My Favorite Cora Photos: Months 8-9, Part 3

Happy Saturday! I hope it is just what you want it to be- productive? relaxing? filled with a 90210 marathon? I am going to start the day out in one of my favorite ways... with a look at some photos of my sweetie babytoddler!

Aww she is not sporting nearly as much chub these days and I have to say I miss it a little bit.

Spoons were her favorite toys for a while. 

 Mandatory monthly photo of silly time playing with dad. 

Family photo.  Professionally taken, obviously.

I realize now that the huge flower clip on top of her head looks a bit silly. For some reason it made sense to me at the time. In my defense, she did need something of the sort to keep hair out of her eyes.

Silly girl! 

Everyone needs one of those super upright flattest-bill-in-the-world baseball caps from the 80s. This one is from my dad's old company.

A little smile! And a baby who looks a lot like her daddy.

Lookin' good with your sweet potato, Cora! 

Park blanket time! 

Another of her favorite toys: keys! 

Cora was not a star with the baseball bat at this point so Scott showed off his skillz. 

Cora showed off her grass-eating skillz! 

And her toy-eating skillz!

I cropped a lot of this photo out to minimize your Scott-rear exposure.

It might not look like it in this photo, but Scott and Cora were having so much fun here! #thebestmoments (shhhh just let the subconscious hashtag usage happen). 

More Cora time:

month 0-1, month 1-2, month 2-3, month 3-4a, month 3-4b, month 4-5a, month 4-5b, month 5-6a, month 5-6b, month 6-7a, month 6-7b, month 7-8a, month 7-8b, month 8-9a, month 8-9b

Entertaining Herself... 16 Month Old BabyToddler, Part 1

These days, it is more about Cora entertaining herself than about me entertaining her. A dish towel can keep her busy for hours.

Here are some of the activities that have been keeping Cora occupied recently:

• Opening and closing things. Doors, cabinets, everything! Ever since she has been able to crawl she has been trying her hardest to get the fridge or the freezer open. Once she was holding a wooden spoon and she wedged into into the door and it popped open. She was extremely proud of herself!

• Coloring. Cora's love for coloring grew quickly. We tried it one week and she couldn't have cared less. The next week, that babytoddler of mine says "blue" (which is her word for "give me those crayons, lady") at least 50 times a day.

• Dish Towel. Like I said earlier, Cora is wild for dish towels or for any small piece of fabric she can get her hands on. She will use them as blankets for her stuffed animals. She will play the "how flat can I get this to lay" game. Dish towels can be hats. The possibilities are endless.

• Trying to put things around her neck usually by holding her chin to her chest to get them to stay. This one she does with dish towels, ribbons, spoons, pretty much anything. She loves to check to see if she can turn her chin into a third arm. Spoiler alert: she can!

• Animal sounds and activities. Her favorite is to stick her tongue in and out quickly when I ask what a lizard does. She knows the basic ones pretty well so we moved on to some of the less known animal sounds. What does a llama say? Well according to what I taught Cora, a llama opens its mouth really wide and does a guttural "ama" sound. I'm not really sure how that happened. Cora is still convinced that dogs only pant rather than bark. My sister and I taught her to say "addle addle" (meaning waddle waddle) when she talks about penguins.

• As always, the library and the park. She could entertain herself for hours at either of these places. Don't worry- I don't let her entertain herself alone there.

• Sweeping. Cora regularly gets out the broom and waves it around the kitchen. For Christmas, she got a Cora-sized broom that she is pretty into.

• Reading books. There are books ALL OVER our house and Cora is constantly going through them. Sometimes she likes to read them up-side-down. But, only every once in a while.

In this photo she was still in the eat books rather than read books phase.

• Spinning around. Cora figured out that spinning around in a circle was pretty fun right around her 15 month birthday. She loves it! She spins around or, more accurately put, walks around in a fairly tight circle. Then, as you would expect, the dizzies set in and she starts her wobbling and squatting down to avoid the impeding nose dive.

See that dizzy look in her eyes? She is on about spin number 6.

• Spinning the chair around. As much as Cora loves spinning herself around she loves spinning our swivel chair around just as much. Her favorite is to put a couple of her stuffed animals in there and let them go for a ride.

• Cuddles! ahhhh I never thought I would see the day. But it has finally come! For the last week and a half she has given me some serious cuddles for the 5 minutes before I put her in bed at night. I always say, "I love you SOOOO much." Then she will name everyone she knows (including Santa and dogs) and I will tell her that they love her too. It is the sweetest moment ever.  And I know this isn't exactly entertaining herself. But I do occasionally catch her cuddling some of her stuffed animals.
  
  
  
  Cora was only 2 months old in this photo and this was one of the last times that she cuddled me excluding when she would wake up in the middle of the night.
  
  
  
  
  I will be back in a week or so with another riveting post about the other ways that Cora entertains herself!
  
  

Sardis Park Reopens

This is a little something for my Charlotte peeps!

Parks & Rec. style!

That's right people... 
It is time to Treat Yo 'Self to a little Parks and Recreation update!

We have a park close to our house called Sardis Park. It is right across the street from our favorite local farm.

The farm is open for business on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Often times, we will do the ol' farm-playground combo.

The park closed down for over a month for renovations.
But it is back! And it is back with a vengeance! 

Cora and I stopped by there yesterday to check it out and they have some pretty awesome stuff going on.

There were a few other spin-y type things to play on that you can't tell in this photo. If I were an 8 year old I would have lost my mind with excitement. I still constantly think about all of the amazing parks in Australia and how jealous I was of the kids who got to play on them all the time. This park is helping us even the score a tiny bit.

Cora still likes the swings best.

Cora Side Note... You see the shirt she is wearing above? Well, she is obsessed with it! Yesterday, we also went to the library and every person who said anything to her she would immediately start pulling at her shirt, pointing to it, and panting like a dog until she thought that they had sufficiently appreciated how awesome her shirt was. 

We gave the new slides and tunnel a whirl. Cora liked climbing all over the playground. But the big kids were giving us a bit of the stink-eye for taking too long.

So, we moved to the old toddler play area.

If I didn't have Cora with me I would have been swinging like crazy on the stand-up spinner.

And that is the end of my PSA about Charlotte Parks!

YOU ARE WELCOME!