Love Letters

Apparently Corinne has a secret admirer that uses secret ink that only Corinne can read. She finds letters addressed to her all over the house and then brings them to me and reads them:
Dear Corinne,
I love you!
I think we will have to put her on lockdown. All subsequent letters will be confiscated and investigated.
Dear Secret Admirer,
Corinne is much too young.

Success!

Monday morning I decided I would finally take on the daunting task I've been avoiding for months: potty-training Corinne. Every time I would think about doing it I quickly found reasons I couldn't start. Matthew was starting school, I had errands to run all week, people coming in to town to visit, going on vacation, etc. I finally just decided that there was never going to be a perfect time. I took away her pants and her diaper and made her go without bottoms on as much of the day as I could. I did put a diaper on the first few days during naps and bed time. Yesterday she finally went all day without a diaper including naptime and bedtime. Results: one urine accident and one poop accident, but the bed stayed dry. I think she was holding her poop in all week and went once early in the morning before I could take her diaper off and Friday she was pushing it back in when it tried to come out. Yesterday it finally fell to the floor and I made her pick it up (with toiletpaper) and flush it. Today, I found her on the toilet and she told me she was doing stinkies. And she did! Self-initiated poop in the toilet! Hooray! Next task: panties.

Girls Hair

If you've followed my blog for long you would know that I have struggled with Corinne and her hair almost all of her life. I may be a complete anomaly, but I haven't been overjoyed that she was born with tons of hair. Of course I thought she was adorable and always ran my fingers through the soft fine hair as I held her. But this was about as much as I enjoyed it. Soon she learned how to roll onto her back and sit up. Her newly acquired muscle strength combined with her super strong personality and long hair were not a good combination. She would move her head back and forth against the back of the stroller or carseat and rub her hair into knots and then proceeded to rub off her hair around her head. The hair grew back and the top stayed long so I could do some things with the top of the hair like pigtails. But then there's the struggle of getting a 6 month old to sit still while trying to put rubber bands or clips in her hair. Not easy. Then there is the bedhead problems.

Bedhead can also include post-nap head. Neither of which are very cute thereby necessitating the need for doing the hair and sometimes re-doing it if it's a complete disaster after naps. I struggled with these problems for a couple of years until a new one emerged: the hair as a comfort measure. This is a ubiquitous problem due to the frequency of her meltdowns. Notice in the picture the winding of the hair around and under her forefinger. This is my current struggle. I recently chopped 2 inches off her hair in an attempt to remedy the damage she has done with broken ends resulting in a hole on that side. I'm almost tempted to cut it all off. I threaten her every time I see her twisting her hair by getting out the scissors and telling her I will cut the knot out if I find one. She has now become proficient in undoing the knots she puts in her hair. I guess that means that problem is solved, right?

Which brings me to Nora. Don't get me wrong--I love Corinne. She has as much fun when she's happy as she's obnoxious when she's not. But it has been such a relief to have Nora, not only because of her sweet mellow personality, but because she is bald! All I have to do to get her hair ready is paste a little bow onto her head, and then only if I choose to. The only problem I have is a small case of cradle cap easily remedied with baby oil. No fighting, no screaming, and no knots.

What mother in her right mind would be grateful for a bald baby girl? This one.

"I'm not tired."

This is what I found ten minutes after he told me that.

Nora is 1

This is Nora first thing in the morning on her birthday. We've started a tradition of having balloons in the kids room when they have a birthday. It gets them excited about their birthday from when they first wake up.
Nora actually tried to blow out the candle and made it flicker. I ended up blowing it out for her. She would rather have tried to grab the flame.

Here Nora shows us how old she is now.

She loved her cake and managed not to get any on the floor.

This was her favorite gift. She couldn't stop smiling about it. Happy birthday sweet girl! We love having you in the family!

Creative Lyrics

For awhile Nora would scream whenever we'd take a car ride somewhere. Sometimes it would upset Corinne and Matthew and the ride would end in tears. We told the kids that the only way to keep Nora from screaming is to talk nice to her and sing nice songs to her. Matthew was good at saying nice things in a sweet voice and Corinne chose to sing nice songs. Often she would choose a song from her internal library and change the lyrics. One went as follows to the tune of Barney's "I love you" song:
"Nora don't
scream at me
I love you and you love me."

A few days later she made up another song:
"Twinkle twinkle little star
Please don't scream in the car."

I loved that this one even rhymed!

Fall 2009

So I'm a little behind in posting. We lost the adapter that connects the camera to the computer and I just barely found it. So here's what has been happening this Fall. First is Matthew's "man-ring." He was very attached to it after his pirate party and wore it to church and to school until he "lost" it. (Meaning I threw it away after he went to sleep.) He definitely thinks it is way cooler to be a girl than a boy right now. I'm just trying to not make a big deal of it. Yet.

Secondly, I celebrated turning 30 in September. I know there is only one candle. It's an ice cream cake and fire and ice cream don't go so well together.

We also made a few adventures to the apple orchard. I had to include a picture of Nora since she doesn't seem to make a debut on the blog very often. She's just so laid back and sweet that sometimes we don't realize she's there.

We picked out our large 25 pound pumpkin at the orchard too.

These are a few pics of Matthew's school in the peak of fall colors. We will definitely miss this picturesque walk to school when we move.

These are some other pics of some gorgeous fall colors around the apple orchard.

This is the best picture I got of my ghosts for Halloween. Matthew decided this year that he wanted to be a ghost. And since Corinne has to do everything Matthew does, she had to be a ghost too. I felt a little lame just putting cut up sheets on the kids when all the other kids have nice costumes, but they wanted to be ghosts. And I'm not buying a ghost costume when I can make one myself. And they were happy. Everyone got a loud "Boo!" from Corinne as she went trick-or-treating.

Grandma and Grandpa Strong came out for a week to see the fall colors, but they just missed the peak by about a week or two. There were still a few colorful trees out but not like it was. Now there are the oak trees that turn brown. Not so pretty. We did find milkweed seeds that blow in the wind that the kids loved.

Grandma and Grandpa also accompanied us to the Mark Twain house and Harriet Beecher Stowe house in Hartford, CT. They lived right next to each other at the same time. Matthew here as Tom Sawyer and Corinne as Becky.