Rosie’s turning 3

Happy birthday to Rosie! On Saturday, she’ll be 3.

Rosie is a character.  Today, we shared fruit and a croissant at the Art Café. She sat across from me with her hands folded on her knees, a little smile on her face. “Well,” she said. “This is a lovely snack.”

She chats from morning to night, a steady stream of related and unrelated thoughts: “Last time, it was Halloween at scoowal and I weared my skeleton costume, and Luca said to me, “hey, badoinky face! And I said, that’s silly Luca because he’s my friend and he’s a silly guy!” The story pauses so she can belly laugh, showing those little teeth with the spaces between. “Is that funny?”

Sometimes, Nora laughs with me after Rosie’s long-winded monologues. “Rosie, you’re just so cute, I can’t take it. Oh, Rosie, I just love you. I love you more than infinity!” Other times, she’s not into it. “Rosie! Yesterday wasn’t Halloween! And you weren’t even a skeleton for Halloween!”

Rosie’s favorite game at the moment is: “Can you make this guy talk?” She’s moved on a little bit from pretending that she herself is the character to bringing all of the inanimate object in our house to life. She will hand you anything—a stuffed elephant, a play doh flower, a stick. “Can you make this guy talk, and then I’ll make the other guy talk?” This happens nonstop throughout the day, so when I’m trying to clean the dishes, I’ll try to make the sponge talk. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. “No, sit over here, no right heeeare! And you be the Mommy and this guy will be the baby and it will be night night time, okaaay?”

She gets so engrossed in her make pretend, that she never wants to move on from an activity. When we must move on, Rosie freaks out. She can be a dramatic little person, screaming, “No!!!!!” and flopping around. “No, no, no, no, this is not-a-great-day-today.” I have to crawl over and under jungle gyms to retrieve Rosie and carry her, flailing, to the car. This is a challenge. I am trying to figure out how to set the limits for her, to be clear with my expectations, to decide which battles to choose, to know when to distract and when to teach, and to give her opportunities to feel in control. Sometimes, I do these things well, and sometimes, I don’t.

Rosie and Nora fight like sisters do, and it is usually because they would like to play the game in two different ways. Nora is often more logical, possibly because of her age—while she also thrives on make pretend, she likes for the game to be somewhat consistent with reality. “Rosie, if it’s a Zumba class, we don’t wear tutus. Zumba is not ballet.”

“Yes, we do.”

“No we don’t, Rosie!”

“Yes, we do.”

“No. We. Don’t!!!!”

“Yes. We. Do!!!!”

Etc., etc, etc.

I am shocked when they occasionally work it out on their own.

Nora: “Well, I guess you can borrow my pink tutu.”

Rosie in a high voice. “Oooh! That would be so very nice.”

Nora’s big sister voice is funny to me. She sort of drops her chin, lowers her voice and says, “Rosie. That isn’t true. Frogs don’t have wings. They’re amphibians and they live in the water.”

Rosie, usually flitting around the room, humming a little song: “Yes, it is. Because today was my bertday and I said, I’m not eating anything today and you said, oh yes you are! And I’m going to decorate your arm or you will have a time out.”

Nora scoffs, not even looking up from whatever she’s doing: “Rosie. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Oh, they are just so interesting. I’m not always able to appreciate it, because sometimes, I just want them to stop fighting and play nice. Sometimes, I don’t feel like “making this guy talk” because I need to move through the day: give them bath, get them dinner, get Nora in her leotard and tights and get back out the door to dance. We spend a lot of time cleaning, getting them out the door, getting them back in the door and getting them to bed.  It so nice when I’m able to pause, play, and observe them.

That’s why I want to write it all down, so I can have a little distance to sit back and enjoy the moments.  And they’re good at pulling me out of my to-dos to make sure I’m paying attention to their cuteness. Rosie sat next to me at the playground yesterday and said, “Well, it is a beautiful day, today.”

I’m really proud of them, and in awe of how they’re growing.

Happy, happy 3^rd birthday to sweet Rosie!

Thanks for reading!

You A Chicken For REEAL

If you were to walk by our house, you’d probably hear children singing “How Far I Go,” from Moana in very loud, (and nasally) voices. “When the sky from the light from the sky meets the sea, it calls me! Now I KNOOOOWW how far it GOOOOOs!” Nora and Rosie are obsessed with this movie, (and they’ve only seen it once), to the point that I decided we had to cool it with the soundtrack to give their brains a break. It was the ONLY thing Rosie talked about for awhile. She really hasn’t watched THAT much TV– okay more than what I let Nora watch at this age. Poor second child. She just absorbs TV unlike anything else. She started telling random kids on the playground, “We watched Moana and it was scaahwy. Moana and uuuummm Heihei  and uuuummm Maui is funny. Um. I’m Moana of Motunu and you will board my boat.” She told Kevin, “I’m Moana and you Heihei the CHICKen.” He said, “I’m not a chicken!” And she said, “But. You Heihei the CHICKen Foh Reeeal.”

She’s pretty good at zingers without even meaning to be. For awhile, she’d call us Sven the reindeer from Frozen. “Mommy, you Sben! I Anna and Nora Elsa and you Sben.”

Also, she said to Kevin, after I’d asked everyone if they’d rather be a cow or a horse (by the way, he said cow if it was a bull). “No, Daddy,” Rosie said. “You a DONKEY.” Zing! What’s with her and calling people not-so-glamorous animals?

Rosie is a chatter box now. She opens her eyes after a nap and immediately starts chatting as if she was not asleep for the last two hours, but in the middle of a thought. The way she talks is so funny to me. She sounds like a voice navigation system. The words are real person words, but her inflection is not quite right and often ends with a question when it shouldn’t, i.e. “AYE love YOU so MUCH?”

She’s started to really think about things the way Nora does. She watched an episode of Super Why with Nora (again with the TV. Sheesh. I’m ashamed!) The episode was about Little Red Riding Hood. That night, I was rocking Rosie and she kept asking, “Is da woof gramma?” “Well,” I said. “It’s complicated. Not exactly.” She was not satisfied. “Mommy, is da woof gramma?” She asked me over and over and over again. “There’s a whole story about it,” I said. “You see, there was this girl named little red…” She lifted her head from my shoulder, put her hands on my cheeks and turned my face toward her face. We were nose to nose. “Mommy,” she said.  “Look at me. I TALKING to you. Is the woof gramma?” “No,” I said, finally. “No, it’s not.” I tried to get her to relax and rest her head on my shoulder, and she started whispering to me. “Mommy is the woof gramma? Mommy is the woof gramma?”

Nora and Rosie are doing just what sisters are supposed to do. They play together, wrestle with each other, scream at each other, fight with one another, turn on us and get into trouble together and love each other in an almost primal way. It’s cool that they can play together now. The game of choice right now is called “sick baby.” Often, I find Rosie sitting in (I mean, dwarfing) a bouncy chair or doll’s stroller while Nora checks her heartbeat with her stethoscope or puts a blanket over her and tells her she needs to rest. “Don’t get up, Baby,” Nora says. “You need your rest.” Rosie says, “My rest? Okay, Momma.” They also like to put on backpacks, rainboots and our jackets and play a game Rosie likes to call, “I’m going at school.”

I can’t keep up with the rapidly shifting love/fight dynamic between these two, and often it’s best for me not to jump in too quickly. I might hear screaming and run into the room to find them both yanking on a toy. I’m just about to intervene when the screaming turns into laughter and then the two of them are chasing each other around the room, in hysterics.

Nora says she loves Rosie just a little bit more than she loves me and Daddy. But that she loves us all a lot. It’s cool. They’ll have a bond that no one can match, and they should. Their relationship will be theirs and only theirs, and that’s what I would hope for them.

PS- I’ve been really bad about updating so I’m going to add a few little funny things Rosie used to do. She’d would start walking backwards and yell “Backwards!” and bump into stuff. Or, she’d put her hands over her eyes and walk around like that and fall all over the place. Also, for awhile she investigated putting food up her nose. She did this with a very serious expression. She put stuff in her ears too. Glad those phases are over. (Knock on wood.)

Thanks for reading!

can I interest you in some delicious cucumber water?

Thanks to Jocelyn from The Home Tome for her shout-out.

THE HOME TOME

What follows is a recipe for cucumber water. If used correctly I believe it could be turned into a philosophy, a political movement, or a cure for…Everything.

1. Go over to your friend Sara’s house for a series of play dates, birthday parties, and other occasions where she is serving special water in a special pitcher with special green discs floating cheerfully on the surface.
2. Guzzle several glasses each time you visit, in a state of extreme ecstasy. Wave people off when they try to start a friendly conversion with you. Because you are concentrating. On your taste buds.
3. Pull her aside and ask in an I’m-sure-this-is-top-secret voice if she will share this intriguing recipe, knowing full-well that you have become extremely lazy in the kitchen and that you will never actually do this, or anything else in the cooking room ever again. Thank her profusely when she nonchalantly provides the…

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“Motherhood Absentmindedness”

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to share my essay, “Motherhood Absentmindedness,” which was published in Brain, Child last week.

The essay begins:

You think I’d learn not to rest my coffee cup on the roof of the car while buckling my daughter Nora into her car seat, but sometimes, I only have so many hands. How many times have I backed out of the driveway and heard the clunk of a thing hitting the pavement? My phone, my sunglasses, a water bottle, a lunch bag, a juice box. And I have spent much of my existence searching for lost items, so much so that my two-year-old has a habit of walking into my closet with her hands in the air, saying, “I’m just looking for something”….

To keep reading, click on the link. http://www.brainchildmag.com/2014/09/motherhood-absentmindedness/

Thanks!

Sara

The bear is ready to go!

Can you believe Nora is two and a half?

I just love the imaginary life she has with her “guys.” She likes to pretend she’s mommy. Today, she carried Kermit the Frog around and had a little conversation with him: “Let’s have a picnic. You wanna hold my hand? Come. We have a special picnic. K? You wanna sit here? Put you on the high chair. K? Put your feet through. We have special food for you. Here’s your bib. You wanna get down?”

Sometimes, her mommy/teacher voice doesn’t sound so sweet. Another conversation with Kermit: “Sit right there. I want you to listen. Okay? No! No! I want you to listen to me.” (Ugh, I hope I don’t sound like that.) “Don’t do dat! Don’t put popcorn on the floor.” And, “Don’t hit.”

But more often than not she’s nice to them. “What’s wrong turtle? He had a boo boo in his hand” (Gives him a kiss.)

Nora in her crib in the morning holding her bear to me: “The bear is ready to go.”

Me: “Where is he going?”

Nora: “Uh… pizza.”

I love the face she makes when she holds one of her guys up close and says, “aww he’s so cuuute,” endearing little lovey face, little coy smile, chin tucked to chest.

She’s started using the potty more frequently before bed and in the morning. She even asked once to go in the middle of the day and she went pee pee!

She got her two bottom molars and one top one. She was not a happy camper when that top one was breaking through.

Nora in the car: “I want a bar.”

Daddy: “We don’t have a bar.”

Nora: “But we have a packet maybe?”

Sometimes she sounds Russian: “What I holding in my hand?” “What I wearing?” “What I have on my pants?”

When she wakes up in the morning, she’ll say, “What are we doing today?”

She started saying “Oh my goodness!” Daddy pointed at a building and said it looked like a castle. “Oh my goodness, it is!” she said.

I went in one night to check on her and she woke up for a second, her hair a mess. “It’s sunny outside today,” she said and then went back to sleep.

I just love her adorable pronunciation like “hoteeel” and “baycation” and the way her mouth moves in an exaggerated way when she talks. I love the way she pauses between each word and the way she seems to be thinking so hard about what she wants to say before she says it.

Every once in awhile I rock her the way I did when she was a little baby and it reminds me of that time. She looks up and off into the distance, big eyes, pretty lips, mouth slightly open. Her breathing slows down. I can tell she’s about to fall asleep, her eyelids drooping, but then she reaches out and touches my face. “That your eyebrow?” she yells. “That your hair?”

What are you doing moon? Are you up in the sky?

 – Nora saw herself in the mirror. A strand of her hair was sticking straight up. “I have a unicorn,” she said.

–  She speaks in full sentences and tells stories about her day: “We meet baby Hanya aaaand see Seryn… aaand run around… aaand eat graham crackers and animal crackers and Seryn have some aaand we play with bubbles.”

–  She seems to finally get it that I’m a space cadet who constantly loses things. She walked into my closet the other day and said, “Uh, I’m looking for my belt. I can’t find it.”

– Randomly, she opened the door again, looked at me and said, “Let me know if you have a poop.”

–  She walked up to a little girl at the playground. “I have my jacket too,” she said, pointing at her own orange coat. “I’m Nora.” The girl just stared at her and then ran away. I was in near tears. How cute is she? Introducing herself to somebody?

(She’s transitioning out of parallel play and starting to really interact with people. This is exciting, but also nerve-wracking, because she’s about to enter a new world in which she cares what others think about her. I will have less and less control over how others treat her and how she internalizes things and that’s kind of scary. But, I realize this is an important step in her development. I’m so proud of her. Sniffle.)

–  While I was trying to pack, she put on my swim cap and held the goggles up to her eyes. “This is my mommy’s hat,” she said.

–   It happened. She climbed out of the crib. Oh boy. I knew this day would come. Nana and Poppop were babysitting and they heard a thud. They ran upstairs to find her quietly standing by the glider chair, looking a little shocked. “I bounced out,” she said. (I’m not ready to put her in a toddler bed! I can’t imagine her left to her own devices in her room! She would probably climb the walls and start eating bottles of Desitin! Has anyone been through this? Advice?)

–  We’ve been dealing with some poopy messes lately in her crib. It hasn’t been pretty, I’ll tell you that. I’ll spare you the gory details… let’s just say she likes finger painting. I’ve been strapping her into those footy onesie pajamas for every nap. I’ve been trying to concoct mixes of lemon juice and mouth wash to get the smell off her hands. I need a vacation! (Advice?)

–  She calls the stuffed animals in her crib “my guys.”

–  She squeezes our faces says we’re “so cute!” in this French-sounding accent. “Mommy’s zo cute, isn’t she? Aw, Daddy’s zo cute!”

–   She holds the page of a book in her little hand and says, “Take care of books. Don’t rip it, right?”

–   If you give her something, she might think you made it. “Daddy made these elephant banjamas (pajamas), right?” (I like the idea of Kevin sitting down at night after a hard day’s work to sew some elephant pajamas.)

–  I asked her if she wanted to hear music in the car and she said, “No. I’m singing Rockabye Baby to my sheep.”

–   Her improvisational skills are getting more and more advanced. “Old MacDonald had a stuffy nose,” “And on that farm there was a pants,” “And on that farm there was a Brianna.” She can sing Row Row Your Boat and Twinkle Twinkle little star to the tune of David Melach Yisrael.

–  She talks to people from afar so that they feel obligated to stand there until she’s done. “I have my leopard bear!” “I take my shoe off!” “This is my mommy!”

–  A woman was carrying a baby in a sling, and Nora said from afar, “See the baby hugging the mommy?”

–  She has so much ENERGY! She sometimes holds both ears, makes this weird face and shakes like the hulk. She does this while running around the yard.

–  Other funny/random things she’s said: “My name is cutie pie,” “Oh I found this in my hand!” “I wanna take a little bath and watch Dora and pelay (play),” “Kermit’s going for a ride! To the grocery store!” “That’s a biiiig poop,” “I want to hear Led Zeppelin. Is this ‘I Gotta Woman.’?” “Don’t break Daddy’s watch, right?” “The kitty cat is zo cute. Hiii kitty cat.” “I’m zo cute. I’m little. I’m a baby.”

–  We took a walk one day and you could see the white moon against the blue sky. “I see the moon,” Nora said from her stroller. “I see it,” I said. Then she yelled, “What are you doing moon?! Are you up in the sky?!”

Wanna play a little minute?

Nora is a little person who speaks in complete sentences, who knows what she wants, who makes me laugh every day. Of course, she’s two, and some moments are challenging, but mostly, there is laughter and silliness. I can’t count all the words she knows because her vocabulary has gotten so big!

“I want…” is her favorite thing to say right now. “Um, uh, I wanna EAT. I wanna EAT.” “I wanna go downstairs.” “I wanna watch Dora.” She once said, “I wanna throw things.” And if you give her what she wants, she might laugh and say, “Oh, thank you. Thank you, Mommy,” or shove it away and say, “No, all done. I’m all done with the mango. I don’t wanna EAT anymore.”

She likes to say what things are not. She might point to a picture of a goose and say, “Not a doooog! Riight?” “I wanna play, not naaap. Not naaap.”

One morning, I went in to her room to check on her because she was sleeping so late I was getting worried. She was standing in her crib with a stuffed toy in her hand, looking suspicious, her hair a mess. “Um. I’m throwing things,” she said.

I love that she says, “Wanna take a little bath?” and “play a little minute?” and “eat a little minute?” She asks you the question in a high pitched voice with her head cocked to one side.

When you read her a book, she points at every single thing and says, “That is? That is? That is?”

She has started saying, “I wanna watch Dora today,” because when she asks me if she can watch it for the millionth time, I usually say, “You already watched Dora today.”

She is very interested in names. She’ll sometimes shout at strangers on the street: “Name?” It’s a little embarrassing if it’s someone I’m supposed to know. The other day, she pointed from her stroller at a man walking into his house. “Where’s the boy? Where’s the boy going?” She’s interested in our names too: “Daddy’s name is Kevin, right? My mommy’s name is Mamma.”

She has a good ol’ time in her crib while she’s supposed to be napping. I hear jumping, banging as she drops books to the floor and laughter. She sings all of her songs. “Merry, merry, merry, merry, life is but a dream. He he! That was fun! It’s so funny!”

She’s still so good at improvising. “Old MacDonald had a cheese with a yum yum here and a yum yum there.” And “Mommy mommy mommy ma” or “onion onion onion ah!”(To the tune of twinkle twinkle little star.) She can pretty much insert any phrase to any of her tunes.

When Kevin came home from work one day, I was giving her a bath. She heard him unlock the door and said, “Hi Daddy! We’re taking a bath! And singing!”

If someone approaches her and she’s feeling shy, she’ll poke my arm over and over, look the person straight on and say, “This is my Mommy. Right heeere.”

She’s trying to figure out the difference between poop and gas. Everytime she has gas she says, “I pooped,” so we tried to explain the difference. Now she says, “I pooped gas. Riiight?”

She peed on the potty for the first time last month. It hasn’t happened again since. We let her sit on the potty every night. She’s so excited about it, but then is “all done,” after five seconds of sitting there.

She just talks and talks and talks….

“The fork is aaarang” (orange), “the leopard bear is reading a book” (this is actually a teddy bear in a leopard costume), “he’s sitting in his high chair,” “I have green on my hands,”  “the onion is very spicy right?”, “he kissed his mommy” (making a sea horse and an eagle kiss), “excuse me” (after a burp), “I see crickets at the quarium, right?” (that’s what stood out to her about our visit to the aquarium — a cricket. I think the cricket was actually food for the frogs, but she doesn’t know that), “I’m a boy!”, “I’m drinking milk and water together!,” “I’m singing the water dirty song!,” “she’s a tiny baby,” “I’m eating soup with yooogurt!”… and on and on and on…

She keeps me laughing. Hopefully she made you laugh too. 😉

Here comes cows!

Can you believe it? She’s going to be 2 years old next week!

This is a really fun age. Nora has really started talking a lot over the last few weeks, and suddenly, we have these great and hilarious conversations.

She’s affectionate, very silly, happy most of the time, sweet and adorable. She’s also very shy sometimes – like in her MyGym class or storytime at the library. When I was a kid, I was really goofy at home, but my mom tells me my teacher said I didn’t speak in school. So, I get it. She likes to take it all in first before warming up. But sometimes she’s extremely outgoing, running the hallways, yelling “hi!” to everyone she passes.

Here are some of the things Nora has been talking about:

Nora: “Sonny’s crying.” (Sonny is a classmate at her nursery school.)

Me: “Why is Sonny crying?”

“Ask for Daddy.”

“Did you say, it’s okay Sonny?”

“It’s okay Sonny.”

 

(Same thing with Eli, another kid, but he “ask for Mommy and Daddy.”)

 

“Nadine’s crying.” (Nadine is her teacher)

“Why is Nadine crying?”

“Ask for Rachel.” (Nora’s aunt.)

 

“Vivien’s crying.”

“Why is Vivien crying?”

“Ask for Brian.” (Nora’s uncle.)

 

Me: “Maybe Vivien’s laughing. Is she happy?”

Nora: “Nora’s laughing.”

“What does Nora’s laugh sound like?”

“Tickle tickle tickle! Hee hee!”

*

(She started saying this in the car):

“Here comes cows!”

“Here comes ducks!”

“Here comes doggies!”

“Here comes fish!”

“Here comes Nora!”

(I picture this really awesome parade.)

*

“I love you so much!”

(She squeezed me around the neck and said this. Heart strings!)

*

(In the bath, referring to the stuffed moose in our room):

“That’s a big, big moose.”

*

“Hug both!” (She pulls Mommy and Daddy in for a hug.)

*

(Songs she sings in her crib with a Mommy cameo):

“Twinkle, twinkle little Mommy!”

“Old MacDonald had a… Mommy.”

“Happy birthday to… Mommy.”

*

(Other songs she likes):

Hokey pokey, itsy bitsy spider, if you’re happy and you know it, Shabbat Shalom hey! (She goes to a Jewish nursery school.)

*

Here are some pics:

The good things and the hard things

Good: When Nora says “hug! And squeezes me tight.” She so snugly and sweet.

Hard: She does this when she can’t sleep in the middle of the night and it’s impossible to ignore at 3am. “Mommy! Hug! Hug!” 

Good: She says funny things. She sits her toys down at her small table and says “birthday party!” And starts singing happy birthday to you. She also feeds her dolls (Food! Baby!”), she shoves them in drawers with a blanket and says “night night, sleep tight” and puts hats on them: “Raggedy Ann! Hat on!”

Hard: She had her first fever recently and it was the worst. I just hate when she doesn’t feel good. Her nose was all red and she has a little rash on her face. She was crying a lot more than usual.

Good: Her songs are the coolest. “ABababc! H I gg abc!” “Old menonal. Farm. Ee I ee I oh! Moo moo heya. Moo moo heya. Old menonal. Farm.  Ee I ee I oh! “

Hard: She requires that we listen to these songs over and over again in the car and won’t take no for an answer. “Ee I ee I oh. Ee I ee I oh. Ee I ee I oh. Ee I ee I oh.”

Good: She can say what she wants and doesn’t want. “Ba na na. Peese.” “All done dwive. (Driving)”

Hard: “All done” is her favorite thing to say so I hear it all day long. While I’m changing her diaper, trying to brush her teeth, wipe her nose, put her in the stroller: “All done! Hug! Hug!” When she wakes up from her nap she yells “All done! Mommy! hug!” (As you can see, many of the hard things are also good things because she’s pretty dang cute– and  dang clever too.)

Good: She still says night night to people and things before bedtime. The other night she said “night night. Watch Dora. Night night. All done.”

Hard: She takes every puzzle out of the cabinet and throws all the pieces on the floor, removes all magnets from the fridge and throws them on the floor, takes Tupperware from the kitchen drawer and throws it on the floor, empties all crayons from their boxes and… (I think you get it.) And worst of all– food on the floor. Now, people tell me this is a phase and will pass, but it’s not passing! Everything we make just gets casually thrown off the high chair. Carrots, apples, bread, cheese, pasta, apple juice, milk. And lately she’s been saying (in an exasperated tone) “Nora. No, no, no.” Or “hey hey hey. Peese don’t do dat.”

Good: The other day, on a road trip, I was trying to teach her to say “no thank you” instead of “all done” but she didn’t seem to get it. We all sang row row your boat and then daddy said “doesn’t mommy have a nice voice?”

 “No thank you,” Nora said. 😉

Love her.

Nora at 19 months

Okay, what’s the little monkey up to?

She loves the swing. “Ming!” And while she swings, she says, “weee!” and “Nora!” I don’t know why she feels she needs to identify herself only on the swing.

She says more words than I can count because she repeats everything we say.

She says words in the possessive. “Mommy’s Agiss (glasses). Dada’s hats.” And sometimes she strings words together in a way that tells a story. “Ian. Pool. Bye bye.”

She loves the pool and the beach. “Omen”=ocean, “eekel”= seagull, “An”=sand, “daden”= dolpin, “lala” = umbrella.

She loves to “mon, mon, mon!” (run, run, run) on the boardwalk and she’s really fast. I mean, we have a hard time keeping up with her.

She goes through this night night routine that I just love. She’s very wistful as she looks up with those long eyelashes and says “nigh-nigh. Dada. Nigh-nigh. Pool. Nigh-nigh. Eena (Marina). Nigh-nigh. Ming, etc., etc. (And she goes through family and friends).

She says “yeah!” or “Yessss” to lots of questions, so I’ve started asking lots of questions like “Nora, will you remind me I need to stop at the Pharmacy on the way home?” And she says, “Yeeeahhhh.”

She knows what she wants when she wants it. If she’s sitting in her high chair and glances at a banana, she’ll cry and yell “Nana!” until it reaches her mouth. She thinks grocery shopping is like, oh, great, all-this-food-is-for-me-right-now time.

She throws food on the floor with such force and with such nonchalance, it would be funny if I didn’t have to clean it up.

I ran into someone from my high school the other day who I hadn’t seen since high school — we were out to dinner. This woman is really pretty and well-put-together. Nora first threw her spoon and then her nearly-empty apple sauce cup at this woman’s shoe. I was a little mortified.

She’s still climbing the furniture and jumping, squealing, laughing — thinking it’s a game. I have no idea how to stop this.

We’re taking a MyGym class to try to release some of that energy she has so she’ll stop climbing and jumping on the furniture. She LOVES it.

Yesterday, I was driving, and a block somehow hit the steering wheel. She’d launched it from her (rear-facing) car seat. Two shoes came next.

She’s a good hugger. “Hug!”

She gets really invested in random toys like a plastic hamburger patty. People laugh as we walk by, Nora in the stroller, and she’s whining for her “hamburger!” She also says that word like Steve Martin in Pink Panther. (Did anyone see that movie? I think that was the only funny part of that movie, that he can’t say hamburger without a French accent.)

She has moved to one nap a day and she sleeps for close to three hours.

She’s learning her colors.

She likes making animal noises.

I think it’s cute when she’s a little shy around other kids — especially because she’s such a chatterbox most of the time.

She’s so sweet, funny, silly, affectionate, pretty, etc, etc, etc. I love her!

Thanks for tuning in!