A Dozen Pearly Whites

Cora hit a milestone this past week. She finally has a symmetrical pairing of teeth in her mouth. Granted, her hold-out-of-a-lower-left incisor has not reached its full height yet, but it has poked all the way through!

You may be asking yourself why this is such a big deal. Well, it's not. I just need an excuse to write down this huge difference in my girls' tooth experiences (and also celebrate Cora's lack of Jack-O-Lanternness before it returns in 5 years with the losing of baby teeth).


Ally's baby teeth arrived in predictable pairs with very little complaining or fan-fair. Cora's have all shown up sporadically and in random order after months of uncomfortable teething and irritation. I mean, what kind of child grows a one-year molar before acquiring any usable pairing of front teeth? (Her fourth tooth, on the bottom, remained short and very crooked for quite some time. Her second tooth, on the top, made up for this by growing comically long.) I'm impressed she was able to eat so well. I never bothered to record the dates of each tooth, but above is their order of appearance.

The after-Christmas Party

***This is another "throwback" blog. Blogs about our recent marathon vacation should be coming soon, but you all know by now how that goes. I just couldn't blog about our visit with Jess in NC before blogging about her visit with us in WA-- albeit 7 months ago.***

Jan 7-17, 2011

Ten hours after all our Christmas visitors left, Cora took her first steps.
Six days later, our friend Jess arrived for some post-holiday fun.
Here is what I remember:

We took Jess to Leavenworth, WA. That's the small town outside of Wenatchee that decided to turn itself into a touristy Bavarian getaway in order to survive. We drove through George, Washington on our way-- nothing much there other than a gas station, a water tower, and this bust of George.


We stayed at the same hotel as our previous visit so we could watch the old man stand precariously on the railing and play his long alphorn while we ate breakfast. We swam in the indoor pool, pretended to take a sleigh ride in the lobby, window-shopped around town, ate a German dinner, saw some snowflakes, and took in all the Christmas decorations.


We're always looking for interesting things to do in the Tri-Cities. One afternoon we followed this van to the TRAC for the gun show. Not something any of us needs to do again anytime soon. It was advertised as an antique show as well, but the majority of it was guns and related paraphernalia. Bullets, rifles, stun guns, tasers, pepper spray, or bear mace anyone?



This pic of Ally was by far my favorite part:






We took the girls to the park one afternoon. I'm pretty sure this was Cora's first time going down a slide. Ally was a great big sister and stayed right next to Cora, holding her hand the whole way.

We took Jess to see the Christmas lights at the local landscaping office one night. We sat in the car listening to music, while the lights flickered and danced to the songs.

Jess took me to the eye doctor so I could finally get some new glasses and contacts. The frames (and lenses) I had been wearing were over ten years old; my newest pair broke back in 2008 when Ally pulled them off my face in the middle of church just before we moved to WA. I'd been wearing my "back-ups" ever since. (Why does it take me so long to get anything done?)

I was able to finish Cora's baby quilt. Jess and I had picked out the fabrics, cut the squares, and decided on a pattern during one of her previous visits. I guess it's fitting that she got to see it through to the end; I just wish it hadn't taken me (us) over a year to complete.










We also started on my apron, which I later finished in March. It's an adult-sized lap apron, but Ally likes to wear it around her chest when her own belly protector is dirty. (Can you see Cora in the background, happily rearranging the contents of our recycling bins?)



Well, I believe that covers all the time we spent together, except for all the chatting and the solving of all our problems, too.

We tried to get Jess to live in our basement and be our nanny, but she ultimately chose to hop back on the plane and return to NC.

Bubbling with Delight

Home

July 22, 2010

Jess took us to the airport and sent us home to Chris.

Here's the top of Mount Rainier from the plane.
Forty minutes later we landed and our adventure was over.

Into the Woods and Finding Our Marbles

July 18-21, 2010

The last leg of our great East Coast Adventure was spent with my pseudo-sister Jessica. Grandma and Grandpa Hoffman drove us out to her parents' house in Raleigh and kissed us good-bye. I remember hanging out with her family and eating dinner there; Ally remembers watching "The Little Mermaid" with Jess' sister, but I'm not so sure it was on this trip. (See what happens when you wait a year to write stuff down?) I am sure that we eventually made it over to Jess' townhouse south of Chapel Hill and that Ally had multiple breakdowns and tantrums over the following few days. I think it was a combination of being on the move for 3 weeks and being a typical(?) 3-year-old.
We walked down Franklin Street and had lunch at a Mediterranean Cafe, after waiting half an hour for the parking lot employee to finish tinkering with the broken pay station. We drove by the UNC Hospitals buildings where I used to work, and we took some pictures of the LDS Institute chapel where Chris and I first met and used to go to church. We also visited Jess' mom at the birth center and showed off Ally and Cora to her coworkers.
One time Jess stayed inside and studied statistics with Cora while Ally and I took a little nature walk down Jess' road. We took lots of pictures, and we collected sticks and stones and pine cones. (We also gathered the 4-piece remains of a picked-apart butterfly, then scotch taped it back together for Jess. I'm positive that morbid piece of artistic expression is still hanging on her fridge.)








Ally is an insect magnet. She saw 3 live butterflies, got 15 mosquito bites, and ended up hosting a tick on her upper thigh for a few hours. When we discovered the tick, Jess and I had to do some emergency "surgery". At first Ally was very afraid we were going to take her whole leg off as we got her into position to remove the tick with a pair of tweezers. Her eventual bravery was rewarded with a soda and a trip to Maple View Farm for some ice cream.
Our last day in NC was spent at the Marbles Museum in downtown Raleigh. Cora laughed and giggled and enjoyed being carried around while Ally hopped from activity to activity. She hula-hooped, drove a truck, gardened and bought groceries, played princess dress-up, sawed some wood, raced a small car, ate lunch with some hockey players, did a few science experiments, counted big money, and tried her hand at cheerleading. Don't believe me? Click to zoom in on the pics and don't forget to watch the video. I'm still wondering who taught her all those excellent moves. . .

Hoffman Horseplay

July 16-18, 2010

We said good-bye to Taunja and Brittany, then we drove back to Selma so we could spend one final weekend with Grandma and Grandpa Hoffman. I was hoping to eat more of Paul's peanut butter balls, but Sarah had finished them all off by then.
The girls enjoyed hanging out with Grandpa and Grandma, eating popsicles on the back porch while the thunderstorms rolled in, and playing with cousin Nate-Nate's toys. It was so nice of him to share like that.

Before we left the Hoffman house, we took pictures of Cora and Ally on Norma's wooden rocking horse. She says she rode on it when she was a little girl (which makes it very, very, very, very old!) and that her grandmother is the one who painted it. It's a neat piece of family history.

el Cuatro de Julio 2011

Now for something a little more recent:

Chris put on a mini fireworks display yesterday afternoon for us. Then he did an encore presentation for Ally around 9:30pm when it was finally dark outside. He lit a bull whip, two egg-laying hens, some killer bees, and a standing stick that shoots off purple fire. We also messed around with some sparklers. Cora and Ally didn't like the loud popping sounds, but they did enjoy watching the sparks fly.


This morning we dressed in our red, white, and blues and drove out to Pasco for the Fourth of July Parade. We found out that Cora has a fear of horses. She whined "horse, horse!" and cuddled tightly on Chris when they marched by, and there were a lot of them in this parade. Ally enjoyed collecting the candy that was thrown, and she did a very good job staying safe by following Daddy's instruction to not cross the white line in the street. At one point she was running for a piece of candy and stopped dead in her tracks when her toes hit the line. She left the just-out-of-reach candy on the ground and walked away. Way to be obedient!


We didn't see any remarkable mullets this year, but we did spot a girl in a dance troupe who was sporting a comically large pink tutu. We also never saw my paleta man, so no arroz con leche popsicles for me. Sad, but I still enjoyed the parade.