selects a walking stick which she proudly holds in her hand and generally prizes as a beloved, precious object for the entire walk. However, there are two problems with her walking sticks: one- she generally chooses very small sticks which are incredibly fragile. The other- she brings the walking sticks home, forgets about them, casts them aside for other playthings, only to remember her highly regarded twig after finding it in decimated pieces on the floor. Then she sobs and wails, “Oh, REMY! That was my WALKING STICK!” This has happened twice now and almost a third time before I remembered to hide her latest stick from our oh-so-eager-to-chew dog.

~ Anytime we are driving and point something or a place out to her, her immediate question is, “Can I go see it?” Every. Single. Time. On our drive to Savannah, she must have requested to see 50 different objects/places.

~ Anytime we are see an interesting place on tv or in a book, she asks, “Can I go there?” It can be Cinderella’s castle, San Francisco, the moon. Doesn’t matter if it’s near, far, real or imaginary. She wants to go there.

~ She’s started writing scribbles. When asked, “What does that say?” she almost always answers “I love you, Quinny.”

~ Read carefully, people, this one is important. All of us are now divided into two groups. There are “Very Nice” People and “Not Very Nice” people. You do not, I repeat, do NOT want to find yourself on the wrong side of that line. It is hard going to find your way back. “Mommy, is she very nice?” “Daddy, those guys not very nice.”

~ The bonus is, if you are deemed “Very Nice,” then you are decidedly not a Scary Monster. “Mommy, is that girl nice?” “Yes, she’s very nice.” “She’s very nice? She’s not a Scary Monster.”

~Nora is not one to think long and hard about a name. All of her small stuff animals/dolls are Baby ____. Baby Panda Bear, Baby Polar Bear, Baby, Other Baby (She has two baby dolls.) We recently got her two tiny frogs that she absolutely insisted on calling Baby Frogs. Collectively. Trying to explain to her that there are two frogs and we can name one frog Baby and the other one a n y t h i n g else did not work. “Their name Baby Frogs.”

~ She has this filler word that I can’t quite pronounce. It’s like, zeh zeh zeh or stha stha stha or something. It’s the equivalent of “um.” If you go back and listen to her singing Old MacDonald on the Sing Along with Nora video (you know, in all your free time) you can hear it.

~ She is going through a serious nature phase here. She LOVES collecting anything from outside. She brings in twigs, leaves- both green and shriveled brown, flower petals, pinestraw- if it’s in our yard, it’s been in the house. It’s also her way of showing she likes you. So if she brings you a dead, crumpled leaf, you’ve been accepted.

Quinn Abigail

~ Quinn is most likely the most pleasant person I have ever woken up. She will be in a deep sleep that we will have to interrupt to take her somewhere and all she does is squint, cover her eyes, and break out into a grin.

~ If she’s already awake and ready in her crib, she starts kicking with excitement as soon as she discovers you are headed her way. “THIS IS THE BEST THING THAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME, EVER!”

~ She is super interested in anything that is playing on the television. She pays equal attention to Barney, Toy Story, and CNN. Should your head be in the way, she leans way over to the side to get a better view.

~ Quinny’s really into touching faces.If you are within arm’s length of her, she holds up her little padded hand and starts stroking your cheek. It makes you feel cherished.

~ Along with a better grasp using those tiny hands has come the Klepto phase. This morning I opened a sock drawer and she somehow swiped a pair of socks out before I could. She’s getting very fast, that one. It’s a little stressful when she gets a good hold of anything containing liquid. I have to figure out how to get it out of her little Kung Fu grip without spilling everywhere.

~ She just figured out how to go from a sprawling position to a sitting position. But late at night, she can’t remember how to lay back down. Last night I went to check on her after hearing her whimpering for a few minutes. I found her sitting in bed, sniffling, half asleep and slightly swaying in exhaustion.

~ Quinn’s a Remy fan, just like her sister was. She giggles uncontrollably whenever she gets to pet him.

~ She’s also a huge Nora fan. I don’t know if anyone can make her laugh like Nora can.

~ She’s been working on this latest skill for awhile…

I love the casual, happy, friendly faces in this picture.