I love purses!

Nora's new favorite thing is emptying my purse and playing with everything. I dug out an old purse and we've filled it with things for her to pull out, play with, put back into the purse, and start the process all over again. She can do this for up to 30 minutes alone!

Look familiar?

This must be the Johnson in her! Butt up! 

Nora's new hiding place!

 

Nora loves to have her feet tickled by Grandma

 

"Hi Grandpa and Grandma! Thanks for bringing me a piano this weekend!"

 

Nora's Curls

 

We're Moving!

Daddy has officially accepted an offer with Microsoft in Seattle, WA. He is going to be moving there at the end of this month and we will be joining him after Christmas.

We are all very excited about these new opportunities and hope that we will have lots of visitors in Seattle!

Happy Halloween!

 

Nora is SO BIG on Halloween Morning

 

Third night in a row

Nora is officially putting herself to sleep. Last night was the third night in a row that she put herself to sleep in less than 5 minutes and slept until 7:00 am! We are thrilled! Hopefully we are officially passed the difficult sleep pattern and can now look forward to the next one ;-)

Sleeping through the night!

In an amazing transformation, Nora slept all the way through the night AGAIN last night. We put her in her crib, awake, at 7:30. She cried for 5 minutes, then fell asleep by herself. She woke up again at 6 AM.

We were expecting a repeat of the Oscar-worthy performance we saw the previous night. What a huge improvement.

I love playing with you, Mommy

 

Playing Row Row Row Your Boat

 

Big Steps in the Remfrey House

Nora slept from 8:30 pm to 7:00 am for the first time in over a month! It was a challenging listening to her scream for 45 minutes before she put herself to sleep, but it was well worth the wait. Brian tapped me around 7:00 the morning and said, "It's 7:00 and we're still in our bed and Nora's still in her bed!" It was a huge milestone for us!

The second big event of the day was Nora taking her first three steps! I set her down in the standing position at daycare this morning to show the ladies and Nora decided to make her walking debut. She took one step toward Miss Lachelle and then clapped for herself and repeated this performance three times. It was very exciting! We are going to try to replicate the show tonight at home.

I have no doubt that sleeping through the night had something to do with the walking. I haven't been functioning very well lately because of waking up two or three times a night, so I can't imagine how she was handling it!

Nora got to go to the Children's Museum this weekend when Grandpa, Grandma, and Auntie Pea were here. She obviously had a good time!

The horsey is always one of her favorites

"OOO, I love this slide!"

What was so funny over there?

Riding on the cart with Auntie Pea

Mommy and Daddy got to enjoy a little R & R in Napa Valley this past week while Grandpa, Grandma, and Auntie Pea took care of Nora. THANK YOU!

A picture of the three couples lucky enough to spend a week in Napa to go to Brad and Susanne's wedding!

This past week, Brian and I traveled to Napa Valley to witness the marriage of our friends Brad and Susanne. It was an amazing wedding set right in the middle of a vineyard!

Look at me! Nora gave us her first 'standing alone' show tonight! She stood without any assistance for about 30 seconds a few different times this evening. She wasn't quite ready for steps.

This is Nora's new favorite thing. She loves to walk behind her walker. Hopefully she'll figure out how to turn around by herself in a few days...for now she just gets frustrated once she walks into the wall!

Back to normal

The spots and the fever are gone, and yesterday Nora was taken in once again for her 1-year checkup. 4 immunization shots and a blood test later, she was released back into the wild with a clean bill of health. She is even sleeping through the night now, which is something she hasn't done regularly for almost a month. We are very relieved to have all of this behind us.

Nora's new obsession is walking behind her little push-car toy. We had her walk up and down the hallway with it. She gets the biggest smile on her face and is so proud of her new-found mobility!

Just when we thought it was over...

We woke up this morning to another nasty surprise. Nora has a rash all over her body, which we have now found out is the calling card of a viral infection called roseola. With all of the visits this month, I think we are going to qualify for VIP status at the pediatrician's office.

Playing with Ethan, Logan, and Ana

What a party!

We just wrapped up the festivities. Nora's first birthday was quite an event, and we were so happy to see so many of you come out to help us celebrate!

Before the beginning of the event we were a bit apprehensive as Nora seems to be struggling with an ear infection that landed us back at Children's Hospital again on Friday. It has been a rough weekend for her and we were a bit worried that she would not feel up to doing much celebrating today.

But it all worked out for the best. Nora had lots of fun playing with all the other kids, not to mention hanging out with friends and relatives who came from far and wide. She had a huge smile on her face when she attacked her birthday cake (pictures are below) and after a couple of handfuls of frosting, I think she was feeling better than she has in a long time.

THANK YOU to everyone for all the great presents, and for making the trip out to celebate with us. It's been a great year!!

Nora dives into her birthday cake with reckless abandon!

Where did the flame go, mommy?

Here's Nora with her first birthday cake...a butterfly cake made by her mommy. Nora plunged right in with no hesitation at all, smearing frosting all over the place!

Happy 1st Birthday Nora!

This was one of the first pictures taken of Nora just a couple of minutes after she was born, a year ago today! Looking at these pictures it is incredible to see how much she has grown. Let's take a look to see how much things have changed:

Weight (then): 5 lbs., 3 oz. (2.35 kg)
Weight (now): 20 lbs., 4 oz. (9.19 kg)

Height (then): 18" (46 cm)
Height (now): 29" (74 cm)

Vocabulary (then): crying and drooling, occasional grunts
Vocabulary (now): "baa" "daa" "maa" "pfffffff" and the occasional rasberry

Favorite activities (then): sleeping, pooping, metabolizing biliruben.
Favorite activities (now): giggling, chasing after the cat, swinging, watching Sesame Street, going out for coffee with Daddy on Saturday mornings

Favorite foods (then) - breastmilk, formula
Favorite foods (now) - cow milk, pasta, peas, watermelon, cat food, lasagna

Happy 1st birthday Nora! Updates on the celebration will be posted soon!

Wild hair...I couldn't resist playing with Nora's hair when she fell asleep tonight!

So Big!

Nora is really starting to get around well. She is crawling SO fast now that just turning your head means she could be in a different room when you look back seconds later. She is also becoming proficient at cruising. When she is standing up and holding onto a piece of furniture, she can walk all around it.

Her curiosity is so much fun to watch! She has some alphabet cards that she looks almost like she is reading them. She turns them around, brings them close to her face, then chooses another card. She really seems to enjoy extended times of independent play. (We like that too ;-)

We continue to have sleeping problems. Ever since she got sick, she wakes up frequently throughout the night. We're working on that.

Nora had her one-year-old pictures taken on Saturday afternoon. The lady at JCPenney was very impressed because she only had to take 10 pictures. All of them were wonderful and difficult to choose between. It was interesting listening to all the other screams and cries coming from the other studio rooms. All anyone could hear from our room was giggling!

Chores

Nora decided that tonight was the night she was going to starting doing chores around the house. She is now in charge of the laundry and vacuuming. Sure hope this keeps up ;-)

Ok Daddy, I've got my clothes going. What should I do next?

Helping Mommy with the vacuuming

Ok, so this isn't really a chore, but she sure loved being carried around in the clothes basket!

Released!

Nora was finally discharged from the hospital late yesterday morning. It turns out that Nora had a urinary tract infection that spread to her kidneys, which in turn started pumping a lot of bacteria into her bloodstream. The root cause of all of this is a low-level kidney reflux, which she will hopefully grow out of in 4-6 years.

The good news is that she is feeling better now than she has in over a week. The bad news is that she is going to need to stay on oral antibiotics every day for the next several years to prevent something like this from happening again. Much to our surprise, the pharmacy has her antibiotic available in a wide variety of flavors...so we're hoping the banana will cover the yucky taste of the medicine.

We're back to business as usual around here which is a huge relief for all of us. The past few days were a nightmare that I hope we will never have to repeat. Thanks to everyone for helping out with your thoughts and prayers.

Time to go...Nora is throwing food again. Back to her old self!

Despite everything, Nora still had a blast playing with Papa in her crib at the hospital.

Don't worry Daddy, this IV doesn't bug me at all!

Still smiling - even after going through the traumatic experience of getting an IV inserted, blood drawn for testing, and other pokes and prods, Nora still kept a smile on her face.

Update

Nora is doing pretty well this morning. She slept through the night (minus the two times the nurses had to check all her 'vitals') which was a huge change from the past week and a half. She is also playing quite a bit, but still sleeping a lot. She took a 2.5 hour nap this morning which is not normal at all for her. I guess her body is just working overtime to get rid of all this crap.

She had an ultrasound this morning of her kidneys. They didn't show any damage from the infection however she has a strange structural defect. She has two tubes coming out of one of her kidneys. The doctors aren't sure what that really means yet. It may just be one of those things that either Brian and I have that no one would know about if we didn't have all these machines to look into our bodies. It may mean that she is more likely to get kidney infections because there is more than one tube going between the kidney and bladder.

We have one more test at 2:30 that is an x-ray of her bladder and kidneys when she urinates. They put some type of dye in her urine and then use an x-ray to see if urine only comes down or shoots up into the kidneys.

We'll keep you posted. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers.

Scary Stuff

I'm writing this entry from Children's Hospital. Nora will be here for this evening. Last night we had to take her to the emergency room because her fever spiked so quickly that she was losing circulation in her extremeties and was shaking all over. I don't have much time right now so I'll get to the chase:

*Nora has a kidney infection
*The kidney infection turned into a blood infection
*She is on IV Antibiotics and fluids until the blood infection goes away
*Hopefully we'll be home by tomorrow night

We'll keep you updated. Nora has been a trooper through all the pokes and sticks. I don't know how she's done it with a few smiles inbetween!

104 degrees

That was Nora's temperature last night. Let me back up. Nora has been puking after her bottles for the past couple of days and not sleeping much at night. After an evening of about 2 hours of sleep between the two of us, Nora was sent home from daycare with a temp of 102. We took her to the doctor who told us to starting giving her Pedialite in small doses and just making sure she was loved and not becoming delirious.

When I took her temperature last night at about 9:00, it was a whopping 104. We called the doctor on call and she told us the same thing the doctor did earlier that day. Thankfully, Nora slept 5 hours straight last night, however, I had decided to stay home with her again just to make sure she was going to be ok. While watching the morning news, I learned that our school district was closed for the day because of power outages from the horrible wind storm we had last night. (They may be closed again tomorrow because Menomonee Falls was one of the worst hit in the area ;-)

Nora seemed to be doing well this morning as was playing on the rug as usual. She took a turn for the worst around 11:00 and was either crying or sleeping until about 4:00. She is again somewhat back to normal, but we'll see how the night goes. Poor thing!

Updates to follow.

Barrrrrrrrf

This has been a tough week for all of us...Nora's teething seems to have some nasty side effects. Last night we were giving her the bedtime bottle which she scarfed down with reckless abandon. Moments later, when trying to burp her, we were made witness to what could possibly be a world-record-setting projectile puke. The fact that we were running with her over to the sink just made it worse...it covered the *entire* length of our kitchen. Thank God for wood floors!

For April's photo documentation of the event, click here. Caution: not for the faint of heart.

Organic? Why?

I'm getting this question from a lot of people lately...not with the kindest tone behind it either. The ladies at daycare think I'm crazy for bringing in my own meat and milk for Nora. I don't really care. I don't want her to have all those hormones and antibiotics in her system before she is able to handle them.

It's just a hunch, but I think little girls are maturing much faster than they used to because of the additives in our food that make animals grow bigger and faster. I know there isn't documented proof, but I'd rather take my chances by avoiding them for the sake of Nora's first period coming when she's 8. Who knows, I may be way off. But at the very least, it can't hurt her.

So if you are one of those people asking me or any other mother, "Why bother with organic?", there you go.

Teeth, Meat and Milk

Nora's third top tooth has poked through the gum. She is working on the fourth tooth bringing the grand total to six teeth. These teeth are much bigger than the bottom teeth creating a very unhappy baby. She had two doses of Tylenol today and will prolly need the same tomorrow.

The teeth are a big help! Especially when she is chomping on her favorite food: pickles! Like mother, like daughter.

Nora had her first taste of meat tonight. Unfortunately she wasn't too into eating it, but that wasn't because of the taste so much as it was because her teeth are killing her. Nora and I went to the organic grocery store and got ground turkey, chicken breasts, and chicken hotdogs. We're also going to try the milk again also. A couple of ounces every day with lunch. Hopefully her little GI tract will slowly adjust to the changes.

Nora's newest face

Two new teeth coming in, with two more on the way!

Vietnamese with Grandpa and Grandma

At the farmer's market

We had a great picnic along Lake Michigan with Grandpa and Grandma this weekend. Nora was enjoying a little snooze while we got the blanket and food set up.

After 11 months of trying the swings, Nora finally enjoys it!

A story before bed with Grandma.

The newest trick: clapping

Grandpa and Nora had a great time playing together this weekend. Here they are enjoying brunch at Trocadaro.