18 Months Old and Visit with the Willmarth's

Cora turned 18 months old on March 16th.  At her appointment, she weighed 22 lbs, 5 ounces, and was 32 inches tall.  Her weight was in the 25th-50th percentile while her height was right around average.  Her head circumference was in the 75th to 90th percentile.  Still our top-heavy baby!  I knew she had hit a growth spurt recently because overnight her 12 month pants seemed to get shorter.  She can actually wear some of her 18 month pants now, though many of them are still too big.  I'm hoping she may be able to wear those next fall...  She is continuing to grow and learn every day.  She counted from 3 to 10 the other day, but I've only heard her do that once.  She comes up with new words all the time - purse, Pooh, beans, spaghetti, hat, good girl, thank you, flower, and she even said bra today - haha!

Last week, we were so delighted to get to meet our good friends, the Willmarth's, in Nashville.  We only got to spend one evening and morning with them, but it was so great to see them!  For those who don't know, they were our best friends in Lexington and they moved near Dallas, TX last summer.  A visit was long overdue!  It was great to get to catch up and see how much their little boy, Jonah, had grown.  He and Cora had such a fun time playing together!  They played with Cora's little soccer ball for the longest time on Thursday night.  Jonah was good to share with her most of the time, but we could definitely see the gender difference in roughness!  It is so neat to see how differently God created us, even from early on.  One of my favorite moments was Friday morning after I got Cora dressed in her cute little outfit (thanks Auntie Amy!) when Jonah told his daddy to look at Cora.  John said something about how pretty Cora looked, and Jonah said so sweetly, "She looks like a princess!"  It was just precious.  We're thinking of an arranged marriage for them...  :)  I didn't take enough pictures, but we really had a wonderful time.

We went to my parents' house yesterday to celebrate my grandfather's birthday.  Cora and her little cousin, Hayden, got to play together for a while before Hayden headed north to see Amye's parents.  They had the best time playing with an animated duck that my grandmother had bought them last Easter!  It flaps its wings and nods its head while quacking "Here Comes Peter Cottontail."  Hayden was busting a move like nobody's business.  I honestly thought she was going to come up off the floor!  I so wish I would have gotten a video of it.  Cora enjoyed moving a bit, but she decided that it was more fun to sing along.  She also was singing along with a little bunny who sings "Jesus Loves Me" and she has been singing a lot of the "ABC" song.  She gets random letter in there, but is especially good at S, T, and U.  I just love to hear her sing!

We went out to eat with Jeremy's parents this evening, and we got to see a first.  There was a little boy across the way (15 months old) who started crying.  Cora has definitely cried before when another baby was crying just because it seemed like the thing to do, but this was different.  She kept looking over at the little boy and her bottom lip would come out.  She kept looking at me with big tears in her eyes, chin quivering, and I really think she was worried about this little boy.  My big girl is learning empathy!  It was so precious and pitiful, I nearly cried myself.  We had to take a walk to keep her from getting upset.  It was quite a neat moment.

Here are some pictures from the last couple of weeks.

Jonah and Cora checking out the dog

Puffs please!

She loves to play with air conditioning units

Playing

John and Jonah at breakfast

Jonah and his mommy - not sure what that face is!

Couldn't get him to smile for the camera, but I got lots of smiles when he was watching a video of himself!  :)

Sharon and I with our "babies", getting ready to head south

Cora playing Playstation football with Daddy and Grandpa (or "Papaw" according to Cora :))

Cora is singing!

Well, probably the most exciting, fun thing that Cora has learned since my last post is that she is singing, which of course thrills me!  :)  For a while now, she's enjoyed singing only the "head" part of "head, shoulders, knees, and toes", with her hand on her head appropriately.  She surprised me the other day by singing along with her Elmo truck toy.  She attempted to sing the whole Elmo song with a very robust "Elmo's world" at the end.  She's been doing it more and more, singing Elmo's song at random.  She also has attempted parts of the ABC song on a couple of occasions as well.  Hopefully I'll be able to catch it on video soon, because it - is - adorable.

Cora went to her first basketball game a couple of weekends ago - we went up to Knoxville with my parents and my sister and saw the UT men play on Saturday and watched the Lady Vols on Sunday.  We were a little concerned about how Cora was going to do, but she was great!  Particularly Saturday night for the men's game, Cora had a blast.  During the warm-ups, she got really excited watching all the balls on the floor.  She would also start clapping when everyone else did, and loved to watch all of the people around us.  There was one guy in particular who was sitting behind us who she seemed to like.  He played peekaboo with her, so she instantly loved him.  :)  She did really well sitting in our laps during the game, but I thought she might get restless, so I went down to the concourse with her to let her walk for a bit.  She did better in the stands...  That child immediately saw the stairs, which of course were everywhere, and all she wanted to do was climb the stairs.  So, concourse time didn't last very long.  We left the game a little bit early to try and keep Cora's bedtime from being too late, and we saw Smokey the mascot on our way out!  Cora was so excited and started barking.  When we got closer, however, it was just like Santa...she likes him, but only from far away.  She was really tired the next day for the women's game, but she still did well.  She just didn't enjoy it as much as she did the men's game.  Overall, it was a successful weekend trip!

Cora has been doing more fun stuff than just singing.  One night she covered up her face with her hands and started saying "Roar-ra!  Roar-ra!" (that's "Cora! Cora!" in baby talk...) and then she uncovered her face and squealed.  She'll do it sometimes and peek with one or both eyes.  It is adorable.  Her vocabulary has really blossomed.  She's learning new words every day.  Some of her new words are "Bry" for her Uncle Bryan, elephant, water, fry (yes, for french fry), apple, cookie (and she smiles every time she says this), car, truck, choo-choo, baby, shoes, duck, goose, poopy, cow, Bible, bread....I'm sure there are more, but that's all I can think of for now.  She also knows a lot of her books now.  You can ask her to go get one of her favorite books and she'll go pick the right one out and bring it to you!

Some of Cora's learning has also created problems.  She LOVES my ipod touch.  She will get into my purse (zippers are no problem now) and get it out.  Sometimes we try to play with it together with some apps that have animal characters that are interactive.  Cora also loves to watch Sesame Street or Muppet videos on YouTube.  My personal favorite is the Muppets' rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody.  :)  So, it can be fun.  HOWEVER, she never wants to stop playing with the ipod, and she will absolutely pitch a royal fit when you take it away.  I keep my grocery list on it, and she started to pitch a fit at the store the other day.  I distracted her with some food item...but it really is a problem.  She can work it without any problem too.  She drags the thing over to unlock it and loves to touch it to scroll through things.  In fact, she somehow managed to get the screen shaking with little red x's next to all of the apps...apparently to delete them.  I don't even know how to do that!  I now have it password protected, which Cora has not yet cracked.  Here's hoping it will be a few years...

Last weekend, Cora also attended her first baby shower since she began walking.  I wasn't sure how she would do - she is kind of shy around strangers - but after the first 10-15 minutes, she was loving all of the attention!  She walked around and smiled at strangers and helped Jennifer open some of her gifts while she wasn't looking.  :)  She was all over the place!  We were both tired by the time we left.  Also, on a side note, Jeremy and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary that same weekend!

I also noticed yesterday that Cora's first canine tooth is coming in.  I have really enjoyed the little break from teething, as I'm sure she has too, and am not looking forward to this next round.  I'm hoping she'll handle it well since she's an old pro at it by now.

I guess that's all the highlights since the last blog post.  As usual, rather than posting pics on here, you are welcome to view our latest facebook album:  https://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2520115&id=12924167&l=0d16898daa

Cora is going to be 18 months old next week!  Hopefully I'll take the time to update the blog with her measurements.  I'm pretty sure she's recently seen a growth spurt - she can wear some of her 18 month pants now!