Just us..

Isabella is at Grandma and Grandpa's house tonight.

Kora and I have 100% one on one time.

Aahhhhh.......

Kora giggles.

Kora is lifting her head quite high now.

This is the sweet face that greets me in the morning.

She's always happy when she first wakes up.

You can see from the video below.

Look at the little wrinkled nose and the dimple.

She smiles and coos all the time.

Kora at 3 months.

Here she is, already 3 months old.

She weighs 11.07 lbs. which puts her at the 20% of baby girls her age.

I'm used to dealing with excessive height, weight, size and what not.

Having a smaller addition to the family is unique for us.

She's very strong and loves to sleep on her belly. Always flips herself over onto her belly or side when she sleeps. She seems to really dislike heat. She gets particularly cranky during these hot humid summer days.

A girl and her grandpas

This is one happy girl. Enjoying a cup of cocoa and sitting in a Grandpa sandwich.

Sock Monkey has a homebirth.

Isabella ran in to the kitchen the other day to inform me that Sock Monkey was about to have a homebirth. When I went into her room this is the scene that greeted me.

She explained that because she could be a little clumsy, Snow White (the husky dog in the picture) would be the midwife and Isabella would just be there, "for support and stuff".

Soon Sock Monkey had her baby. Isabella caught it, held it gently in her cupped hands and brought it up to Sock Monkey's chest very gently. Isa was telling her what a good job she did and how cute her baby was. It was so touching to watch her genuine tenderness with this imaginary scenario.

This kid is off to a great start!

May's nature findings.

First I go out mowing and I could have sworn I heard a rustle under to the side of me like a chipmunk or snake but I saw nothing. Then I noticed it there is a little duckling peeping and waddling through though the grass. I see no Mama duck and after a while picked it up. I took it back into the woods behind our house in the hopes that Mama duck was waiting unseen to retrieve her little fellow. A few moments later I see the duckling waddling back towards me. It laid near my feet, preened its feathers and proceeded to wattle towards the road. As we have it now, I put the little fellow in a plastic tote with some grass. I really hope I see or hear a Mama duck soon. What the heck to I do with this duckling?

Then, I get my shovel to dig up a rose bush to replant elsewhere. As I uproot the rosebush a huge amphibian of sorts untangles itself from the roots of the plant and plops down into the hole. Woah! I'm real glad I didn't hurt it with the shovel. So what is it? It's absolutly beautiful but what neat-o species is it? Isabella and I ended up putting it into the woods where she/he dug back on into the earth.

Look at that sweet little face!

These are it's markings.

Welcome Peeps!

Just look at them! Look at these sweet little girls. One is named Linda. I think the other two should be named Florence and Darlene but we will have to see what Isabella thinks when she gets home from school. This is her project.

A photobooth story.

I was unaware that I had photobooth on our computer until I went searching for it after reading this woman's blog. Playing around with the images is so much fun!

Here's our story:

A witchdoctor shrunk Isa and Kora's heads (I should show them Beetlejuice as a cautionary tale!). Ahhhhhhh!

So we hopped in our trusty TARDIS to go back in time to undo the tragic mistake of angering the witchdoctor. Kora's not a fan of a time travel, yikes!

During our travels we ran across the cutest little alien I've ever seen :)

One month old.

One month old. Sleeping good, nursing good, snugly, sweet wonderful little baby. We enjoy her so much!

Gene Simmons training.

Miss Lizzie's Music Program

Forgive the shaking camera and less than stellar pixelation of these movies. I did them on a digital camera (instead of a video camera) and it's really hard to hold that little camera still enough so it doesn't look all shaky.

If you don't have time to watch the whole video just scroll over to 2:56 because you'll get to see Kora enjoying the performance. You can't really see Isabella in this one.

This is evidently a very common children's song in France. Is that true Morkin-Terada family?

I love how this becomes the Sacred Meadow mosh pit and how Isabella loses steam halfway through it and becomes a mid-mosh pit observer.

What big eyes you have...

This picture makes me wonder which creature is more amazed by the other.

These two have fun together.

Sweet Sisterhood

Isabella is a wonderful, loving sister. Cuddling Kora is the first thing she does in the morning and the last thing she wants to do at night.

Ready to pop!

Like Avatar, we went 3-D too.

Kora is 33 weeks now and we got another round of sonograms to make sure she is doing well (with all the stuff that kid's been through the last 2 months!!!). The tech tried to get us some pictures in 3-D but it was a bit of a challenge because sweet girl had her hands up to her face on the left and the placenta makes it look a bit fuzzy on the right.

We got a couple of relatively good ones so without further ado....Kora's face:

There were also a couple of regular ones:

Look at the teeny nose and mouth.

This one looks like she is smiling.

"Solar, Wind, Water, Compost..."

Why we chose Kora.

The decision to name this baby Kora with a K is 100% Josh's decision. The man is adamant about this name and adamant is not a word one often uses when describing him. If I had my druthers I would have named her some lovely hippy name like Avalon Magnolia...but he wanted Kora (which I am totally fine and dandy with). The main reason is that a kora is a West African harp made from a huge gourd. It makes a surprisingly beautiful sound. Then after some research on my part, I found out that Cora or Kore is another name for Persephone in Greek Mythology. She has to do with the return of Spring in those myths and turns out this little sweetie will be born during Easter time. Perfect.

Here is a short video showing what a kora is. I find it amazing that such beautiful music can come from a big ol' gourd.

Sonogram pictures!

These were taken back in November. I particularily like this shot because it looks like she's doing the move that won Daniel-Son the karate championship in the first Karate Kid movie. Or she's somersaulting. It's so cute.


This one is great because she you can sort of see her little face and it looks like she is giving the peace sign.

Snow people

Isabella's first snowman of the year. She got some help from Grandma.


This lady snowman evolved from a tiny baby snowball that was laid into the snow mama's "womb" and slowly covered with more and more snow. Then she was given boobs because duh, she's a lady.

In case you couldn't tell just how pregnant she is, we took a side picture.