Cora- Month 11

OCTOBER!!! It's my favorite month of the year and it was so much fun spending the halloween holiday with you. Your first October. :) I hope it was a good one. It was actually a pretty tough month. The first couple of weeks were just a weird one. You were really fussy which just isn't like you and REALLY clingy. I couldn't set you down or even walk into another room without you freaking out. It went on for a little while and then boom. You started crawling on your hands and knees and then like 4 days later you took your FIRST STEPS!!!! It was such an exciting week. I think a lot of the fussiness was just from frustration of being so close to being more independently mobile but not being quite there. Once you learned how to move around better you were instantly happier. I love having you mobile. I think it is crazy when people say it is so much harder. There are definitely more messes but you are able to be entertained a lot easier. You were so wanting to be exploring this world and you couldn't so it has been a lot of fun now that you are able to get into everything. Thankfully we baby proofed the house the month before so we were ready for you. 

This year for Halloween you were the Dalai Lama. :) We had to take advantage of the beautiful bald head. So we whipped up your costume really quick and you were perfect. Dad and I were Forrest Gump and Jenny so you were the perfect little guru for our costume. Then for Dad's work party you were a kitty cat. I didn't get a picture of you on our real camera sadly but you were adorable.  We celebrated good over here. The day before halloween we had our traditional Chili night and carved pumpkins. I thought you would love the guts of the pumpkin but you really didn't care much for them. You kept wanting to eat them and then got so mad when they didn't taste good. For actual Halloween you helped me make sugar cookies and made a huge mess with the flour but it was a lot of fun. Then we handed out candy to the trick or treaters. You LOVED seeing all the kids dressed up funny. We ended the night at a party with friends. You seemed to have a good halloween so I was happy.

So after you took your first steps you still mostly prefer to walk with our hands. You won't stand up by yourself for long so I think you need to learn that before you can really take off. You love to walk back and forth to Dad and I. You usually only take 3-4 steps but have taken up to 8-10. You always get so proud of your self and by the end are walking and clapping at the same time. You also always chew on your hand when you walk. Haha I have no idea why but it is cute. 

You got sick for the first time this month. Not bad making it 11 months! You got a cold and it was a nasty one. Lots of sleepless nights for you and I. But you are mostly on the mend. You have this runny nose that will not go away but you are definitely feeling better. 

We are preparing things for your first birthday next week. I honestly can't believe it has almost been a month. My life is infinitely better since you came into it. I absolutely adore being your mom. I love that I am the first face you see in the morning and the last face you see when you go to sleep. You are getting so much fun. I think your personality comes out more and more every day. I am loving everything about this phase of life with you. I am so excited to celebrate the best year of my life and your birthday this next week. You are our everything baby girl. I love you. 

Cora- Month 10

Well your first birthday is in 5 days so I feel as if I should probably finish up your monthly blog posts for the year. :)

Month 10! I feel like I need Nana to write this post for me since I was gone for half of this month. You went on your first big trip to AZ without us. Dad and I went to Europe for 2 weeks and you were able to go and play with your Nana and Papa. While you were there you learned how to army crawl! It took a lot of motivation from your nana but she got you there. You also learned where your nose is and what a nose is and you got pretty close to figuring out how to blow kisses. You were a champ for them! You slept through the night every night and you were happy, and a good eater. We missed you like crazy in Europe but we knew you were in good hands. We would Skype with you every night. It was so fun to see you get so excited to see us over the computer. When I flew into AZ I thought for sure you were going to be so excited to see me at the airport but you didn't even bat an eye. HAHA. It took us getting into the car for you to actually realize what was going on and then you were very excited and giggling the whole way home. You also decided that walking with our fingers is literally the best thing to ever happen to you. It is all you wanted to do this month. We had to walk up and down the aisle of the airplane a bunch to keep you happy on the flight home. But we survived your 12th flight! Can you believe you have already been on 12 flights. Thats is insane, little girl. You are a traveling machine. 

Once we got home to CT we wanted to participate in all things fall. It was beautiful! So we did a special trip up to Higganum for a sleepover. You loved hanging out with your friend Brighton and we did a little photoshoot of you two together. You were not a good sleeper that night though and were screaming from like 12-1. :( Not very fun when we are guests at someone else's house buttttt we finally got you to sleep snuggling with your mom and dad. I think you were just confused about traveling and not sleeping in your bed again. We had a lot of fun hanging out the next day as well. It is nice to have you be able to interact with another baby since it's mostly just you and I hanging out. 

Brighton and Robli also came down to Guilford and we went and picked out pumpkins. You loved picking out the pumpkins but that was about it. There was a barn full of corn kernels that I thought you would love and you HATED it. I have no idea why, but you wanted nothing to do with it. you loved riding on the little toy tractors though. I think your new obsession with being pushed and pulled around on things started here. After that you love to be pushed in circles in our baby carriage and also pulled in the little red wagon we got from your baby shower. 

It was a great month with you baby girl. You keep getting cuter and cuter. You are so much fun and definitely like to keep us on our toes. We often think about what we did all day without you and how we must have been bored because you are our whole lives and we love every second of it. Happy 10 Months!

Camping-Jamaica State Park

Brian was lucky enough to have a 4 day weekend over Labor Day weekend. We spent the first few days just relaxing and then we decided last minute to go camping up in Vermont in the Jamaica State Park. We hurried and went and bought supplies and headed up north. Thankfully it was a short drive just over 2 hours and it was gorgeous. Vermont is everything I thought it would be and more. There are green rolling hills, cows roaming, mountains, and covered bridges. I was obsessed. I hope to be able to go back up when it is fall. We got to our campsite around 2 in the afternoon and hurried and set up and then walked to the swimming hole. Cora was in love with it. She just sat on the bank and splashed and played for the whole afternoon. I swam and Brian built a rock tower. It was so gorgeous and green. We headed back up to camp and made a gourmet dinner of hamburgers ;) and by that point Cora was pooped. I was trying to keep her awake until 7 so we walked down to the river in hopes she might perk back up but she fell asleep on Brian's shoulder on the way there. You guys, if you know Cora you know that she does NOT snuggle. She HATES it. So this was huge. So of course I get insanely jealous and snatch her from him and she stayed asleep. It was literally pure heaven. I would live in a tent if it meant having her sleep on my shoulder more. Haha well her sleep didn't last long and by 7:30 she was awake and ready to party. So she sat by the fire with us and roasted smores. It was like the kind of evening you dream of having with your future family someday. I am always the happiest when I am in the outdoors. I like to pretend I am a city girl but as soon as I am in the country my heart swells and I get a permanent grin dreaming of living in a little country farmhouse. Once the stars came out Cora gave in to sleep and by some MIRACLE she slept ALL NIGHT! Like until 5:30! Even when Brian and I came in the tent and got in our sleeping bags. She was an angel. I can't get over it. She ate and went back to sleep and then around 6:30 I hear some serious loud noises in the trees so I FREAK out and think a bear is coming so I hop up and look out the mesh top of our tent right as a HUGE tree is falling down above us. Thankfully it was far enough up to not hit us but it was crazy. I started freaking out thinking it was going to knock down other trees so I was yelling we needed to get out of the tent and thus woke up my sleeping child. So we were all awake at 6:30 for the day, haha glorious. So we ate breakfast and loaded up and went and explored some of the small towns around the area. It was such a fun trip and I am actually really sad that we waited so long to go. If I knew Cora was going to be such a champ we would have gone like every weekend. :) Until next time Vermont.

My baby is part elf