Happy Christmas Eve!

There's my adorable Farmerette Nora sitting infront of a toasty warm fire a few days ago. She is getting be such a big girl! Can you believe she is officially nine months old now? I know I can't! When I pick her up, she is a heftly 20 pounds, a far cry from the miniscule 5.5 pound baby that she was when she was born.

Let's see... some of the changes she has gone through: She crawls, pulls herself up and cruises along furniture, she practices "talking", she has two bottom teeth and has two top teeth just coming in as I type. Sometimes I forget how little she was when she was born, and then I will come across one of her recieving blankets and I will remember how they were the perfect size (or even too big!) and now they are more snuggle blankets for her!

She still nurses, though she loves to each our food. One of her favorite foods is Grilled Cheese sandwiches. She also loves meat and fruits and veggies, though the fresher the veg, the better. I don't blame the least on that! She really doesn't like baby food.

You know what she really loves? MaryJane's Outrageous Outback Oatmeal. It has currants and SunFlower seeds in it. But babies don't digest currants and sunflower seeds all that well. Yeah....I didn't know that. Sometimes you can get a little too much information about your baby's digestive system when you change a diaper! LOL

Speaking of diapers, we still do cloth diapering. I was once the woman who proudly declared that she would always be the "Fun" Aunt and never wanted to have kids of her own. One of the main reasons? Diapers. Diapers are really not my favorite thing. That is until I started doing Cloth. I make my own which is it's own joy in of itself. I love going down to the fabric store and picking out the cutest flannels for her bum. Okay- so I know pure white would be best because it absorbs more- but who can resist flannel with sleepy elephants on it? Or teddy bears in pajammas that are sleeping on the moon? So cute!

We do flat fold diapers, though I did make some contoured ones. Making contoured diapers for a 5.5lb baby is just not worth it. Now that she is bigger though- I might try it again. The flat folds are really nice though, because I have only had to make two sizes- a 22 inch square that lasted until about 6-7 months old and now I am doing a 30 inch square. The best part of using cloth, though isn't just the monetary savings (which save us hundreds of dollars a month) or the evironment savings (disposable diapers are toxic to produce and take over 500 years to biodegrade) but the best part is that our house doesn't smell like stinky diapers. Since I wash diapers once a day, they never sit around long enough to get funky. We have never had to bother with a Diaper Genie or even special diaper pails. We even travel with them! We travel to Wyoming by car and plane a few times a year and even on the plane we used cloth diapers.

We went to Spokane yesterday to visit some Farmgirl friends. I got to meet Audrina (Farmgirlwannabe) and her lovely mother. I also got to spend time with Teresa (Lavenderfields Dreamer) and her mom Carol Sue (Carol Sue). Sky-dog came with and had fun exploring the house and cleaning up the crumbs that Nora dropped everywhere.

On the ride up, I knew Nora was going to get hungry so I thought up a (I think) rather clever rig. I had a container of milk for Nora to drink and a long skinny length of plastic tubing. So she in effect has a really long straw. So I set the container of milk in the cup holder by me and she got the end of the straw. It worked perfectly! Yay! Next time I am going to get a clothespin or some thing to clip the straw down though. She did pull it out and fling milk everywhere once or twice! LOL

We will probably head out to the horse ranch today (http://www.rockinheart.com/). You have got to see these horses! They are so beautiful! This is the one I want to someday own. Her name is Talla. In this picture is was about 3 months old and now is about 9 months. Nora and Talla were born just a couple weeks apart! She should stay this beautiful bay color and I love the white markings on her face. She has the sweetest temperment and literally floats when she moves. She is so graceful! I will have to see if I can get permission to upload a video of her for you!