May 2021! Happy Birthday Nora!!!

Nora turned one in May! She's a happy, adventurous girl who always has something to say and loves anything soft and fuzzy. Grandma TT was in town for her birthday! We visited the Japanese Friendship Garden and had a birthday Zoom session with family. Unfortunately, Nora was super sleepy/grumpy during the family Zoom session, so we postponed her cake until she had a chance to nap.

Nora has started walking, saying more words, and signing for more things like banana and all done. Her favorite word to say is "done". She over-pronounces it, saying "duh-uhn". She also when through a phase of violently slamming food into her mouth while grunting "AH!" - that lasted a few days and was quite entertaining :). Nora can walk about 5-6 steps at a time before she decides she's all done and sits back down. She seems to prefer crawling and walking on her knees for now instead :). She LOVES reading books with us. She grabs her preferred book, holds it out and grunts at us until we read it - sometimes the same book 5-6 times.

Ben is doing great, too! He's still enjoying school - he tells us all about which friends are "nice" and which do "bad stuff" (which I'm sure isn't bad at all, it's just filtered through Ben). He loves to tell us stories about himself and Nora. He also likes to pretend he's driving our van when we're driving around - he pretends he's steering with his feet on the back of the front seat. One of his favorite activities is playing his guitar and singing songs for us. He makes up rhymes with words like "imitation" and just pours his heart and soul into it :). I would post a video, but it's not exactly easy on the ears. Lol.

In addition to celebrating Nora's birthday, we visited the Phoenix Zoo, the Japanese Friendship Garden, the Uptown Farmers Market, took a weekend trip down to Tucson to say hi to Aunt Debbie and Uncle Joe, AND moved to a new house! We were a little sad to move our of our old house - it was the first one we've ever owned and it was the house that we lived in when both Ben and Nora were born. We hope to make many fun, new memories in our new house!

Ben-isms this month: