SO BIG! And Other Things....

Well, we've always known this, but Noella thinks she is so big. The only difference is now, she can express it herself (sort of). She's teething (of course) so this video ends in fussing. See it at the end of this post.

Also, Uncle Alex requested photos of the soccer jersey he sent from Belgium. Behold our future soccer player:

And because all of our blogs are really just to post cute new pictures and video of Noella, here are some other new randoms:

Date night with Liam (her bf). You can tell he's more thrilled than she.

Taking a break from trying to eat the deep freeze

Carhartt Baby Model

All this picture posing makes "Moose America" thirsty

Summer is slowly slipping away from us here, but we don't mind. It means cool mornings and evenings, beautiful sunsets, and, of course, the coming of fall. We can't wait to go through the seasons with Noella.

Beautiful Sunset over the Columbia

I'm sure we will have more news in the upcoming weeks. We have visitors from Southern OR this weekend, and then we are taking our first (*deep breath*) camping trip with the dog and baby labor day weekend. Yeah, why not make your first camping trip with a baby on the busiest camping weekend known to man?

And who can believe this was almost exactly a year ago? :

Noella Lately

Here is the latest video of NoJo. I literally recorded this morning. We miss all of you lots!

Child Labor

We decided that Noella is old enough to do some work around here. She can't just crawl around and play all day. She must work to earn her keep. 

So we have her doing parenting research for us. Here she is in action: 

We also needed the front door painted, so here she is at work on that. She smudged a little, but we'll let it slide this time.

And swimsuit modeling. This one is the most lucrative career choice I believe. 

In all seriousness, we are just hanging out and being (or trying to stay) cool. A heat wave is sizzling the Gorge right now (but we are only in the upper 90s with little humidity, sorry Missourians -- this is as bad as it gets here!).

Crawling, Standing, Babbling Baby

Seven Month Itch

Our Baby Bear is already 7 months old! And she thinks she's even older than that! Here's a tally of all the skills/milestones she's achieved thus far:

-crawling (for over a month now)
-pulling herself up to stand (on everything in sight)
-eating finger foods and loving every minute of that (she prefers to feed herself)
-three teeth
-banging with her hands
-dadada, bababa, mamama

Some "firsts":  She's eaten her first leaf, and was pretty upset about it. She's had her first bruise (on her cheek). The first of many I'm sure. Her first time away from both of us when Adam and I went to a concert and our friends in Portland watched her..... Time is spiraling away from us! Where is my little tiny baby?

In other news, Mom came out for the week last week. We all packed it up and headed to Bend for the weekend (our favorite getaway). Adam and I got to go mountain biking. Together. TWO days in a ROW! This was huge for us. Now we don't take outings like this for granted. It's amazing what having this little person in our lives has done for us. I feel that now we are simply more grateful for the little things in life (like getting a couple of hours to go mountain biking together). Thanks mom for the help!

Everyone expected lots of good pictures. Well, I hate to disappoint. This is literally the only one we took on our little vacation:

For some reason we took a picture of her when she woke up from a nap. She was soooo good on our trip. Slept like a baby. 

Shifting gears: I mentioned her affinity for feeding herself. We remembered we had some frozen apple pieces from making applesauce last summer. She thoroughly enjoyed sampling them. 

Well, okay, it took a little while to get used to the cold.

Here are some other of the latest shots. I think I'll post some video of her crawling and standing since it is kind of a big deal. 

Please excuse the clutter in the last photo. She's just discovered the "baby" that lives in the back of our closet.

We will all be back for a good stretch in September. Can't wait to visit with everyone!