HUGE milestone!

This morning, right after Rudy left for school, Nola went to the door and said,

“Bye-bye, DaDa”

I almost passed out from sheer excitement!  She had never put 2 words together before.  Big stuff, people…big stuff.

On a related note, she imitated the word “fumble” one afternoon this week when the boys were playing backyard football.  Now, we think she’s calling footballs “fumbles”.  She says, “fuh-buh”, which could be football or fumble, but she says it with the same intonation that Rudy used when he yelled, “fumble” out in the backyard.

Her new teachers are reporting to us everyday that they just love having her in class.  They tell us that she is really funny.  She dances and loves music time.  She no longer cries when I drop her off in the mornings.  She really seems happy there, which – of course – makes me happy. 

As far as being funny… the new joke is for us (Rudy, especially) to ask her, “Can I have a kiss?”  She says, “No!” and turns her head away.  We respond by making a big deal (oh, man!  come on!) and she laughs and laughs like it’s the funniest thing ever!

I can’t imagine life without my girl. She’s wearing us out with her pre-2 tantrums, but we love her more than life itself.  She makes up for the fits with her kisses, hugs and grins. 

Nola’s Not Talking…Yet

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while or you know us personally, you know that Nola’s ears have been a source of difficulty for her (and us) since she was a tiny infant.  She had tubes put in when she was only 5 months old – the earliest our ENT would put them in.  Even after the tubes were put in, she continued to have infections and fluid.  Her ears drained fluid repeatedly throughout the fall, winter and spring.  For a while, we were at the ENT’s office to have them suctioned about every other week. 

As a speech path, I’ve been concerned about Nola’s speech and language development.  She doesn’t have enough words and she continues to rely on whining/yelling and pointing to get what she wants.  She’ll occasionally take our hands to show us things, but most often she either gets mad or just gives up.  We’ve taught her to sign “more”, but she has to be reminded after she starts whining.  She has always seemed to understand what we’re saying, but she just isn’t saying what she should be.  I told myself not to be too concerned until she got closer to 18 months, but that nagging feeling just kept telling me to be proactive. 

I had to take her to the doctor in June because she was tugging at her ears right before we were supposed to go to St. Louis.  Dr. Schaefer was out of town, so we saw Dr. Scherer.  He looked at her ears and told me that it wasn’t an ear problem, but she was teething instead.  Afterwards, I told him I was concerned about her speech development and asked if he would write a referral for a hearing and speech evaluation.  (I wanted the hearing eval to rule that out before we did the speech eval.)  He agreed and put the orders in her chart.  I immediately called the ENT’s office to schedule an evaluation with the audiologist and started the process of getting scheduled for evaluation at a therapy clinic. 

In the meantime, I decided to ramp up my at-home therapy.  We started making a greater effort to teach her words and “make” her say things instead of giving in to whining and yelling.  Everybody got on board – even Caleb.  It was so cute watching him try to get her to say things and trying to teach her words. 

Of course, everyone’s response is always, “Well, she’s the baby.  Everyone probably talks for her.  She doesn’t have to talk.”  That just burns me up.  I’m smarter than that.  We don’t talk for her and we don’t let anyone else talk for her.  Granted – as the 2nd child, we haven’t been able to spend as much one-on-one time with her, playing and reading every single day like we did with Caleb.  But…it’s not like we’ve neglected her.  It’s not like we don’t talk to her or talk about everything we’re doing all the time.  I talk to her just like I talked to Caleb.  “Look, Nola, there’s an apple.  Yummy apples.  The apple is red.  Can you say apple?”  “Oh, my goodness.  I see cows.  Cows say ‘moo’.  Those cows are big and little.  They are eating grass.”  Sometimes it’s exhausting how much I talk to her about everything – just trying to teach her language.

Nola’s hearing evaluation was on July 15th.  She did amazing!  The audiologist, Lori, said that her right tube is still in and working perfectly.  Her left tube is probably coming out, but her ear function is still good.  She passed the tympanogram with no problems.  We went into the booth for the sound field testing and she knocked that out of the park too.  She responded to every single sound.  Just to be on the safe side, Lori did an OAE and there were no problems there either.  The verdict:  Nola can hear.  Hallelujah!

The next step was one that I’m much more familiar with.  I made an appointment for her language evaluation at Imagine Pediatric Therapies.  I chose Imagine because I have heard nothing but good things about it and I have known some wonderful therapists who have worked there.  We went in on Monday afternoon (7/18) to meet with Mrs. Andrea.  She was so welcoming and Nola took to her immediately.  We spent a long time talking and she asked me lots and lots of questions from the Receptive-Expressive Emergent Language Test and we worked through the Preschool Language Scale together.  Nola was much more interested in emptying out my purse and her diaper bag, playing with all of the toys and exploring the room than anything else.

 

She did what was asked of her, though, and I think we got a good picture of her communication skills.  Her scores are very split between the tests.  She scored very high on the PLS and much, much lower on the REEL.   I know the scores don’t mean much to anyone but me and any other SLP who might read this, but here they are:  PLS Receptive = 91, PLS Expressive = 92, REEL Receptive 88, REEL Expressive = 76.  That 76 put a major lump in my throat.  I never dreamed it would be that low.  Actually, the 88 was a little heartbreaking too.  I really thought her receptive skills were at or above age expectancy.  Andrea wants to do one more test, but Nola definitely qualifies for therapy. 

I’m not sure when therapy will start.  It will definitely be as soon as possible.  I’m ready to see if someone other than her family can convince her that talking really is beneficial.  A lot of people have asked why I don’t just do her therapy myself.  The honest answer is that when things are hard for kids, they tend to learn better from other people than they do from their parents.  I’ve tried all of my therapy tricks and they haven’t worked.  It’s time to turn this over to someone who specializes in younger kids. 

It took a while for this to sink in.  My sweet baby girl is delayed.  I never dreamed I’d be typing those words.  I never dreamed I’d have a child who didn’t talk.  I mean, seriously…what are the chances of that?  And, now, I worry about what we’re looking at.  Is it simply a language delay because of her chronic ear problems or is it something more?  I worry about apraxia and I worry that it could be a part of a bigger problem that I don’t even have a name for.  However, I know that no matter what comes our way, we’ll handle it just fine.  God won’t give us more than we can handle – even if He trusts us more than we trust ourselves.  And, I know this for sure…this little bundle of sass and sweetness will get her point across, regardless of how she has to do it.

A 5-year-old’s World

Sometimes I would like to see the world through Caleb’s eyes.  It’s all about the next adventure.  It’s all about running and playing and avoiding bedtime.  It’s all about him.
At five, Caleb is obsessed with all things creepy-crawly.  Basically, if I won’t allow it in the house, he LOVES it.  He would spend all day hunting for bugs, lizards, frogs & toads.  And, oh, when he catches them…those poor little guys.  He caught a toad this past weekend.  Rudy made him let it go in the yard after 24 hours.  I’m pretty sure that toad is in therapy somewhere (physical and mental).  Right this minute, there is a wet/dry habitat box on my back porch with 6 baby frogs hopping in it.  The previous inhabitant was a salamander and a variety of beetles and spiders.  Caleb says he wants to be a scientist when he grows up – the kind that studies bugs and animals.  We’ve learned some new words:  entomologist, zoologist and biologist.  He doesn’t think he wants to be a veterinarian, though.  They don’t get to work on spiders and bugs.  I’m pretty sure we’re not going to be able to avoid a lengthy trip through the insectarium this year when we visit the zoo.  A couple of weeks ago, I looked out the window as I was putting laundry away and saw this big box turtle crawling through our front yard.  We took Caleb outside immediately and he was so excited you would’ve thought Disneyworld had dropped in our front yard.  He looked at it, picked it up, giggled and then helped Rudy take it to a safe spot in an empty lot.  He talked about that turtle all weekend.

At five, Caleb is learning letters and numbers and logic and language.  He likes to write, but gets frustrated when we try to get him to sound out the words that he wants to put on paper.  He doesn’t really get math concepts, but I think that’s partially because I’m really bad at teaching them.  He can color beautifully, putting to ease my (very slight) worries of fine motor difficulties from a couple of years ago.  He loves books and I feel the greatest guilt when I have to tell him that we can’t stop and read a book right now.  He also likes to ask for books to keep from having to go to bed.  (He’s 5, right?)
At five, Caleb’s imagination is growing by leaps and bounds.  He pretends with his toys.  He pretends when he’s playing alone.  I love to “eavesdrop” on those moments.  One night, he decided that he wanted to make a campfire like Pops makes at deer camp.  He stacked some wood in the middle of the backyard, then gathered some rocks to make a circle around the wood.  He got a couple of chairs and put them by the fire.  That wasn’t quite enough, so he took his red bucket, turned it upside down and pretended that he had a campfire, just like at deer camp. 

At five, Caleb is still a worrier.  He gets it honest.  He’s naturally anxious.  I worry about his worry.  I’ve talked to my wonderful sister-in-law who is a psychologist and she assures me that he is okay.  We try to help him relax.  We give him time to survey the situation before expecting him to join in.  We don’t scold him for being reserved.  We do scold him for being ridiculous about it though – especially when we know he is putting on a show of it, like pretending to be scared just so someone will sleep in his bed with him.  We do scold him for being whiny.  I can’t stand whiny kids.  Sometimes Caleb is whiny.  We’re working on it.  Any suggestions? 
At five, Caleb loves his sister.  He loves his Daddy.  He loves his Mama.  He loves his grandparents and his friends.  He is a sweet, sweet boy…most of the time.  We do occasionally catch him giving Nola a little extra shove at the end of a hug.  We also see him give her hugs when he thinks nobody’s watching. 
At five, Caleb is wonderful.  He loves t-ball, football, bugs, animals, playing, anything with wheels, his family, his friends, the swimming pool, bizzert (dessert) and the ice cream truck.  He loves his behavior sticker chart that earns him nightly choices like playing Wii or a dollar for his bank.  He is pretty much a great kid…and I think I’d say that even if I wasn’t his mom.

Stuff We Did in May

That’s right - I went another month without blogging.  Here’s the synopsis…
May 1 ~ Usually, we would’ve gone out for our annual BBQ dinner on May 1st, but we decided to go a little early this year and went over the weekend.  That evening, I was a little sentimental about my sweet boy turning 5 the next day and made this collage to celebrate him.
May 2 ~ Caleb’s 5th birthday!  Of course, this warrants its very own post.  We took cookies to daycare to celebrate and then had a spaghetti supper and chocolate cake at home.  We gave Caleb a Razor scooter for his birthday and he loved it!

May 4 ~ Nola spent her morning catching up on current events while the rest of us got ready to go to school:

May 6 ~ I got these beautiful flowers at school with a sweet note from Rudy telling me what a wonderful mother I am.  I loved them!

That evening, we celebrated Caleb’s birthday in style at the Naturals baseball game.  We took 5 boys, 2 toddlers and 12 adults to the game and had a blast!

May 7 ~ Mom and Mr. L went to Caleb’s T-Ball game and spent the day/night with us.
 
May 8 ~ Mother’s Day.  I spent the day quietly being lazy and enjoying it to the fullest!  Caleb went home with Mom and Mr. L. for the week.  Rudy took Nola to convenient care because she had some congestion and her eyes were goopy.  We thought he was taking her as a preventative measure so that we would have a note for daycare saying that she didn’t have pink eye, just allergies or a cold.  Just as I sat down to blog, he called me to say that she DID have pink eye and would have to stay home.  Ugh.  We started immediately looking for someone who could watch her, since I have no sick days left and he had a concert coming up.  We couldn’t find anyone, so he stayed with her.  This whole sick day mess has been awful this year!

May 10 ~ I had a job interview for a supervisory position in my school district.  I won’t go into details, but I applied for a few jobs this spring that would give me the opportunity to use the admin degree that I worked really hard for.  Apparently, it’s not my time, because I didn’t get any of the jobs.  I’m trying to focus on the fact that God has a plan for me and maybe He knows that it will be important for me to be with Caleb for his kindergarten year.  As hard as the rejection has been, I know that my time will come.  Patience is not my strength.

May 11 ~ We went to a going away party in Fayetteville for a band staff member.  While we were there, Nola discovered a basket of Build-A-Bear clothes.  She pulled out 2 sparkly purses, put one on each arm, said “bye-bye” and walked to the door.  She is so sassy!

May 13-15 ~ We went to Hot Springs to spend the weekend.  My Memmie was in the hospital in North Little Rock and I wanted to go see her.  Rudy and I left the kids with Mom and Mr. L. and spent Saturday with Memmie, Poppie and Uncle Ron at the hospital.  It was a tough day – so hard to see someone who has been such a source of strength for me all my life struggling to be strong for herself.  It turned out that her calcium levels had gotten way too high and caused her to be confused and lethargic.  The hospital was able to get her leveled out and she’s now home, feisty as ever.  While the guys went down to get some coffee, I had a chance to just sit and hold her hand, talk and pray.

After that quick trip to the middle of the state, things got really crazy at work.  I buckled down and started cranking out reports, paperwork and billing like a mad woman.  I snapped this picture one evening as I was catching my breath at my desk, well after the kids had gone home.

As I write this, there are 2 more days of school left and I’m still cranking out paperwork. Almost done, though…

May 17 ~ We may need to put a lock on the pantry door:

May 18 ~ The Villines kids had a rough week at daycare.  When Rudy picked Nola up on Tuesday, he was given an incident report to sign.  Apparently, another child tried to take a toy from Nola and she bit him.  While it just horrified me to think that she had bitten another child and we were going to be “those parents” with “that kid” in the class, I had to laugh at the fact that the incident report said that the workers had disciplined her by telling her to “use her words.”  She only has two words – mama and cracker.  Which one of those would have been most appropriate in that situation?  As if that weren’t enough, when Rudy picked Caleb up on Wednesday, Caleb only had 2 of his 5 behavior sticks left in his cup.  Caleb almost always has all 5 and has never had less than 4.  Rudy gave him the what-for about it at school and I made him sit down with me after dinner and help write an apology letter to his teacher…

May 19 (and every day since then) ~ Caleb had 5 sticks in his cup.

May 21 ~ Caleb’s t-ball game was cancelled due to the fields being wet from all of the rain we’ve had.  We had a good family Saturday and had some guests over for dinner.  One of Rudy’s co-workers, Chris, and his family came over.  Rudy grilled an amazing dinner for us.  Chris has a daughter who is just a little bit younger than Nola.  It was fun to watch the two of them play around each other.  Caleb was enamored with little Sara Kate and she thought he was pretty funny too. 
Also – here is a picture of Nola’s new shoes.  They are Tiny TOMS and they are ridiculously cute.  I love my TOMS and I love their “one-for-one” giving.  But, mostly, these are just plain adorable…
May 22 ~ HAPPY 12TH ANNIVERSARY TO RUDY AND ME!  This day honestly deserves its very own post.  It was quite eventful.  Until I get that post written, I’ll just say it started out great and ended up very eventful.  It involved friends, a trip to Fayetteville, a surprise date, tornadic weather and a dead rabbit.  If that’s not a teaser, I don’t know what is!

May 24 ~ Was supposed to be my last day of school.  But, does anyone remember Snowpocalypse 2011?  And, so we added 10 days to the end of the year.  It was a bummer to not be getting out of school, but these two went to daycare looking awfully cute anyway:

Throughout the day, we kept hearing reports that the weather was going to get bad that night.  We were told to prepare for the worst storms we’d seen this year with a high likelihood of tornadoes.  I’m not typically scared of bad weather.  I've always had a healthy respect for the power of weather, but I know that we have a solid home and have always felt pretty comfortable in the safety of that shelter.  The weather reports that day were enough to truly scare me.  Rudy and I waivered back and forth about going to a friend’s house with a basement.  I have friends who got hotel rooms in a place with a storm shelter.  Many, many people in our area left their homes and went somewhere with a basement.  After a lot of thought and debate, we decided to ride out the storm at home.  I kicked into high gear and prepared our laundry room to be the safest place in our house.  I was nervous all night as we watched the storms roll in on the weather reports.  Miraculously, we were spared.  The storms did produce tornadoes in Oklahoma and south of us in Arkansas, but our area only had severe thunderstorms.   Our friend Chad was in town and spent the night with us.  I’m sure he thought I was crazy because I was so nervous, but I was being a protective mother bear and I don’t apologize for that one bit.

May 26 ~ I drove to Hot Springs for another interview.  It was oddly quiet in my car as I drove those 3 1/2 hours by myself for the first time in a very long time.

May 27 ~ I had my interview in the morning and drove home in the afternoon.  I was passing through Fayetteville when Rudy called and said that Nola needed to be picked up from daycare because she had a fever.  Ugh.  More about that in a separate post.

May 29 ~ Nola figured out how to answer the question, “Where’s your bellybutton?”

 

Whew – no wonder I’m tired!!!  Just reading through all of that made me need a nap!

Ready, Set, Walk!

On the afternoon of Friday, April 1st, we were sitting in the living room, trying to decide where to go for dinner.  Nola was playing in the floor.  I didn’t think too much about it when she crawled over and pulled herself up to standing by holding onto the coffee table.  She’s been doing that for months.  I did take notice, though, when she decided to let go.  She stood there for a few seconds before she put her hand back on the table.  Rudy was closest to her, so I suggested that he see if she would walk to him.  He did and – lo and behold - if she didn’t let go of that table and take a couple of steps!  We spent the next half-hour having her walk back and forth between us, laughing and enjoying the moment.  Here’s some video of her first afternoon of walking:

Nola right after taking her first steps on 4/1/11

Nola @ 12 Months (and a little beyond…)

Yes, Ms. Nola turned TWELVE months old on January 27th!
Here's what she's up to these days...

• Nola went to the doctor on February 14th for her well visit.  She weighed 23 lbs (75.55 percentile) was 28.5” tall (24.1 percentile) and had a head circumference of 47 cm.  She got her 2nd flu shot, a chicken pox shot, an MMR shot and a pneumonia shot at that appointment too.
  
• When she turned 12 months, she was still taking bottles when she woke up.  Shortly after that, on February 10th, we decided to start “bottle rehab.”  We boxed up all of her bottles and replaced them with sippy cups.  Day one was not fun.  After that, she started to get the hang of it.   By the 13th, she was completely fine with it.  We donated all of her bottles to Loving Choices.  God willing, there will never be bottles in our house again – at least not for our own children.
  
• We were going to switch to sippy cups and milk at the same time, but our well visit got pushed back a couple weeks due to the snow.  I wasn’t comfortable making the formula to milk switch without her doctor’s okay, so we did that after our visit.  Since February 15th, she hasn’t had any formula at all.  She drinks only whole milk.  We give her milk in the mornings when she wakes up and she drinks it at lunch at daycare.  Otherwise, she’s drinking water or juice or diluted juice from sippy cups at all of her meals and snacks.
  
• Speaking of meals and snacks…the girl LOVES to eat.  She will eat pretty much anything we give her.  Bananas continue to be her absolute favorite food.  She gets so excited when she sees us with one.  She starts clapping her hands together (her sign for “more”) and grinning.  She also loves yogurt, cheese, bread, pancakes, turkey, chicken, salmon, pizza toppings, spaghetti, soup (with the broth strained out), cooked carrots and the toddler ravioli meals from Gerber.  She’ll pretty much eat anything that we eat as long as it’s not spicy.  She (of course) LOVES sweets.  When we give her a bite of something that she really likes, she says, “mmm” and grins and claps.  If it’s something really good and she’s never had it before, she might even laugh.
  
• Nola still wears size 4 diapers.  She can still wear some of her 12 month clothes.  Her 18 month clothes aren’t as snug, but they are usually too long.  When she tries to crawl in her 18 month PJ’s, she gets tangled up in the legs because they are too long.  She wears size 3 shoes.
  
• Just recently, Nola has started walking while holding onto our hands.  She’ll even walk holding one hand, but it’s slow going and she won’t do it for long.  She would much rather crawl.  We’ve seen her let go of the furniture that she’s holding onto once or twice, but she’s not quite ready to take a step yet.  She is starting to get a little braver though.  She has gone from cruising the furniture to walking while holding on to the wall.
  
• She has started pointing lately at anything and everything.  She usually points and says, “ga” or “da”.  We try to label what she points to, but sometimes we have no idea what exactly that might be.
  
• As for words – she’s not very consistent.  (I still blame that on the persistent fluid in her ears.)  She said “mama” very clearly on 2/12 – right after she gave me one of her big kisses that seems like she’s going to take a bite out of whomever she is kissing.  I nearly melted to the floor when she did it.  She still says “mama” sometimes, but usually, she says, “mamamama.”  She has also said “dada”.  She said it today when she saw Rudy after school and I’m pretty sure that’s the first time she’s done that where we knew for sure that she was actually calling him “dada”.  We think she’s calling Caleb “ba” or “bab.”  She does it somewhat consistently, but she says that syllable so often that we’re not completely sure.  She will imitate “uh-oh”, but she says “uh-uh” instead.  She gets the intonation, just not the syllable change.  She also babbles with conversational intonation and she plays with sound a lot, repeating sound patterns and sing-song babbling as though she’s carrying on a conversation with herself.  She’ll imitate a few syllables like “kah” when we say “quack quack”, but she doesn’t spontaneously say any other words.
  
• What she lacks in words, she makes up for in gestures.  She signs “more” by clapping.  (She only does it for food, though.  I guess technically that would mean that she’s signing “eat” by clapping, right?)  She waves any time she hears the words “bye-bye” and she usually blows kisses when we ask her to by opening her mouth and patting it with her hand.  When she’s doing something she knows she’s not supposed to do and I say her name with a stern tone, she looks up at me and smiles while shaking her head.  I have to try really hard not to laugh because it’s pretty cute.  Sometimes when we are talking to her, she’ll raise her eyebrows up and nod like she’s really agreeing with everything we’re saying.  I’ve tried to get video of these things, but she clams up every time I get the camera out.
  
• She still sucks her thumb.  A lot.  Pretty much any time I pick her up, she puts her thumb in her mouth and she always does it when she’s tired or if something upsets her.  I asked the pediatrician if there is anything I can do about it and he said it’s too early to worry about it.  Everyone always comments about how cute it is and I just cringe.
  
• Nola now has 7 teeth – 4 on the top and 3 on the bottom.  That 4th bottom one should be coming through any day now.
  
• Nola moved up to the toddler room at daycare on February 14th.  She’s now a “Busy Bee.”  One of her daycare workers was also Caleb’s daycare worker when he was 18 months.  Nola is the only child in the class that doesn’t walk.  In the class, she sits in a little chair at a table for her meals and sleeps on a cot instead of in a crib.  Apparently, she’s doing pretty well with it.  She usually sleeps anywhere from an hour to 2 hours at naptime.  The girls in her class tell us that she eats pretty much everything they give her and hasn’t had trouble at the table at all.

Let’s see how our sweet girl has grown this year…

And, here’s what I got when I TRIED to take her 12 month picture:

Apparently, she wasn’t in the mood to model.

Nola @ 11 Months

I didn’t write Nola’s 10 month post.  I didn’t have time.  Things would happen and I would think, “that’s something I need to remember for her monthly post.”  I don’t remember those things now.  But, I do know what she’s doing now that she wasn’t doing at 9 months and here it is…

Nola turned ELEVEN months old on December 27th!  (Yes, I realize that we’re a week from her turning one.  Cut me some slack.  I’m doing the best I can.)
Here's what she's up to these days...

• Nola went to the doctor on December 20th for well visit.  She weighed 22 lbs, 1 oz, (80.08 percentile) was 28” tall 34.18 percentile) and had a head circumference of 46 cm.  She got her flu shot at that appointment too.
  
• She still takes 8 oz bottles when she wakes up.  She still eats some jar baby food, but really prefers to eat table food that is cut or mashed up.  She loves bananas and will bite off the ends of those if we hold them up for her.  She also eats anything we put on her high chair tray, especially fruits and noodles.  She eats finger foods at daycare too, though it makes me nervous.
  
• Nola wears size 4 diapers and 12 month clothes.  The clothes are starting to get pretty small, though.  We’ll be moving up to 18 months clothes soon.
  
• Nola can crawl like lightning.  She cruises furniture and can walk while pushing things like her baby doll stroller or a chair.  She will walk if we hold her hands, but doesn’t really like to.  She’d rather crawl.
  
• Rudy holds Nola and asks her if she wants to “go.”  She points forward and says something along the lines of “ga” or “uh” and he runs across the room with her.  She giggles hysterically and they do it all over again.
  
• Nola’s babbling comes and goes.  I think it’s because of her ears, but I don’t have any proof of that.  When she babbles, she has this sweet little tiny voice that just melts me.  More often than not, though, she just yells and throaty “aaggghhh” that’s not nearly as cute.  She always does this when people take things from her and when she doesn’t like things.  She waves bye-bye, blows kisses, covers the sides of her head to play peek-a-boo, signs “more” when she’s cued while eating, dances when she hears music, shakes her head (and grins) when we tell her no and nods her head when we do.  Nola cracks us up by making what we call her “grumpy face.”  She looks at people like she is so angry at them, then she raises her eyebrows and grins.  It’s the silliest thing I’ve ever seen.
Grumpy face & eyebrows up:

Peek-a-boo (sort of):

• Look at all of that hair.  I took these after Nola’s bath one night when her hair was fluffy and curly.  I know she’s going to curse my genetics someday for these curls, but they are awfully cute now.

• Yes, she’s still sucking her thumb.  That thumb is going to be the death of me.  Nola’s speech path mom doesn’t like the idea of her sucking her thumb.

• Nola has 6 teeth – 4 on the top and 2 on the bottom.  So far, she’s gotten really sick each time she’s cut a tooth.
  
• She still sleeps really well at home, but some days doesn’t nap at all at daycare.  We can’t figure out why or what to do to get her to sleep.  She’s moving up to another classroom in February and will have to nap on a cot instead of in a crib.  We’ll see if that is helpful or not.