Nora Evelyn

Nora slept in super late on Saturday morning: until nearly 10 past 7. She woke Jen and me up by calling out/singing:


I wake up!!!
*pause*
I wake up!
Mommy! Nora wake up!
*pause*


Then she just started naming all of the things she could see from her bed.


Nora's turtle lamp! pajamas... monkey monkey! baby!
baby's clothes! baby's hat!
I wake up!
*pause*
Happy Birthday, Nora! Happy Birthday, Nora! A B C H I J Happy Birthday!
Nora down!


and so on until we finally stopped giggling long enough to go get her. At dinner tonight Jen remarked how only a few weeks ago a meal was largely a fairly quiet affair. We’d talk about our days and ask Nora questions and mostly she made chewing and banging noises. Now she talks constantly and usually it’s pretty intelligible.

She’s like a living, breathing first page of “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” 24 x 7.

last year Nora had a good time at cookiefest, but this year she had a blast.

Jen found a wooly bear caterpillar on the floor in the foyer.

me: Nora, do you see the caterpillar?
Nora: (waving) hi, caterpillar!
me: Do you see how he curls up in a ball when I poke his tummy?
Nora: *nods*
me: what should we name him?
Nora: outside!
me: “Outside”? that’s a funny name for a caterpillar.
Nora: (waving again) bye bye, caterpillar! bye bye!

Ruggles doesn’t eat so he doesn’t normally join us at the table. Yesterday, though, Nora specifically requested his company so I (after scrupulously cleaning and drying her hands and face) made an exception.

We stopped by my sister’s house on Sunday to visit with Colleen, Brien, other Brien, and Beth. We were there for less than 2 hours but Nora managed to smash a salt shaker, demolish a table dressing, drop pizza on the floor, and fill her pockets with Christmas ornaments. It was great fun. :)

Our good friend Markus came over this morning for breakfast (day old french bread with eggs courtesy of the Masing family). After breakfast he helped Nora and me assemble the dollhouse Hans gave us yesterday (she can’t have it until Christmas, but I don’t see any reason she shouldn’t have the fun of helping us assemble). Assembly went perfectly smoothly and Nora was a real help. Here are some pictures.

thanks, Markus & Hans!

We had an amazingly fun day today just Nora and me. The morning started with a visit to the Masing’s house where Nora patted their kitty cat, Scooter, and met with the chickens again. Hans & Tricia sent us home with 9 amazingly fresh eggs and a trunk full of goodies. Then we went, as previously reported, to Granny’s for a dance lesson. The studio is near IKEA and we need some more smocks so we stopped by there, sat on all of the kiddie chairs, failed to find smocks, and ended up eating lunch in the cafeteria (Nora was totally fine this time, no freak out). Then we failed to have dinner with the Masings but ended up having a lovely dinner at a coney island where Nora was much-adored by the wait staff and neighboring customers.

After dinner I was walking into the grocery store with Nora in my arms and she leaned back, looked up into my face, and said “I love you. I love you, daddy” and hugged me.

Only it’s “uff”. “I uff you. I uff you, daddy!”.

*sniff* Hard to grocery shop with tears welling up in your eyes.

p.s. during bedtime reading Nora pointed at a picture of one of the blue IKEA chairs in one of her books and said “IKEA!”. It’s possible we shop there too much.

Nora’s Granny teaches Irish dancing at Tim O’Hare’s dancing school. This morning Nora and I went over to meet the dancers and maybe learn a few steps. As you can see, it is very blurry inside the dance studio.

I know I just posted one of these, but this time she’s wrapped herself in a blanket to cuddle up and read on the couch. How awesome is that?

Last week we went in for Nora’s 2 year Dr’s appointment. She’s in great health, a crazy rambunctious 2 year old, and still unable to break the elusive 10th percentile weight barrier. You know how your broken car always works when you take it to the shop and kids never do cool new things when you’re telling friends about it? While we were explaining to the Dr that Nora’s current favorite trick is tearing off all of her clothes, tearing off her diaper, and running around with her arms in the air she … tore off all of her clothes, tore off her diaper, yelled “I did it!” and started running around the room laughing and waving her arms wildly above her head. Laughing only encourages her, but how can you not?

Here’s how this picture looked just 20 months ago. We have a nicer camera now but everything else is basically unchanged, eh? ;)