November wrap-up

It's already well into December, but between work, travelling for Thanksgiving, and getting ready for Christmas, we've been busy. Eleanor had a check up at the doctor (more on that soon) and Chris is taking on a lot more responsibility at work right when his semester is ending so he's been running a bit ragged. Throw on to that the insane amount of leaf raking we have to try to stay on top of, and there's just not room for much else!

Basketball season is now in full swing, so Eleanor has been staying up a bit later some nights just because of the game schedule. She seems to enjoy them more this year because there are other girls around to play with and now she is a bit more interactive so they pay a little more attention to her.

We have still been getting out on the bikes during the nice days. I actually went out this morning, but the wind was so cold that I cut the ride short. I am not looking forward to the next couple months because Eleanor and I typically spend our entire day outside...

Our neighbors hosted a chili cook-off earlier this month and Chris decided to enter this year (I did ours last year). He ended up winning first place and was pretty excited because he really put forth some effort and I guess it paid off!

Eleanor is started to get into baking, and when I say she's getting into it, I really mean she likes to eat the dough/batter/etc. as much as I do.

Even though Eleanor moved down to one "official" nap a day, sometimes she'll take a little cat nap with me on the couch in the morning or afternoon, and especially on the weekends in front of the fireplace.

Eleanor has suddenly become very into kissing. She loves to kiss us goodbye, to kiss Maynard, and to kiss basically everything. Here she is kissing her baby friend:

I also started letting Eleanor push the shopping cart at the grocery store. The trips end up being a lot of redirection, and a lot of me taking items out of the cart to put back on the shelf so she can get something off the shelf and put it back in the cart again. It's all right though because she enjoys it and I only let her do the cart if we've got lots of time on our hands.

Speaking of shopping, Eleanor doesn't always love to shop. Here she is acting a bit like her dad when we went to Home Goods the other day:

One of Eleanor's favorite activities lately has been the shower. She has started climbing into the empty shower even when the water isn't running. She just loves the water, or "ah-whoa" in Eleanor speak (which sounds very similar to agua - so I'm wondering if she learned some Spanish at day care).

And speaking of day care, Eleanor celebrated her one year anniversary at day care this past month! We are considering making a day care change soon, but certainly not due to her wonderful teachers in the baby room. 

We've been spending lots of time with babies this month. Eleanor has met several very small babies due to the Hike It Baby challenge we did this month (I tried to reach out to new, new moms to make that first 6 week period less isolating, so she met 3 or 4 babies under 6 weeks old)! She now says the word "baby" very well. 

Speaking of Hike It Baby, Eleanor and I did complete the challenge and walked/hiked a grand total of 47.5 miles in the 30 days of November. About 15 miles was on trails and about 10 miles of it I had Eleanor in the carrier instead of the stroller, but my goals evolved over the month and it ended up being more about getting brand new moms outside for a stroll than actually hitting up legitimate trails. 

We also went to a birthday party for a friend this past month. It was a pajama party and when we showed up, the first three babies there were all wearing the exact same pajamas! They were absolutely adorable. I loved it.

Last but not least, fall being my favorite time of year in this area, and Colonial Williamsburg being a popular place to walk (Hike it Baby), we spent a lot of time in CW. Our mugs that we typically bring downtown to fill with ice cream alternated between coffee and hot chocolate this month. We always hit a lull of visiting CW in January/February, so I'm glad we got a few good trips in this past month.

So another month in the books - onward to the Advent season!