Oy Chanukah, Oy Chanukah, it's Cora Menorah...

Hanukkah's here! Jump and cheer! It feels like I haven't updated this thing in a year!

Seriously though, Hanukkah has come to the Robbins household in full force and Cora is LOVING IT. She walks around the house saying "dindle? dindle?". For the longest time I thought she was referring to dinner, but it turns out she means "dreidel". She has already sort of figured out how to spin the dreidel on her own, because she is her father's child. We took them out about a month ago and I'm almost nervous to put them away because that girl is going to go through some serious dreidel withdrawal. She also loves this one travel menorah we have and she can often be found walking around the house with it. (Oh yeah, she walks now.)

Meanwhile, the weather has been pretty cold! The other day I whipped up some bubbles in my stand mixer and let Cora have a go at them. I was amazed at how much entertainment she got out of a little soap and water. I'm going to have to be creative if we're going to make it through this winter. The other day I made play dough. Apparently having a stand mixer is totally necessary for toddler moms. Nobody told me this, so I'm glad I registered for one anyway! 

I hope you're all having a wonderful holiday season so far. We are having Sean's family over for candle lighting tomorrow, and then next week we will head to my parents' house! It has been really fun to see Cora start to understand the holidays a little bit more. She likes to "help" cook our holiday meals, and she DEFINITELY understands presents. She loves to watch the menorahs be lit and claps after we say the blessings. She certainly gives us something to be thankful for each day!

Happy Holidays to all!

Well, this is interesting...

It appears that I haven't updated since before Cora turned one! I guess once you have a one year-old life sort of takes off, doesn't it? We've been keeping ourselves busy. Sean worked 14-hour days all through September, so I was busy chasing around Little C by myself. She's still not walking on her own, but she'll stand for a couple seconds if you trick her into it. At 15 months old we're starting to get a little frustrated by it. We'll see other kids much younger than her running around at the park or the store and we wish that Cora would go play with them, but know that she'll do things in her own time. The good news is, she's still so teeny that people assume she's about 10 months old. ;)

We took a trip to Florida in October...in the car. Yes, we may be a little bit crazy, but our kiddo was great! We went to Disney to meet Mr. and Mr. Mouse, and more importantly Cora got to meet my grandparents for the first time, She still gets excited when she watches videos and sees pictures from our trip, which tells me that it was totally worth it. It was our first "big vacation" with her, although to be fair she DID already go to Disney World once before she was born.

Well...that's pretty much what's going on in these parts. Looking forward to Thanksgiving (when I may or may not update again!) Here are a few pictures to tide you over.

11 months old!

I cannot wrap my head around the fact that Cora will be one in less than a month! We're getting all set for her (our) birthday party, although I'm so excited to see how she reacts to everything that I'm not really planning anything super special for my own birthday! It will be interesting to see over the years how we combine the celebration for both of our birthdays. I think when she gets older I'll take her out to a few of the places that offer free treats on your birthday and we can indulge together.

We've been enjoying the summer so much that I haven't updated. Our new house has lots of garden plots, so I find myself busy in the yard a lot checking on the things that we have planted while Cora hangs out and tries to eat the grass. The WEIRDEST weed has infiltrated our garden plots. Radishes! I'm not sure how they got there, because they are in all of our plots strewn across the yard. They're BIG too! Like the size of really big carrots! Upon consultation with my gardener friends and Garden Expert Google, it turns out there's a type of radish that is weed-like in nature and we have been the lucky recipient. Unfortunately, we aren't huge radish fans (except Little Miss C will eat them raw...weirdo) and we also get them from our CSA most weeks. There are seriously at least 50 in our yard that I'm constantly pulling. Tried to ship them to my radish-loving friend in CA...you can't ship radishes from the post office. The good news is, I didn't totally fail at my first year of gardening! We have tons of cherry tomatoes that are just-about ready to pick, we got a few strawberries earlier in the season, and definitely some zucchini. We may even have cantaloupe that's sprouting, but I'm doubtful as it just seems like it was too easy for such a heavy fruit.

All of that is to say that we've been busy as usual! Sean was out of town for work this week, so I had my hands full with a kiddo who has recently learned to army crawl. It's so exciting to see her move around! I'm not sure I mentioned this before on the blog, but she's been getting a little bit of PT since she's a bit behind in her gross motor development. Little Miss is a bit too content to just sit and play with her toys that are in front of her, and not quite as motivated to move. Well, she was anyway! Now she's scooting everywhere on her belly. She's become quite the chatterbox as well! Here's a little clip to show you what her squeaky voice sounds like:

It's super adorable and slightly grating at the same time.

We had a fun Fourth of July at home. Since Sean was leaving town on Sunday, it was nice to still have a full weekend and we decided to spend the time just as our little family. We grilled hot dogs and I made yummy berry lemonade popsicles. Cora and Sean preferred the store-bought kind...

Don't these look way more delicious?

So that's what has been going on around the Robbins nest! Hopefully I'll update again before she turns one, but I would be pretty impressed with myself if I actually remembered to do that.

Time is FLYING!

I can't believe Cora is less than two months away from being a year old! Birthday party plans are in the works and her one-year doctor's appointment has been scheduled. She's learning so much every day and it's fun to see her little personality come through.

A true member of here mother's family, she loves being the center of attention. At a meeting I had the other day she stood up in my lap and started clapping at everyone to make sure they were watching her. Of course, they all were.

We have had some pretty crazy weather in these parts over the past week. The other night we had a fun little midnight party in the basement when the tornado sirens went off. Cora had lots of fun playing blocks with Daddy while Mommy frantically scanned the weather radar for an hour. Luckily she slept in the next morning. She and I are both getting a little stir crazy though. The park is one of our favorite destinations and we've missed out this week. I think it's supposed to rain fairly constantly until TUESDAY! I'm considering filling up the splash pool in the middle of our kitchen floor.

In other news, Little Miss has two teeth now! She's trying hard to figure out how to give a toothy smile with hilarious results.

We spent Father's Day weekend in Chicago with my parents. Cora had fun with her YiaYia and Bump while we got to go to a White Sox game! It was a short little trip, we came back Saturday night and spent Sunday watching the Honduras-France game with Sean.

Most recently, Cora has a "word" sort of! She's started saying "banana" and even screamed "NANANA!" when she saw Sean holding one at breakfast. I'm dreading the day when we're out somewhere and she berates a stranger for not sharing their banana with her.

Cora's latest trick!

She may not crawl or stand on her own, but at least she's gotten one thing down! And she thinks it's hilarious.

Feeling like big brother...

When we were deciding what baby luxuries to buy when Cora was born we had to really think about what was "worth it" to us and what was just a scam to get parents to throw their money at baby stores. We ultimately decided that buying one of those fancy video monitors was SO not worth the extra $100 and frankly I thought they were a little creepy. So we picked up a cheapo $20 monitor at Toys r Us.

WELL now that we have a house instead of a teeny apartment things have changed! Cora likes to wake up and talk to herself in the crib, and sometimes it's hard to tell if she's crying or just screeching at her ceiling light. So when we saw a great deal on Zulily for a video monitor we agreed that it was time to take the plunge. Sean set it up yesterday and so far I love it! The best part is that I can see how she gets into all of her weird sleep positions. She's relatively immobile, but it seemed like she was getting to places that should have only been accessible through crawling.

Turns out the kid is just an expert roller! She knows how to get the perfect angle to get into that corner that she wants to explore.

So that's something new in the Robbins nest! I hope you all had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. We spent a lot of time relaxing and had my family over for a barbecue. It's always so great to spend time with them, and one of our first gatherings in our new house! Here are a few cute pictures from the past week.

Hanging out in the park with Mama

At the zoo checking out the giraffes

Yes, I let my baby sit on the counter and play with an apple.

Family pic at the zoo

Learning how to computer.

Roll to bookshelf...use foot to grab books?

Oh, I forgot to mention Cora grows yarn hair now

Starting her early! Play food in the kitchen.

Good day, sunshine!

On Wednesday it was in the 70s here! It was hard to believe after the terrible winter we've had that the sun would come again, but it did! So Cora and I lathered sunscreen all over our pasty white skin and took a walk to the park in our new neighborhood.

She loved it! She was much more interested in watching the girl next to her laugh and swing than her own personal swinging, but we enjoyed the sunshine. I can't wait for all of the fun summer activities in our future. We keep getting little tastes of warm weather;  a dip in the splash pool here, sinking our feet into the sandbox...etc, but I'm hoping that spring is finally here to stay! Because...well..you know, it's MAY and all.