15 Months and a Run for My Money

Our Nora girl is 15 months old!  She is a spitfire hurricane!  Seriously, every toddler cliche applies to this girl.  She loves the toilet, the outlets, the heat vent covers, throws tantrums like a pro, climbs the tables to dance, pulls chairs to reach things that are not appropriate and so much more.  She has to be watched constantly.  For example: this is a real list of things that happened in one week while being supervised...1. she put cat poop in her mouth 2. She pulled raw chicken out of the garbage can 3. She received a shock while pulling a night light out of the socket.  I think she will live to see two but she is going to have some injuries along the way! 

She loves being outside and playing with her brothers.  She loves when daddy comes home and hates when mom leaves.  She is the worst at teething and is up at night a good number of days of the week.  Can't wait for all those teeth to come in.  She looks huge to me and acts older than she is.  If only we could get a few more words from her to better understand her wants maybe some of those tantrums could be avoided...but probably not.  :)

I love putting dresses on her.  I only really do it on Sunday but I sure love dressing her up. I wish she'd let me put bows and flowers and headbands on, but no.  She hates them all.

Also, in case you are wondering, the mark on her forehead is from a burn she got from grabbing the flat iron that I accidentally left on.  Mommy fail.  :(

She is one curious girl and loves exploring how the world works.  She is also starting to really love books.  She has opinions about things and likes being able to choose things.  If you put out some options of blankets or books or whatever she will carefully look over all the choices and deliberately make her choice.  It's hilarious. 

She loves imitating others.  She will mimic words in intonation and sounds and these next few pictures she was imitating Jacob behind me who was crouching down and then standing up...so Nora was doing the same.

Nora gives the best hugs and kisses.  Full arms around the neck, and kisses on the cheek and lips with a smacking sound included. 

She is a joy to have in our home even with all the mischief and tantrums.  I can't imagine our lives without her.  We all LOVE Nora!

Halloween

We didn't go to the pumpkin patch this year.  I think I'm still sad about that.  But I was too busy replacing carpet in the boys closet because they had turned their closet into a urinal (grrrrr).  It was part of their consequence for that behavior but I'm pretty sure I was the one who cared the most about missing the pumpkin patch experience.  Oh well. 

We ended up picking up a pumpkin while running errands on the Saturday before Halloween and carved our solo pumpkin the following Sunday.  Nora loved watching it all.  She was fascinated by the pumpkin guts.  But she didn't want to touch them too much.  And Ben flat refused to help with the scraping.  Isaac did a little bit of it, but Jacob did the most.

This white pumpkin was actually pretty cool.  The whole thing glowed with the candle inside.  It was neat.  Too bad I didn't get any pictures on actual Halloween night.  We had friends over for dinner and trick or treating that night and I got busy with that and neglected pictures all together.  Halloween fail I guess.  But the actual dinner and trick or treating was a success so that's all that really matters I suppose.  

Anyway...back to pumpkin carving.

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Ben and Isaac were super excited that I let them help carve with a real knife.  I guess I was feeling brave this year.

This year we took the easy route for Halloween and bought costumes.  The kids loved these swat police officers so we just decided to go for it.  I'm hoping they keep using them as dress ups throughout the year.  They played with them the whole week of Halloween at least. 

These pictures are from the day of Jacob's work party. His work party was a full 5 days before Halloween, the day before Isaac's birthday.  It was a busy week!

I can't get over Ben in these photos.  He's using his binoculars and walkie talkie like they are real.  So funny!

And Nora!  She killed it at the work party.  Everyone loved watching her walk with the wagging dragon/dinosaur tail.  I scored this costume at a yard sale for $5.00 brand new.  She had a love hate relationship with it.  She did not love the hat because it kept falling into her eyes.  But she couldn't get enough of watching herself walk with those feet.  So cute and funny.

We brought home a few balloons from the work party and the kids loved playing with them the next day.  Until I got tired of them and popped them.  I had to retrieve them from the super high ceiling too many times.

We had really warm weather for actual Halloween and it was so fun.  Dinner and trick or treating with friends was great!  The boys were troopers and trick or treated almost our whole neighborhood.  Ben petered out a little earlier than Isaac and chose to walk along with me.  Nora was sent home really early with Grace and her younger daughter, Lauren.  I was done with Nora wanting her candy and not wanting to stay in the stroller.  She was loving being out at night and would have stayed longer if I let her.  Too bad baby girl.  Maybe next year.  

Birthday Season

We are at the beginning of our Birthday season.  It seems from Isaac's birthday until Jacob's in January we are busy.  I guess that's because most of the birthdays in this house are close to holidays too.  Busy times for sure.  The week of Isaac's birthday felt especially crazy this year with work halloween party, young women's activity, birthday celebration at school and the ward halloween party.  It was madness.  But we did manage to celebrate in our usual Brunson way.  We started the day with opening parts of the birthday snake.  It's a good thing Jacob remembered it the night before.  Oh boy...one almost midnight, post YW meeting, trip to Walmart and done.  :)

And then later that night we had birthday meal (Isaac requested homemade mac and cheese with cucumber sticks as a side) and opened family birthday gifts.

Siblings have such a hard time when it's not their birthday.  Nora wanted to be all up in Isaac's business and didn't get the "only the birthday kiddo gets to be on the blanket" rule.  Isaac was a good sport about it all though.  He really is getting so much older and more mature.  Cute kid!

And then it was cake time!  H requested chocolate cake and then didn't eat a speck of it.  Later he told me "I don't really like cake."  Um, noted.  We'll do something different next year.  

And then he was super funny and blew out his candles before we even had time to sing to him.  He laughed and then said "oops, I forgot."  It was cute. 

Oh Isaac.  What to say about this six year old.  He is super smart and super active and sometimes still super naughty.  He has a hard time with self control especially in regards to hurting others.  He tends to get a little to physical too often.  But on the plus side, he is mellowing too.  His tantrums are far less frequent and his helpfulness is far greater.  He is curious about everything and wants to touch and explore.  This is both good and bad.  He often breaks things as a consequence of his exploration but he also learns a lot and knows a lot about how things work.  He reads like a champ!  I think he is at a second grade reading level.  And he also excels at math and science.  He is less thrilled with writing and coloring exercises.  He is super clever and retains information easily.  He is funny!  I do love having him around.  Glad he made me a mom six years ago!

Happy Birthday Handsome Isaac!