Big Steps

Jamie got after me since its been so long since I last blogged. So, let me see if I can try recap the last few month or so of events. My mom came up to Minnesota to visit over the Thanksgiving holiday. It was nice because she volunteered to watch Norah one evening so Jamie and I could go on a date! After grandma Miller left Norah always sighs now when she sees grandma in the picture book.

Norah checking out the Christmas tree

Norah with grandma Miller

The big news is that Norah has starting walking! She took 2 steps all by herself for the first time on Saturday, then today, bam, she's walking like a pro. Check out the video evidence that Jamie was able to capture today.

Miller Update

Two weeks ago Jamie and I had an opportunity to share our adoption story. New Life Family Services, the agency that we used for the adoption, was having their once a year banquet and fundraiser and they asked us to give a short presentation on our experience. They put up several pictures of Norah while I was speaking and the crowd (about 400 people) absolutely loved her! It was a great night hearing about New Life and the amazing ministry they have. If you are on Facebook, you can become a fan, just search for them.

There is not a whole lot of other news here in the Miller household. We are starting to hunker down as old man winter is bearing down on us. The fact that it gets dark by 5pm totally sucks... its going to be long winter. Luckily, we have a little ray of sunshine that keeps us going. Here are some recent pictures, including some from our trip back to Indiana in October.

Grandpa with his girls

Norah showing off her pretty pink outfit

Little Pink Riding Hood

Norah and Lydia getting friendly at the Essenhaus

Back to Indiana

Jamie and I headed back to Indiana last weekend so I could attend my 10 yr reunion at Taylor. It was a lot of fun seeing some old friends who I have not seen since graduation and hearing what is going on in their lives these days. Its hard to believe that its been that long... I must be getting old.

My sister and her family came home as well so Norah got to play with her cousin Lydia for a few days. It is so fun to watch them play together because Lydia just loves Norah. She was always going up to her and giving her kisses. Since the whole family was back together, we decided to have some pictures taken. They turned out great. The pictures were taken by an old friend of ours and you can see a couple of the shots on her website, Traci Shupert Photography. Here's my favorite one as a teaser!

Basically, Just Pictures

There is not a whole lot new going on in the Miller house these days. We just continue to enjoy watching Norah grow and learn new things. The latest thing now is waving goodbye. She thinks she's so cool when she waves at people. She also has become pretty good at crawling down the steps, but going up is a whole different story. She only makes it up one step, and then chickens out and goes back down.

Norah with a magazine. I think she liked her twin on the left page.

Norah dominating the sippy cup

Check out the hangtime on that drool!

A cake at Norah's last baby shower.

The evolution story: Start with one puff...

... rinse it down with some crystal clear water...

... throw in some bananas, and you've got the makings for a mess.

The First Stair

Jamie took Norah and went out to Utah for a week to visit Doug, Emily, and Ellie. It was fun for me for a day or two, but I was definitely ready to have them home. Don't get me wrong, the sleeping through the night part was awesome and I didn't want to give that up. Rumor has it Norah learned several new things while she was away from home. Including this one that was caught on tape.

She Stands

Norah has learned a few tricks in the past week. She can now pull herself up on things, and she ate her first jar of baby food. She's been eating rice cereal and mashed up avocados and sweet potatoes for months, but this was the first store bought food. She's lightning fast and nothing is sacred to her, so we are continually amazed at where she ends up and what she has in her mouth when she gets there!

North Carolina

Two weeks ago Jamie, Norah and I went to Raleigh to visit Jamie's brother and sister-in-law. We had a really good time and got to go see some pretty cool sights. The first day we were there we went to Duke Gardens to have a picnic. After lunch we traveled over to Chapel Hill and took a look at the UNC campus (and bought some Tar Heel paraphernalia).

Sporting Dr Seuss like blue hair-do's

We also took a day trip out to the outer banks, which was really cool. We first stopped at Kitty Hawk and saw where the Wright brothers first took flight. I think I enjoyed it much more than Jamie did. From there we went straight to the beach, where Norah got to jump into the ocean for the very first time. From the beach we drove down the shore all the way to Cape Hatteras to see the light tower. It turned out to be a long day, but it was well worth it.

Norah petting Razor

Norah loved looking out the plane window

At Duke Gardens

Somewhere between Hatteras and Kittyhawk

Cape Hatteras lighthouse

And a few more pictures of Norah, since that seems to be all that anyone cares about these days :-)

Minnesota Hacksaw Massacre

On Friday we had a little bit of time to do some chores around the house, something we don't get to do a lot of anymore. I was finishing up some work on the sprinkler system and Jamie decided to trim some shrubs in the front of the house. Specifically, these variegated dogwoods.


However, I'm not exactly sure that what resulted could appropriately be called a trim. I'd say it was more like a hatchet job. When I came around to the front yard I nearly choked. The once beautiful dogwood now looked like this....

Sprinkler System Installed

Well, I decided to be a bit ambitious this past weekend and I put in a sprinkler system. Everything went fine for the most part, with a few exceptions. First, I'm pretty sure a 160-lb man was never intended to run a 1000-lb trencher. Let's just say I felt like I got run over by truck after running that thing for 5 hours. Second problem, coax cable that's buried 3" deep in your yard is no match for aforementioned trencher. So not only did we lose our internet and TV for 2 days, but we lost our free extended basic as well. Now we actually get what we pay for, basic cable.... which totally sucks!

One of the many trenches... straight as a politician.

The jerk that took away our free cable.

The work crew. My neighbors Darrin and Bernard.

Before.

After. The finished product. Zone 1 in action.

PS - Funny story. My neighbor Bernard is from the Congo. He said, "in Africa I would just pay someone $50 and they would come and dig these trenches for me. Why are you doing them?" I informed him that in America it costs just a wee bit more than $50 to get someone to do this for me. More, as in $1800. I thought he was going to pass out when I told him :-)

What has Norah been doing lately....

Hi all. Just thought I would give you all an update on things and include a few pictures. On Friday, July 31st we are finalizing the adoption, yippee!!! We are looking forward to having all this legal stuff behind us and moving ahead as a family. Below are a few pictures of Norah, hope you enjoy.

Our little cowgirl

Reaching for everything, this time its the bottle

Norah loves eating her shoes

Howdy partner

Relaxing on the couch

She's already doing her hair in the mirror... oh boy.

Norah at her first Twins game. They beat the Tigers 4-3!!!

Black Hills Camping Trip

I'm turning into a prolific writer here all of a sudden. Two posts in one day! On Thursday of last week Jamie and I went out to the Black Hills to go camping with her mom and dad, and Emily, Doug and Ellie. Its a 10 hour drive from Rochester which I was not looking forward to with a 5 month old, but Norah continues to impress us and she did awesome on the trip. The kid is amazing, on the way there and back she probably only fussed for a total of 20 mins. If you say we are lucky, you're wrong.... we're blessed, big difference :-)

We, er I, was totally not prepared for the weather out there. It was 90 degrees by day, but dropped into the high 40's by night. Since I took along one pair of pants, one long sleeve tshirt, and one fleece, I spent the better part of every night freezing my butt off. We kept Norah in the tent with us the first two nights, but because it was so cold we decided to put her in the camper with Jamie's parents.

We had a good time and saw lot's of stuff. We drove the Needle's Highway, went to Mt. Rushmore, ate at the Purple Pie Shop, went to 4 Mile Town, (start sarcasm) and probably the most exciting of all, the CrazyHorse Monument (end sarcasm). CrazyHorse was one of the weirdest things ever. We went for the free laser light show which started at dark. We got there about 90 mins before it got dark, so we sat there and froze our tooshies off. Then when it did start we got to hear for 30 mins about how evil the white man is for stealing the red man's land. And after hearing how much we white folk suck they finished it off with a moving song, Lee Greenwood's "I'm Proud To Be an American."

We brought Jamie's "new" camera along too. About a year ago she bought a new Nikon D300. It was slightly more than "holy crap!" and just less than "that's it, give me your credit cards." The problem is, she never uses it because she doesn't know how to use it. So I bought a book at Barnes & Noble which is basically a how-to for the D300 and read that on the trip so we could actually start taking some pictures with it. Anyway, here are a few from the first batch.

Adoption Update

Its been awhile since we've updated what has been going on, so I thought I better get out here and write something.  On Tuesday of last week there was another meeting with the judge to discuss the paternity action that the birth father filed.  Like two months prior, he failed to show for this hearing.  So the judge dismissed the birth father's rights and we are now free to move towards finalization! 

We still have to wait another week or so to call the courthouse to set up the finalization, but that is the last thing left to do.  Then I'll officially have papers to prove that I'm Norah's father in case she decides to claim I'm not when she's a teenager and hates me ;-).  We plan to throw a little party as soon as the finalization is complete.  If you live in Rochester we'll let you know, if you don't live here, well, you can celebrate with us in spirit.

She Makes Me So Proud

We traveled back to Indiana over the Memorial Day weekend because Jamie and I went to the Indianapolis 500 with my mom. More on that later. First, let me share with you all something that makes me one happy daddy. As you can see from the video below, Norah is going to be a football fan.

As for the race, that was pretty cool as well. I never had a desire to go to the race in the past, but my mom has been asking us to go for the last couple of years. So we finally gave in and decided it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Well, now that I've gone once I'm hooked and I'm thinking this might have to become a more regular thing. I wasn't expecting just how loud it was... and believe me, it is LOUD!!! But there is something about a car with almost 700hp that goes 220mph gets a man all excited :-) Here's just a little clip from our spot on turn 4 (where 5 of the accidents happened). This video does not do any justice to how loud and cool it is to actually be there.

4 Months

Today Norah turns 4 months old. Its wierd because it seems like we've had her a lot longer than that, and I mean that in a good way. So we updated the Shutterfly website with a few new pictures if you are interested. Here's a couple to tease you.

The Many Faces We Love

There are many others that I just don't have updated pictures of at the moment. We love you too...Kanani, Kawika, Ellie, baby Alderman, Addison, Braedon, baby Jaxson, Abby and Deepali