5 weeks

I talked to Gramma Beth yesterday and she's reminding me that I'm behind on posting. Nora is getting bigger every day and Gramma wants to see pictures!


We've had a good week. Nora is finally settling into a sleep routine (am I tempting fate by calling it that?) that doesn't leave me feeling like a zombie all day. For the last few nights, she's stretched out to 5-6 hours of solid sleep overnight. How delightful. We've been out late with her for a few nights at graduation parties for Matt so she's been settling down for good around midnight and then sleeping ~6am. I love it! She's also finally in her crib we're not having to hold her quite as long to get her to stay sleeping when we put her down. I'm optimistic that we're heading in the right direction.



Like I said, we've been doing a lot of graduation parties lately. We had the Peds graduation last week, a surprise dinner for Matt with the EM/IM folks, the EM graduation party Friday and the IM graduation Saturday night. Luckily we've only got on more party (the EM/IM barbecue) on Wednesday then we'll be done... phew. For a cranky hermit like me, I need the break.

Once we're finished with the parties though, Matt's going to be leaving MN. Dean and Matt will be hitting the road this Friday morning driving both cars and dogs out West. Even though we've known about this day for the last year, it's still hard to believe that it's actually here. Part of me is excited about this adventure and this new chapter in our life, but it's hard not to feel sentimental and sad as we look at leaving MN. We've lived here for 10 years, lived in our home for 9 years... this is where we've lived almost our whole adult life. We started our family and our careers here and have friends and family that we will miss deeply. I know that we'll be back for visits, but we will be walking away from the life that we had and things will never be the same. Sigh.



Erin's still doing great with Nora. She wants to hold her and loves to snuggle with her and talk to her. She is constantly telling me that "Nora is smiling at me!" I've yet to see more than a few half-hearted smiles from Nora, but it's nice that Erin is so optimistic. Erin also loves to talk about "my baby sister" and seems proud of everything that Nora does. Erin also seems unfazed by Nora's crying which is good. Nora hates her car seat and is usually screaming in the car (strange because she is otherwise so mellow). Erin often wants to try to make Nora feel better, so says "It's okay Nora, don't cry, it's ok." Unfortunately, Erin can't be heard over Nora's cries, so she turns up the volume until she's yelling "it's okay Nora!" repeatedly at the top of her lungs. Needless to say, by the time we arrive at our destination, my nerves are a little frayed.



Erin has gotten more and more into pretend play over the last few months and it's great to see what she comes up with. Today she made a tent on the porch and played with Grandpa and her babies in there. Most days we play "Birchwood" and "school" at least a few dozen times and Erin still loves to pack and go on trips. She made a reading fort yesterday and insisted that we all come in for story time. She also loves to try role reversal and will often tell Grandpa that she is the Grandpa and he is the baby. She's certainly continues to have a strong sense of how things should be and can get downright bossy if we let her.


Erin also is still having fun with word games. When she "reads" books to her babies and when she sings to herself at bedtime, she makes up her own language which she finds hilarious. She also loves to try saying words with odd accents and with intonation that is off and again, she cracks herself up.

We also seem to have finally won the keeping poop out of the pull-up battles that raged for so long. We made a potty chart and have her earning prizes and she's finally decided that the prizes are better than driving us crazy, so she's been good for about 2 weeks now. I think that I'm going to phase out the chart over the next few weeks. I am getting a little tired of scouring the target dollar bin, but this is way better than changing a poopy pull-up every night.


We had a low key Father's Day yesterday, but did enjoy spending time with Matt and Dean. Erin especially liked the "bessert" portion of the day and seemed to like rootbeer floats just as much as Daddy.