3 Month Pictures

These are really late, but I have to share Cora's 3 month pictures. Thanks to Mom for taking these for me!




You can see that Cora has started to interact with her bear much more. She even kind of man-handles him. Dustin likes to have Cora "wrestle" with her stuffed animals. As you might imagine, Cora always wins!

Oh my goodness, where to start?

It has been over a month since my last post and Cora has been so busy! I'm not even sure where to start!

Well, most importantly we had Cora's baby dedication service at our church in early September. My sisters were home and Dustin's family was here so we had the whole gang there to support the three of us. Cora was perfectly behaved (and awake) during the whole thing.


Cora's grandparents and great-grandmother Bowen joined us in promising to raise her in a Christian environmenet.

My beautiful family!

The Martins

The Packetts (minus Uncle FoCo)

There's such a special bond between Daddy and his little girl!

Now, you all know that I've gone back to work and that means Cora has been spending a lot of her time with her Grammie. Do you think maybe she's picking up some of Grammie's habits?

She is becoming quite the little reader and really loves books. After reading the books, she's ready to eat them!

Cora loves her Carolina and sometimes wants to be her twin. Then she wants to eat Carolina's bow. Notice a pattern? Yes, everything Cora touches goes straight to her mouth these days!

On the days that I drive into Arlington Cora also gets some extra time with her Daddy. When I get home, they always have a surprise for me. On this day, the surprise was her outfit!

Of course Dustin has been teaching her about the excitement of Man Vs. Wild with Bear Grylls.

But Cora's not picky. She can even have fun in a cardboard box!

This is just the beginning - Cora has done so much more - including flying for the first time! I'll blog about that soon!

Long Time, No Post

Of course things have been crazy busy now that I've returned to work, but I've had three full weeks back on the job and I think a post is definitely in order! Part of the problem is that in my "off" time we Martins have been busy as well. As you'll soon see, though, our business has been really enjoyable!

Going back to work has been kind of bittersweet. It's really fun to be back in Visionville (I'd love to tell you what that means!) but leaving Cora for 14-15 hours a couple days a week is TOUGH. And to top it all off, the first two weeks it seemed like every day there was a major accident on I-95 that just wanted to keep me from getting home. I've started to settle into the routine now and am so thankful that Cora gets to spend her days with her doting Grammie. Check out Mom's blog to see what Cora does on her days with the babysitter: www.cindypackett.blogspot.com.

During the week that I returned to work, my cousin and his family were visiting family in Virginia. Josh and Bethany have a beautiful almost 2 year old little girl named Lucy-Kate and a 5 days older than Cora little girl named Felicity! Cora had so much fun meeting her cousins and she can't wait to see them again at Christmas. I think we're going to have a blast with three precious girls running/crawling around with Christmas excitement.

Here are the proud moms adoring each other's babies.

Lucy-Kate and Josh also got in on the photo op.

Cora loved on Felicity like she loves on her babydoll, Carolina.

Apparently Dustin has been teaching Cora to "PUT YOUR HANDS UP!" when I'm not around. Looks like she's getting pretty good...

Cora and Felicity are having a little girl talk. It actually looks like Cora is telling Felicity what to do. I'm afraid she might inherit a little bit of a bossy streak from me.

Thankfully, Felicity is a very laid back little girl and still seemed to enjoy Cora's company.

Cora and Felicity, the grandmas, and the Great-Grandmother!

Cora also really enjoyed listening to Lucy-Kate read a book to her.

We had so much fun watching the little ones together and can't wait to see them all again!

That weekend was also Labor Day and we had two big events that weekend and lots of family came to Warsaw. First, we celebrated Mom's retirement from 31 years of teaching. We started out with a very yummy dinner at Driftwood.



Then we came home to a beautiful shadow cake from - where else? Ketchie Creek!


Cora ordered the cake.

Honestly, I think she looks far too young to be retired!


The Packett clan



Happy Retirement, Grammie!

I had planned to include Cora's baby dedication service in this post, but it's already gotten so long and it's time for me to go to bed - I promise I'll do it in the next day or two!

Last Week of Stay At Home Mommyhood

I'm glad no one can see me as I write this post because I know before the end of it I'll be shedding some (maybe many) tears. My time on maternity leave has flown by and tomorrow I officially return to work. While I'm excited to get back to a job I love and to coworkers who are also friends, there is definitely a part of me that will always be thinking about Cora. So I tried to fill my last week of maternity leave with tons of fun memories...

Early in the week we finally had cool temperatures so Mom and I took Cora to Westmoreland Berry Farm. She absolutely loved it. It was a little overcast, but perfect for taking little babies - which was exactly what lots of other parents and grandparents thought, too! Cora wanted to wear her little brown jumper that makes her look like a farm girl. Grammie thought that we may be able to keep socks on her feet if we put them on under sandals, so I apologize, my darling Cora, for this fashion faux pas.


Oh well, it's adorable on little feet at least.

There are so many fun things to see at the Berry Farm. They have a couple of goats in pens that kids can feed and pet. Cora was very interested in the new animals she was meeting.





Then Cora wanted to be the horse in the the face cutouts.


And of course you have to watch the goats cross the high bridge over the road.


Cora loved watching them!

Grammie and I got to enjoy a good lunch and even a little dessert (non-dairy for me, unfortunately). And then we took lots of fun pictures - as many as possible!












One afternoon we also took a little break down at the beach. Cora loves the water and I know next summer she'll be quite the little beach bunny!














We had such an amazing week. Cora also got her very first babydoll that we aptly named Carolina (at least until Cora names her whatever she wants). She loves Carolina very much and really enjoys chewing on her hands, her face, her bow, whatever she can get in her mouth.

My sweet Cora, I will miss you terribly tomorrow!