Now this is getting truly crazy. There are two more teeth! 12 total now.

Tooth number 10 is here! I saw another molar last night. She's really getting them out!

I got busted bigtime last night...
I was telling my friend Michelle about my awesome Chanukah present. And it is awesome. It's a tiny, 1-gig mp3 player, pictured above all the way to the right (mine is silver). I listen to books when I'm walking with Nina. It's small enough to hang around my neck like a necklace and did I mention it's tiny? And only available from wal-mart (romantic music stops with a crash of cymbals). Yes, I shopped at wal-mart. Twice. Once to get mine and once to get one for Arwyn. But (as I pointed out to Michelle) I don't shop at wal-mart, I shopped at wal-mart. I know now why Spanish has two past tenses; one for things you did repeatedly and one for things you only did once. It was really hard to bring myself to do it (and it was only online), but can I mention again how tiny and cute this gadget is? And how much I love it? I suppose my membership to the super lefty treehugger anti-whatever group will revoked. So be it. What hits home a lot harder is that Michelle was appalled that Lorien shopped at wal-mart. The important lesson I will take from this episode is that friends are my moral compass; they keep me focused when my desire overtakes the needs of the larger world community I belong to. Thanks, Michelle, for keeping me honest.

Nina walked across the kitchen several times this evening, with us cheering her on the whole time. She had spent a lot of the day just standing, with a "What do I do now?" look on her face. As you can see, she's figured it out!
It's so exciting that I forgot to mention that she has a new molar also, for a grand total of 9 teeth!

Mama, I told you tube top pants are so in this year! Can I get a ride to the disco?

Nina's birth story (in progress)
This pic was taken around 10:00 pm on November 1. Mom got into town at 1:00. I had been telling Nina that she had to wait that long. I went to a meeting with my friend Kevin. On the way there we drove down a bumpy road, and I was joking that it would make me go into labor. At the meeting I started having contractions. Just as I walked though the door at home, my amniotic fluid started to leak. I called the Jessie (our midwife) and she said we had a while and to call her if anything more happened (stronger, closer contractions or a gush of fluid). Though we were excited, we all went to bed. Sometime in the middle of the night the contractions got a bit stronger and I was vocalizing through them and resting in between (somehow Larry managed to sleep through it). By 6:00 am on the 2nd I was feeling it, so we decided that I should go vote. I had stubbornly refused to absentee or early vote. So we went to the polling place and got to the front of the line at 7:00 when they opened. By around noon My friends Rebecca and Kathy had arrived to help.

Happy 13 month birthday! Nina now has 8 teeth.