3 Months Old

Our little Norah is now 3 months old, and I can hardly believe it! Her little personality really shines through her tiny little body. We absolutely adore her.

People often ask us if Norah ever stops smiling. Um... no. Not really.

 

 

You getting the feel of her crazy smiliness, yet?

Okay, her one pout face fluke

As long as she's not hungry or sleepy, she is ready to ham it up for you. She will often sit there and stare at Rich and me with a big grin on her face, waiting for us to look at her. She's such a cheese! We have gotten some full out laughs out of her now, not just little giggles, especially when we're getting her ready for bed. Rich is the best at getting her to laugh.

We are still haven't figured out hair and eye color. She does, however, have my big eyes, as witnessed in the above picture. I don't feel like her eyes have really changed color in the past month, but I still have no idea what color to call it. Her hair hasn't grown at all and probably won't for a nice little while (which is a real shame because I am dying to use the hair clips we have).

Since there was no checkup this month, I don't know her stats. I am pretty sure, however, that she has chunked up a bit. For about two weeks she was a champion eater, going for thirty minutes every three hours. Then, suddenly, she decided she wasn't really interested in eating anymore. Now, she gets what she wants and is ready to be done. Meal time is often a struggle, especially if I'm trying to sneak in a feeding too early. She seems to get what she needs, though, and weighs over 13 pounds and is about 24 inches now.

She is a major hand sucker. You have to be careful with those hands because they are almost always covered in slobber. She is also getting pretty good at finding her feet, too. She's started grabbing them, although she's not exactly sure what to do when she gets a hold of them. Norah also loves to talk. She will goo and gah constantly, making it kind of difficult to hear what is going on around us. But it never fails to make me laugh because it is so stinkin' cute.

Our one big struggle right now is sleep. She is kind of a rotten sleeper. If she is not swaddled and held close with a pacifier in her mouth, you are not getting her to sleep. I got my hopes up for length of sleep because she slept through the night a couple times the past month. But, over the past two weeks weeks, things have gone in the opposite direction. She finally grew out of her cheater swaddle (the SwaddleMe), so I've been trying my own imperfect blanket swaddle with very little success. She's out of that thing like it's no big deal, and I'm waking up with her at all sorts of crazy hours (last night it was 12:45 and 4:15) trying to re-swaddle her. I'm heading to Babies 'R Us this weekend and getting the next size up of the SwaddleMe because I'm dying for sleep here.

I have been trying the Baby Whisperer's sleep method, which has helped her to fall asleep more quickly but still not on her own in her crib. I don't want to try any cry-it-out methods because we have people on all sides of us (although with how much I hear from the family above us at all hours of the night I kind of want to give them a little taste of what I'm going through down here). I think it has also helped with naptime. We used to be lucky if we got two hours of naps total each day, but now we're getting closer to four.

Basically, we're still learning this parenting thing. We're not perfect, but she sure is adorable, isn't she?

Farewell

The above truck has been in Rich's family for a long time. Rich's dad bought it new in 1992, and the Nelson family has treasured it since. Notice the lack of rear-view mirror on its right-hand side? This feature earned it the name Vincent Van Gogh, Vince for short. Rich was lucky enough for it to become his truck, which then meant it became ours when we got married. It's hard to say what was so special about Vince. He was a great little runaround truck, and Rich always said that he was just fun to drive. (I've only driven him once since I'm a little afraid to drive a stick shift, but even that little drive was fun for me.)

But now, Vince has taken his last truck breath. While driving home one day, Vince blew a head gasket coming up our hill. It seems 5 Mile Road was just too much hill for him in the end. As much as we'd like to keep Vince going until Norah can drive him, it's just not practical to put $1500 into him and wait for something else to break down in the only too near future.

This was the truck that Rich and I dated in. He took us on our first not-really-a-date to play catch. He took us to our first real date, dinner and the driving range. He took us to Ogden for Rich to meet my family the first time. He took us to the park where Rich proposed. (He, however, did not drive us on our wedding day - Vince wasn't exactly made for snow.)

Vince makes me think of summers in Provo after we were married, when it's just fun to be there because most of the students are gone and the city is quiet and beautiful. Vince was our vehicle of choice for Provo summers. Now, when I think of Vince, I'll always remember driving down the peaceful Provo streets on a warm summer evening.

I guess this is goodbye, old friend. I hate to see you go. You had a good run, and the Nelsons will treasure all 236,686 of your miles.

(Think this post is a little over-the-top for a truck? Obviously, you never knew Vince.)