Elijah at home

Cora just loves her baby brother and is always checking on him. If I put him in my room to sleep she will go knock on the door and ask for him. She's constantly touching him and kissing him - usually on the top of the head but if we don't catch her first, she'll go for his lips too. She's very concerned with making sure he has his blankets and burp cloths wherever he is.

Cora thought my doughnut from the hospital was pretty cool and kept stealing it.Cora loves her Papa and Grandma.Elijah is a very strong little boy - he has been lifting up his head and looking around since he was one day old. He has very prominent dimples on both cheeks that we can see when he cries. He is very hard to wake up when he wants to sleep - for example, during his favorite naptime - from dinnertime until I decide to go to bed, at which point he will be wide awake. When he does have his awake periods, however, he is really good at making eye contact with you and turning to the sound of your voice. His night time sleeping habits are still pretty variable - there's been a few good nights here and there when he'll wake up, eat, burp well, and go back to sleep at 3 hour intervals, but most nights aren't so good.

Cora had been becoming such a big girl. Generally she is a very happy cheerful little girl, but she is very stubborn and definitely knows what she wants. She's also very sensitive and her mood can change quickly. She loves all of her family and is always making us laugh. She's been watching more TV recently, since we moved, and then I was tired and very pregnant, and now with the new baby, but we are trying to cut it down. It's been fun to share some old favorites with her however, like the dinosaur movie (Land Before Time), and "see-ah-yay-yah" (Cinderella) and the fish princess (Little Mermaid.) She also loves Toy Story 3, Ponyo (a really cute movie we discovered recently) and shop-a-sheep (Shaun the Sheep, on Netflix). She is still a little book worm too and loves pulling out a book to read with me while I nurse.A couple of times now we've gotten her to repeat after us during prayers, and it just melts our hearts to hear her sweet little voice praying. She has learned her numbers - mostly. She loves to count everything, but she has developed some sort of prejudice against the number 2 - she never says it. She can count up to 10 but she skips right over two. For instance, she'll go up to Elijah and say, "one, tree eyes!" (and probably poke him in the eyes while doing it) The best is when she counts her toes - she'll say "one, tree, four, five, and the baby one! and the daddy one!" She knows the adjectives big and little but generally prefers to describe big things as daddy ones and little things as baby ones. She watches and listens to everything we do, and copies everything - which is pretty dangerous sometimes. She burps her babies, and helps me burp Elijah. When Elijah makes any noise she'll say "oh goodness, baby!" If he cries she'll tell me he's hungry and wants to drink mommy's milk.

I generally try to nap when she does, if I can get Elijah to cooperate, and it's usually really hard to get up when I hear her wake up - but she'll start calling "Mommy, where are you?" and I just can't ignore that little voice. She has a great memory and can tell you about things that happened months ago. When she asks for a treat she says "trick or treat mommy? please?" She has started calling me "mom" a lot of the time instead of mommy, which makes me sad - I think it is because she heard me say it to my mom when she was here.