Nora is 11 Months!

       Our beautiful girl is 11 months!  On one hand I am shocked and sad that she is almost a year and on the other I am so proud and honored to see how much she has grown. About a month ago something clicked with her and all the work of routines and sleep training paid off and she seems to understand what her bed is and what she is supposed to do there. She is going to bed more or less when the other kids do now, so I get a little more time in the evening - which is great.
       She is fast, both at crawling and at mimicking new sounds. She loves our excitement at each new accomplishment. I can see it in her eyes.  Just yesterday she started to say and wave bye-bye really well. She can also say Da and bellow Mama. She does things that make us laugh which gets her going.  I appreciate a good belly laugh.
    Nora is a good eater. She doesn't have a single tooth yet but does really well with a diverse array of soft cooked foods. She especially loves: peaches, scrambled eggs and black beans. Hopefully she gets some teeth soon.

Praying Mantis

      Dante our dog had a large mass on his neck and a week and a half ago he finally had a surgery to remove it. It went great and he is healing up but his behavior feels like the biggest change.  He seems so much happier and is eating better than he did pre-surgery. When we were leaving the vet yesterday there was a praying mantis in the middle of the sidewalk just sitting there. I thought it was a neat looking creature and wanted to show it to Riley because I don't come across them often but she was at school.  I scooted it into a baggie I had in the car and took it home to be her surprise when she got home. I like teaching her how to investigate things and to ask questions, so thing little creature was our latest project. His new home for the next day was a mason jar with screen on top and a few crickets to keep him company or make a nice snack.

We learned that there are 20 different species of praying mantis in the United States. They are hunting insects and will eat almost anything. They use camouflage to hide from birds and other predators as well as get close to their prey. They have good vision and quick reflexes, it creeped me out the way it stared at me and its head followed me across the room.   It was fun to examine closely though. Today we let it go in the front yard and I told the kids to stay back and just watch but Riley walks up to it and gives it a flower.  After being held in captivity for a day then having a child get in its face it puffed its wings up in warning but she didn't get back and it flew right into her. She freaked out and started crying but it didn't last long and flew across the yard. So close. She calmed down and I think she learned some new things about an insect and about listening. When asked why she gave the insect a flower, she said " because I love it".

Miss Nora has been pulling herself up with ease on anything she can find.  She zips around the house with ease but I am not sure how far off walking is.

Butterflies

    Riley had a sick day yesterday. She spent most of the day on the couch reading or playing with play doh at the table.
   After lunch we went outside to visit the butterflies! The last several days a few plants in our yard have been attracting 40 or 50 painted lady butterflies.  I think they cheered up Riley since she was sick. I had never seen anything like it in our yard. It was fun to have them fly all around us! For some reason I didn't get a picture of August. I think it was because I was with Nora in the yard and he was in the driveway next to one of the flowers, tormenting the butterflies. Nora tried to eat a pine cone, a clod of dirt, and some chalk. She liked crawling around though. She sure is getting big!
   It ended up kind of a theme day. Riley was playing with a butterfly cookie cutter in her play doh stuff and one of the books we read was the cat in the hat teaching about insects. It had a lot of good information in it while being fun.  She went to school today but was a bit grumpy about it. Hopefully she gets some good sleep tonight.