Gobble Gobble

I wanted to start this post off with a "holy crap" moment I had the other day. Cora's 9 month "birthday" marks a special time for me. 9 months in, 9 months out. Even though she is technically only 9 months old, she has been our baby for 18 months now. She has consumed every thought in my head for the last 18 months. She has made both Lee and me smile every day for the last 18 months. I have been having thoughts back to when she was Baby J. I think about how beautiful I thought she was when we had our 3D ultrasound. Nothing prepared me for how incredible she has been as my outside baby for the last 9 months. She is pure joy.

We had Canadian Thanksgiving this last weekend. This officially marks Cora's first Thanksgiving!! We had a great time. Lots of friends, lots of food, and lots of wine. Twelve people were at our house to celebrate turkey dinner and watch football on Sunday. Cora loved having everyone over. She was the only kiddo, so she had lots of attention. We played Cranium and Settlers of Catan. Settlers of Catan is the most fun board game. I highly recommend it to everyone! Stephanie and Doug stayed over on Sunday night because they live outside of Edmonton. Cathy's boyfriend who lives in Calgary was also here. It was great because Thanksgiving definitely drifted over into Monday. Seven people at breakfast is always fun. :) We had snow all weekend long. Big huge snowflakes. It was beautiful. The pictures of Thanksgiving are pretty bad because we had drank a lot of wine... LOL! But, I'll post some anyways.

We didn't have a table large enough to accommodate everyone. Not even when Cathy brought up her table.

Cora loved her Thanksgiving dinner. She slept through the actual dinner so she had leftovers in the kitchen. She had turkey, cranberries, sweet potato bake, mashed potatoes with gravy, curried cauliflower, baked brie, and a couple bites of pumpkin pie. The little Bug can eat!

We of course weren't going to let her eat by herself. Here is Cathy and Lindsey enjoying dessert and wine while Cora literally stuffed her face.

Cathy's whip cream was goooooood!

Cora had a huge crush on Chris. He is from Britain, accent and all. We joked all weekend that British accents always get the girls to fall hard. LOL.

Cora also wouldn't leave Steve alone. She doesn't understand that she can't drink everything that is in a "big kid" glass. She also doesn't understand that not everyone enjoys baby drool on their beer bottle. She'll learn. Hehehe.

She played and laughed all day. She is such a happy little kid. A well dressed one, too. Thanks Grandma Jo. :)

For all the yelling and running around during Cranium, I thought she would have been scarred for life. Again, Cora is a trooper.

Cora was one happy baby when she woke up on Monday morning to find that there were still a lot of people to play with.

Today, we had a Jeffers Family Outing. It was great. We loaded into the car and headed out for a late lunch. Then we drove on over to the.....Flu Clinic! Woo Hoo. Seasonal flu shots for the whole family. It was such a great bonding experience. LOL. Cora did awesome. She only shed a couple tears. Lee, on the other hand, was a mess. I've never seen a grown man cry so hard. Hahaha. No, not really. We're all fine from the needle poking extravaganza. Cora will have to head back in for a booster in about a month. Then we should be ready for our H1N1. Those vaccines are supposed to be ready sometime in November. Maybe that will be Lee's birthday present. ;)

We had Cora weighed before getting the shots. She is starting to look a bit cramped in her carseat, so I wanted to make sure she hadn't exceeded the seat's weight and height limits. All is good, but the Bug is huge! She weighed a whopping 20 lbs 5 oz! I am not sure I completely believe these stats. This means she has gained 2.4 lbs in less than a month. She definitely has had a growth spurt, but I didn't think it was that much. These weights are from two different scales which could attribute a lot to error. Who knows. What I do know is that Cora is getting bigger and more beautiful by the minute. She can steal a heart in less than 5 seconds. At least a dozen strangers stopped to chat with Thumbelina just today. Cora, being the charmer she is, just smiles and waves. "Grandparent-aged" folks are her weakest victims. She sucks them in every time. She is really starting to move about. She is crawling on all fours now. She still army crawls quite a bit, but she is pulling up onto her knees more and more every day. She is also starting to cruise with great agility. Today she traveled from a chair over to the window without sitting down to crawl. It was a great accomplishment! Lee and I love being able to watch her achievements. Parents really are their children's biggest fans. :)

9.5 month old photo shoot. These were taken before shots. :) She looked just as happy minutes after.

Lee leaves tomorrow for his annual fishing trip at Nestor Falls on Lake of the Woods in Ontario. He is very excited. I am too. He brings home lots of good fish for the winter dinner table. YUMMY! Here is a picture from last year. I hope he isn't too cold this year. It was chilled down really quick this year. Brrrr. This link here takes you to the blog post from his trip last year. Check the last picture and last paragraph.