Long time no blog

Well, I'm not really sure where to start here since it has been a month since I've blogged.  Life has been CRAZY!  We did get moved down to Tennessee over Halloween weekend.  We are currently living with Jeremy's parents in Birchwood until our house sells so we can get a place of our own.  Naturally, I was a little hesitant about moving in with my in-laws, but it has really worked out great - and I'm not just writing that because I know they'll be reading this.  :)  Cora has settled in too and enjoys getting to spend extra time with her Nana and Papaw and she really enjoys going outside to see the cows.  She has, of course, also enjoyed living only 25 minutes from Aunt Mandy and an hour from Grandpa, Grandma, Uncle Bryan, Aunt Amye, and Hayden!  It has been really nice getting to see everyone more often.  I can already tell that Cora knows everyone more readily now and she and Hayden are so fun to watch together!

Jeremy has been learning a ton at his new job.  Vascular surgery is quite a change from internal medicine, so it's kind of like he's starting over again.  He's been a little frustrated from time to time feeling like he's not catching on as quickly as he should, but the docs he is working with are all great and assure him that he's doing just fine.

Cora has reached several milestones since we've moved.  After getting her other top side front tooth, she unexpectedly got 2 molars - same side, top and bottom.  She just cut one of her bottom side front teeth yesterday.  Here's hoping she's going to get a break from the molars now, but with her anything is possible.  She is also walking now and loves it!  She will walk to you with her arms up in the air, grinning ear to ear, and will just fall into your lap and give you a giant hug.  This is usually accompanied by squealing, and is just priceless to see.  She's not just walking to people anymore, she is all over the place. 

Cora is also enjoying grown-up food more and more.  She really enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner this year!  She at some turkey, but definitely seemed to like the carbs more - homemade dressing, noodles, and yeast rolls.  The only thing she didn't like was the cranberry sauce.  I can no longer eat in front of her without some kind of request for me to share my food.  Usually it's pointing and grunting, but she also will just stand/sit there and open her mouth and wait for you to give her a bite of whatever your eating.  And this child has THE MOST enthusiastic open mouth you've ever seen!! 

Cora's vocabulary is also expanding!  She now says "woof woof" anytime she sees a dog...or cow....or sometimes a cat.  She will also moo when I ask her too and we've had a meow or two.  Now she just needs to figure out which is which.  She is saying "bye" very well and sounds like a little southern belle.  She caught on to how my phone conversations would go and started saying "bye" after I would say "talk to you later."  So cute!  (Dana, that made me think of Joshua and how he did that with your conversations - miss you guys!!)  She's also saying kitty, hi, no, mama, dada, and boom.  She has an Elmo truck that she frequently pushes into things and I would always say "boom!" so she caught on and is doing that now.  :)  She's shaking her head 'no' (sometimes appropriately, sometimes not), and her Papaw taught her to nod her head 'yes.'  Again, she's still learning what those gestures mean exactly, but she enjoys doing them anyway.

We went this past Tuesday to my parents' house to celebrate my niece's 1st birthday!  I can't believe that she is already a year old.  The big party is on Sunday, so we're pretty excited about that.  I posted a bunch of pictures on facebook from the last month.  Here is the link if you'd like to see them: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2495530&id=12924167&l=b929c31b03  

Boyd Orchards and Other Stuff

A couple of weekends ago, we made a trip to Boyd Orchards in Versailles, KY, and met up with our friends David and Laura Probus and their adorable little girl, Anna.  It was a beautiful day, and we had such a good time!  Cora liked the pumpkins, and she really enjoyed sticking her head through the wood cutout things for photo opportunities.  :)  We got to see some farm animals and went on a hayride.  The highlight of the trip was probably the fried apple pie and the apple cider!  It was a wonderful day.  Here are some pics:

Life for us has been pretty crazy the last couple of weeks.  We are finally getting ready to move!  We'll be heading south on October 31st.  We still haven't had any luck selling our house, but we trust that everything will work out when the time is right. 

Cora continues to learn and explores.  She is saying ball now...well, really it's baa, but we know what she means.  :)  She has been going absolutely insane with her ball popper lately!  It is so fun to watch.  She is also saying "mama" all the time.  It's driving Daddy crazy.  We'll ask her to say 'dada' and she won't say it anymore.  Instead she usually responds with an enthusiastic "mama!"  Of course, I get a kick out of this.  It was a long time coming!  Cora also pointed and asked for something for the first time on October 22nd.  I had given her a little bite of my iced sugar cookie which she had never had before.  She liked it enough to actually ask for more!  With Jeremy and I as her parents, she's bound to enjoy sweets.  :)  Cora still hasn't taken her first steps yet, but she is getting more and more confident walking with fingers.  I don't think it will be much longer.


Here are some other pictures from the last couple of weeks.  Hopefully we'll have some fun videos up soon.

Cora looking quite stylish in her Sunday dress

Something about black tights on such little stubby legs makes me smile.

It's for you!

Cora's first pigtail!

Cora discovered her shadow - she enjoyed watching it dance!

Cora LOVES to watch mommy through the glass when I am outside grilling

Cora's New Toys

Cora got lots of fun new toys for her birthday!  Here are some pictures and videos of play time.  :)

She loves to take the balls out, but she is also very good at putting them back in.

She's a pro now and starting it up!

She has really enjoyed reading all of her new books!

She certainly can make a mess...

Cora got a Winnie the Pooh card that played the song - she really enjoyed it!


Here's Cora playing with her ball popper and her musical table:


And more dancing with her musical table:

Cora Leigh's Birthday! (2 weeks later...)

So, I'm a little late posting this, but our baby girl is now a year old!  Cora celebrated her first birthday on Thursday, September 16th, and I cannot believe it.  We went to Tennessee for a long weekend to celebrate her birthday.  We started on her birthday by taking her to the doctor to get her shots.  Not exactly a fun gift, but the gift of health is worth something, right?!?  :)  She weighed in at 19 pounds, 2 ounces (20th percentile) and was 27.75 inches tall (13th percentile).  Her head circumference was 46.5 cm which is the 86th percentile...poor thing is definitely top heavy!  Maybe that's why she's not walking yet - hard to balance all that weight on her little body!!  Anyway, I always enjoy looking back at mine and Jeremy's milestones for comparison - at 1 year, Jeremy was 31 inches tall and 26 pounds, 4 ounces; I was 28 inches and 19 pounds, 8 ounces.  She's definitely more on track with my growth rate.  Dr. Gillispie said that she looked great.  She did pretty well with her shots this time around.  She didn't get mad until her second one, but she was able to get over it pretty quickly afterward by reading one of her books that we brought with us.  After her appointment, we headed to Tennessee for the weekend.

It was a crazy but fun weekend!  Saturday, Jeremy and his dad went up to Knoxville for the football game, so all the ladies hung out at Mandy's apartment and made preparations for the party.  It was quite a crazy day preparing food and decorating for the party.  The theme for the party was kitty since that was Cora's first word.  We made kitty balloons and kitty cat plates.  They turned out really cute, but unfortunately the helium didn't hold in our "helium quality" balloons.  All of our poor kitties were laying on the ground Sunday morning (the morning of her party).  Luckily they started going south on Saturday, so we knew we were going to have a problem.  We made it work with some balloon sticks that Mom found at Hobby Lobby - it was just quite an ordeal.

Cora's party was Sunday afternoon, and she did very well for the most part.  She didn't participate in the gift opening much, but she did enjoy playing with them after they were open.  She really enjoyed the birthday card that she got that played "Winnie the Pooh" when you opened it.  We were so excited for cake time, and were fully prepared for a big mess.  Cora was not so enthusiastic.  She kind of picked at it a little bit and licked some icing off of her fingers, but didn't make much of a mess at all.  Oh, well!  We still had a wonderful time celebrating with our family and friends.  You can see the pictures on my facebook album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2478132&id=12924167&l=f0a0a230e7

It sure has been an amazing year.  We have no idea what we did with all our time before Cora was in our lives.  We can't wait to see what kind of fun this next year has in store for us!

Crazy Days

I'm a little behind on my blogging, but life has been crazy in the last few weeks!  First of all, of course since we're moving, we were working like crazy getting our house ready to sell.  Our house was officially on the market on August 20th, and we had our first open house on August 29th.  Even though our house wasn't in bad shape by any means, we had a lot of de-cluttering to do, some minor repairs, and general cleaning.  To make life more interesting, Cora picked up her first stomach virus on Sunday, August 22nd.  It didn't show itself until Monday evening.  Cora had just finished her dinner, and we were getting ready to go to the grocery store when I looked over and she had vomited a little.  Even though it has been a long time since Cora has spit up, I didn't really think much of it - she was acting fine - and figured she might have eaten too many puffs.  :)  So, we headed on to Meijer to do some shopping.  When I went to get Cora out of her car seat, she had vomited again.  We were going to try to clean her up and change her outfit, and then it started again...and it was a lot of vomit.  At this point, we are starting to get concerned.  Because she had never been sick like this, we wanted to take her to the doctor.  Unfortunately, our pediatrician's office was closed by the time we got there, so we went to a walk-in clinic.  Cora vomited again before we got there, and two more times in the waiting room.  In between vomiting sessions, she was just laughing and acting like she was having a great time!  For some reason, it didn't occur to her panicked parents to ask for a basin for her to vomit in, so all of this is collecting in her car seat.  We finally got in to see the doctor, and they checked her and said that it was a stomach virus.  They gave us instructions, and we went on her way.  Poor baby vomited once more before we got home.  It was probably close to 9:00 by the time we got home.  First things first, I put Cora in the bathtub to wash all the vomit off of her.  In the meantime, Jeremy went back out to get some Pedialyte.  After Cora's bath, I went ahead and nursed her before I put her to bed.  Mid-nursing, she vomited again.  What a mess!  I cleaned up as best I could, and Jeremy got home with the Pedialyte.  We read on our pediatrician's website that you should give your baby 1 tsp. of Pedialyte every 3 minutes until she can keep it down.  Well, I kept pushing the Pedialyte, and Cora kept vomiting it right back up.  At this point, we had wised up and had a bowl to catch it in.  :)  Oh, and I should mention that while I was catching vomit, Jeremy was out in the garage trying to get all the vomit out of the car seat and car seat base - not a pleasant job.  Finally, poor baby was so tired, she just leaned over and laid her head on my arm and went to sleep.  A few minutes later, she woke up to vomit.  She continued to sleep a little longer between each vomiting session until she was finally able to go to sleep for the night at 12:30.  I held her until 1:30, just to make sure she was finished with the vomiting.  The next morning, I was optimistic that she might be over it, and she did really well after she nursed.  Unfortunately, her cereal did not set as well, and up it came.  I called the pediatrician's office and they told me just to nurse her for 8 hours and then to try some solids.  So, she nursed all day and did great with it.  We even gave her some puffs at dinnertime.  Again, I hoped that we were finished with the vomiting.  Unfortunately, she vomited again after she nursed the next morning.  We had one minor vomiting episode after that, and finally we were finished.  I felt like we needed on of those t-shirts that read "I survived the big, bad stomach bug!" 

It was such a terrible time for all of us.  It also really affected our productivity - particularly mine.  Cora really needed her mama while she didn't feel good, and I certainly wasn't going to reject her.  Praise God, He knew that we were going to be needing some extra help getting our house ready for the open house that next week, and He sent my dad!  Dad had 3 days off during that week, so he came up and worked on the house, and helped some with Cora.  It was such a blessing.  He left us on that Friday with the house in pretty good shape.  Jeremy and I spent all day Saturday cleaning house.  We decided that our house was probably the cleanest it had ever been!  We were so excited with how good everything looked.  I baked some snickerdoodles on Sunday before the open house to create a nice, homey atmosphere.  Unfortunately, we did not have a single potential buyer come to our open house.  We were SO disappointed when we found that out.  Since then, we still haven't had anyone come see it, and it has been on the market now for 3 weeks.  We have another open house this Sunday, so here's hoping we'll have better luck.

We did have a fun Labor day weekend last week.  My sister, Mandy, came up to visit for the long weekend.  It was especially nice to have some company while Jeremy was gone to the Tennessee game on Saturday.  Here are some pictures and videos from the last couple of weeks!

Cora's Spongebob Pajamas - They say Spongebob Smileypants.  :)

Here are a couple of videos that Aunt Mandy took over the weekend.  Cora was obsessed with Aunt Mandy's camera - it's a touch screen.  :)





This video Cora shot with Aunt Mandy's camera.  The video part of it is lacking a bit, but the audio is priceless!  :)



Here is one of Cora playing with her cow book.  She loves pressing the button to make it moo!



And last is a video of Cora multi-tasking.  I'm not sure how it happened, but either Aunt Mandy taught Cora or just observed her pressing the button on her glow worm to get it to sing.  When it would stop, she would wave goodbye to it.  Precious!!  Here she is also really concentrating on her books, but she is sure not to forget her glow worm.  :)

Nashville, 11-month birthday, and big news!

We have had a very busy last couple of weeks.  Last weekend, we made a trip down to Smyrna, TN, to attend my friend, Jessica Pitt's, wedding.  It was good to see her again and see how happy she and Jonathan are together.  I also got to catch up with a good friend from high school, Amanda Johnston Sims.  It was really great to get to see she and her husband, Tristin, and catch up on all of their family news.  Here's a picture of Cora before the wedding and one of the happy couple walking down the aisle together.

That weekend, my mom happened to have a conference that she was attending in Murfreesboro.  My brother and his family were also in Murfreesboro for his sister-in-law's college graduation.  So, Dad and my sister decided to come on up too, and we all got together.  We met up with Dad, Mom, and Mandy on Saturday and did some shopping and hung out.  Sunday, all the boys got together and went to play disc golf.  While they were gone, the ladies went to hang out at my sister-in-law's parents' house.  They have a swimming pool, so we took advantage of that and spent some time in the water.  It was Cora's first time in a big pool, but she seemed to enjoy it.

Here are Amye and Hayden, having fun playing with the beach ball

Cora isn't sure what to think at first...

The beach ball was fun!

Here Hayden is trying to steal Cora's swim suit.  She doesn't understand why her momma just put her in a diaper and a hat!  :)

Cute baby!

Cora also had her 11-month birthday on the 16th!  I cannot believe that she is so close to being a year old.  I took her picture, as always, and she looks so grown up to me.... :(

Miss Traci was over to watch Cora while I did some dissertation work.  She helped keep Cora in one place while I took her picture and got her to smile for me.  :)

We recently purchased a couple of bigger towels that are really cute, so we had to take Cora's picture in those.  Also, we went swimming again last Thursday with our friends Laura and Anna.  Laura's mom, Barbara, and sister, Jennifer, also joined in the fun!  The pool water was quite cold, so I wasn't sure how Cora was going to do, but she LOVED it!!  She had so much fun watching Anna and also was very entertained by Jennifer.  She also got to eat snacks in the pool, so you can't beat that! 

We had a Sunday School cookout last night, which was a lot of fun!  We brought our outdoor blanket and sat Cora on it.  We discovered that she does not mind the texture of grass at all.  That child was crawling all over the place!!!  Grass, sticks, it didn't matter, she was on her way.  Her little legs and feet were pretty dirty by the time we left.  We forgot to bring our camera, but here are some pictures that I stole from Dana's facebook.  :)

We also have some exciting news from this week!  Jeremy has accepted a position with University Surgical Associates in Chattanooga.  It is going to be really hard for us to leave our friends and our church, but we are so looking forward to being back home!  It is going to be nice to be less than an hour from our families.  We don't have a moving date yet, but it looks like we will probably be heading south in early October.  We should have a date nailed down early this week.  We would appreciate everyone's prayers as we try to sell our house and figure out where we're going to live.  We know that God has a plan and that everything will work out, but it's still easy for us to become overwhelmed.  Dad is coming up this week to help us tidy up the house a bit.  It's going to be a busy month or two!

Cora's First Haircut and Family Trip to Tennessee

Last Tuesday, poor Cora's hair was just staying in her eyes.  I mentioned something to Jeremy about how we needed to cut her bangs and it fell on deaf ears.  Daddy just wasn't ready to take that step.  :)  After spending a second day watching Cora have hair in her eyes, I decided that it was just going to have to be done.  So, I cut Cora's hair last Wednesday night.  I was really nervous, but Cora did really well!  I only cut her bangs and just a little on the side where she had one strand of hair that was a lot longer than the rest.  Daddy did okay with it too.  We immediately missed her long locks, but she looks so cute now with her little bangs - she looks like a little girl! 

The after shot!

We also went to Tennessee last weekend for a visit.  Jeremy's cousin, Becky, and her husband, Jeff, were also in town visiting from Tampa.  It was the first time they had met Cora Leigh!  Here are some pics:

Another highlight of the trip was getting to see Jeremy's parents' baby cows.  Cora and I were brave enough to ride up in the pasture with Jeremy and his dad.  The babies were really cute, though Cora didn't really seem too interested.  :)

Cora also had fun playing a really old toy piano at Papaw and Nana's house.  I think it was close to 40 years old.  I had just gotten out of the shower when I heard it...I'm just going to say that I'm glad it's not at our house!  :)  Cora did have a good time with it though.  Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to play only one note at a time, so we had all kinds of harmonies - or I guess I should say dissonances - going on.  :)  Cora did love it!

We also got to spend some time with my family and my little niece, Hayden.  It had been 2 months since we had gotten to see her!  Here are some of the pictures of the adorable babies.  Also included is a rare shot of my sister, Mandy, and I without our makeup on with Cora Leigh, all with our hair rollers in.  :)

One really fun thing that we got to do was give both girls a bath at the same time.  The guys had gone to play frisbee golf, Amye (Hayden's mommy) was working, so Grandma and I were the bathers, and Mandy took pictures for us - thanks Mandy!  Cora and Hayden had the best time!  They were instantly splashing in the water.  Cora, in true Cora form, decided that she did not want to sit for the majority of the bath, so I tried to bathe her while she was standing.  She got so excited, she couldn't hardly contain herself...and she didn't.  She was standing up talking, hollering, and acting silly, when suddenly a little poop escaped.  So that was the end of bath time!  :)  Grandma didn't lose any time getting Hayden out of that bath tub!  It was absolutely hysterical.

Unfortunately, Grandpa had to work all weekend, but here is a shot of he and Cora Monday before we left.  All in all, we had a wonderful visit.