Norah is 1!

Norah turns 1 tomorrow (December 3rd)!!! I can't believe it! She full blown walks now. It's weird because I can hear her walking around the apartment. I know that may not seem like a big deal, but I love the sound!

We have celebrated her birthday twice now. Once with friends in Canton, OH for the annual Malone Thanksgiving gathering. Our friends graciously helped us travel there via plane tickets. It was really the only way we were going to make the quick weekend visit and it was worth it.

The other celebration occurred over Thanksgiving with my family. We had Christmas morning on Thanksgiving morning, then Thanksgiving about 4 hours later and then we had a little birthday party for Norah and Caleb. Caleb is my sisters son who is two months younger, but we figured we would squeeze it in since all of my siblings were together with our little ones. It was a crazy weekend, but so much fun! It was like a mini daycare.

We have over 200 pictures from the past two weekends, but we will be uploading those to flickr over the next week, so check back. I am going to add a few favorites!

Here are the cousins in the tub!
(L-R Norah, Caleb, Ellie and Cora)

This is Norah and Ellie in a laundry basket! They were little chums over the vacation.
They often had yelling wars.

These are the great grandparents with all the kids!

These are the proud grandparents!

Here are all the siblings, spouses and kids!
(L-R Jarrod and Heather with Cora and Ellie, Andrew and Amanda with Caleb, Dave and Peg with Emmet and little Hazel who is due at the first of the year!, Josh and I and Norah)

This is Norah getting a little kiss from her cousin Emmet...so sweet!

This is Norah and Caleb getting ready to eat their cupcakes made by Josh, Emmet and Cora.

This is a cute picture!

Halfway done!

BAM! Caleb rubbed it in his eye and well, this pretty much wrapped them up and they were both sent to the tub to clean up!

Now that Norah is 1 or she was close enough to it we turned her car seat facing forward in the car! She seems to like it, but I think she gets a little distracted from falling asleep because she can see us. Oh well! I love it facing forward.

White Castle

So my co-workers were talking about White Castle a month or so ago and I mentioned that I have never been to one. They all about fell on the floor and said I needed to go.

Yesterday, two ladies and I went. They let me know that there are a lot of onions involved and I went into my long story about how I do not like onions and they said you can get a burger without any.

When we got there I realized that I have always eaten onions on McDonald's hamburgers, so they said I should be fine.

When I got to the register I let the lady waiting on me know that this was my first time at a White Castle and she glanced up at me and then back down and said, "Ok, what do you want." Was not the most warm White Castle welcoming I'm sure, but the economy is bad so I brushed it off.

I order the value meal that came with 4 "sliders", fries and a drink. My co-workers told me that the small hamburgers are referred to as sliders because they slide right down.

Anyways, we sat down with our food and I took my first bite. I knew for the rest of my time at White Castle I was going to need lots of ketchup! I ate two sliders and when I bite into the third one I knew my time at White Castle had come to an end.

I instantly started to feel nauseous! I had to start chewing gum to get the taste out of my mouth.

I felt sick the rest of the day and when I went to bed I thought for sure I would be spending some significant time in the bathroom through the night....but I stand here this morning to tell you that I survived! I feel much better and it's a new day!

I will not be participating in White Castle for as long as I live!

Stitches

Here is a cute picture of Norah! She is walking a lot more and taking more risks. She was not really taking a big risk today, but we ended up in the ER! Here is the story...

We were at our friend Branden's house visiting and Norah was crawling all around and walking a little and at one point she tripped and fell right into the corner of his speaker and hit her head really hard right between her eyes.

I immediately picked her up and her head starting bleeding really bad and running down her face. She turned her head into my arm and when Josh got there with a cloth and she turned her head, he soaked up the blood and then realized that the cut was pretty deep and said we need to go to the hospital.

He took her at that point and Branden and I gathered our things and tried to figure out where the closest ER was. It turned out to be two streets away. By the time we got to the car at his apartment her head had stopped bleeding and she was not really crying anymore. Branden drove us to the ER,dropped us off at the front door and parked the car.

The nurse and doctor quickly assessed her and said that they would need to clean the cut, then put some numbing liquid on her forehead that Josh would have to hold there for 15 minutes. They would then need to put her in a papoose, which is basically a board with thick velcro straps that wrap around and hold her in place so they can put some stitches in.

Norah did not cry at all while the numbing stuff was being held to her forehead. She got a little frustrated that her arms were being held down, but that was it.

It was past time for her bottle, food, she had a full diaper and had not had a nap, but she did not make a peep. She did great!

Before they put her in the papoose they wrapped a sheet around her chest with her arms bound inside and then put her in the papoose and she acted like it was her favorite thing. She just layed there and sucked on her pacifier and watched the doctor. The doctor had Josh hold a towel type thing with a hole in the center at a slant so that Norah could see him but she could not see the doctor. The nurse held Norah's head and I just kinda had my hands on her legs so that she felt comforted, or maybe so I felt comforted...who knows!

The doctor started stitching and Norah just layed there and did nothing. At one point she started to fall asleep! She got 7 stitches and will need to get them out on friday. We need to wash her wound 3 times a day and apply some neosporin. I asked if I should stay home from work for a week just to be sure she was ok and the doctor did not really go for my trick! ;)

Have no fear friends I captured the whole thing with pictures!!!! I know that's what you really want anyways!

This is when we got to our Triage room at the ER and were waiting for the nurse and doctor. You can see the blood on her fleece hoodie if you look close.

Close up of the wound.

Norah in the papoose! She looked so cute but it broke your heart at the same time.

The doctor and nurse were so great with her!

Minutes later it was over!

Norah being carried by her buddy Branden to the car!

Norah loved her new bracelet!

Now what do good Americans do when times are crazy and you are thankful nothing worse happened? You go to McDonalds!!!!
It turns out that we were right near the corporate office of McDonald's and the McDonald's that is right next door is pretty sweet and that it was!

We made a new friend!

Here's Branden taking care of Norah while mom and dad pull themselves together after everything that just happened. Nothing that fries can't fix!

We were so thankful that Branden was with us. He was lots of help!

Winter is coming!

It is supposed to snow tomorrow and it is getting cold here in Chicago. We are getting Norah ready. This is her new winter hat that has matching gloves. I thought the hate would look cute with her pj's!

Norah is 11 months old now. She is taking more and more steps everyday. We got a great video of her walking back and forth between our two couches. Josh will probably upload it on his blog soon.

Happy Halloween!!!

Well, the monkey it is....



Norah has been braving some steps lately and we got some on tape. Norah is also very much into socks. We often find her with a sock hanging out of her mouth. I don't think she has them in her mouth in the video, but I used the socks to get her to walk!! :)

(well i tried uploading the video overnight and it did not work....i will try later tonight!)

The video is here!

The videos are in for the Improv Everywhere thing that we did!

There is a video combining all four cities that they did the experiment in and then you can see all of the individual city videos. We are in both!

Look for me pushing the stroller in the Chicago specific one and we are marching in the battle scene and then we are in the combination one too marching in the battle scene!

It's fun to finally see the video. The voice that we could hear through the Mp3 is the one you hear talking in the Chicago specific video. They cut out some parts that I think did not turn out as well. Enjoy!

Chicago Specific video

Combination video

Improv Everywhere!

This weekend was a great weekend of rest and relaxation, which was much needed due to lots of stress from life.

A friend of ours here Annette told us about this group called Improv Everywhere that was coming to Chicago last Sunday. If you click on their name it will take you to their website. Basically, they are an improv group of comedians that want to help people in the world have a little fun. They post what city they are going to be in, when, where you need to show up and any specifics that you need to bring with you. If you look at their website you can see the Chicago post. They will make a video of the day in a few weeks, so I will post that when it comes up, but we just saw today that they put some pictures up.

We met two other friends in Lincoln Park, strapped Norah in the Bjorn and joined the craziness! We had to wear either green, red, blue or a yellow t-shirt, download a track to our Mp3 player, bring a balloon and and umbrella. That's all we knew. You were not supposed to listen to the Mp3 track until everyone starts listening to it at the exact same time and they instruct you on what to do. It was so fun!!! Regardless of the rain, we had a great time. There were probably three hundred people that showed up! We are pretty sure we will make the video because of Norah! People were so excited about seeing her participating and she loved it!!! She was kicking and flailing all over the place. The main guy from Improv Everywhere was in the crowd and we saw him several times. I think he even high-fived Norah at some point. I know this probably does not make a lot of sense, but look at their website. I highly recommend watching the "Frozen Grand Central" video!!!!

Anyways, I hope you enjoy it. I downloaded some pictures that we were in. Oh, I forgot to mention that they have a camera filming it all from above in an helicopter and then a few crews on the ground.

You can see us in the front line there. We were getting ready for a balloon battle in a huge field. I am holding the orange balloon and have Norah strapped to the front of me! To my right is our friend Annette, Josh and holding the red umbrella is our other friend Lisa.

Here we are marching! I stayed behind and quickly cut to the right to get out of the crowd with Norah! I have never had lots of luck with big crowds and getting trampled so I decided to save Norah from the fate as well!

If you look down to the bottom right corner you can see our fearless leader getting ready for the charge!! ;)