Nora got to meet her newborn cousin Briahna last Saturday when we drove out to Shannon and Uncle Brian’s house. New babies are cool, sure, but if you’re a toddler nothing tops a padded ottoman that rocks (particularly when the baby is asleep).
On Tuesday we attended a fantastic event at the University for students who are also parents. There were hordes of happy kids, a corresponding number of nerdy parents, a clown, a station for making masks, a station for making wands, an unbelievably ill-advised baby pool filled with water and ducks, and free food. What’s not to love? It was also Nora’s twenty six monthaversary and her first (known) consumption of celery that hadn’t been stir fried.
Many thanks to the fine folks at Rackham and University Unions (and whomever else was involved) for a great evening of not being in our living room.
Nora and I were at the park watching a man play frisbee with his two border collies on a hill. He was taking turns throwing to each dog, though, so we could only ever see one at a time. Nora was terribly, terribly excited and kept calling out “doggie! doggie!” and making the sign for ‘more’ and saying “more doggie!”. Until they got out of phase and both dogs came bounding up the hill together and Nora called out, in an amazed little voice, TWO DOGGIES!”
I nearly fainted. “two doggies”. She got the number right, she differentiated 2 from 1, she used the English plural inflection properly, she did the voicing assimilation on that morpheme properly… I’m still kind of amazed. It was a glorious moment to be alive; I’m still kind of buzzing.
I can’t believe we’ve never posted a picture of Nora brushing her (hard-won) teeth before! She’s been doing it (progressively more on her own) for about a year now. Here she’s doing the bedtime routine with her trusty Mickey Mouse toothbrush.
pity there isn’t a leaf fairy who brings us $1.00 for each leaf a tree drops (but think of the inflation!).
We’re starting our first-ever theme week here on rubberducky.org: things that are deciduous. Post 1 finds our heroine enjoying the crisp Autumn weather to help the rubberducky.org webmaster team rake the leaves into the path of the giant leaf-eating Lorax machine.
By far, Nora’s favorite part of our trip to San Antonio was the boats that travel up and down the river – water taxis, maintenance boats, river tour boats. Every time Nora saw one she would gleefully yell “boat!” Imagine her excitement when we actually rode on a boat:
Last night Jen had to work so Nora and I headed over to Washtenaw Dairy for ice cream. She had a tiny, little bowl of banana pudding ice cream (with bananas and vanilla cookies mixed in), I had the chocolate chip and we sat on a faux wrought iron bench outside so Nora could swing her little feet while we ate.
It was a gorgeous late summer/early fall evening of the sort that could convince anyone to live in Michigan. Nora pointed out all of the dogs, birds, cars, babies, trucks, busses, airplanes, glasses of water, trash cans and shoes she could see while gripping her bowl in the left hand and very, very neatly using the spoon with her right. Occasionally she’d give me a scoop of hers and wait for a scoop of mine in exchange.
When we were done she needed her face cleaned up a little bit and her hands wiped off but who doesn’t?
Life is good.
It took 13 days, but Nora has figured out that she can get out of bed and wander around. No photo as that would only encourage her.
Nora has learned to pretend; this happens far earlier than I’d have imagined during a child’s cognitive development. Or she’s been pretending for a long time and she’s just become sufficiently verbal to convey irreality? I don’t know.
She’ll lay her doll down on a pillow and tell us “shhhhhhh! baby sleeping”. This morning she spent several minutes pretending she was crashing into her bedroom wall and falling over while yelling “nora boom!”. Here’s a photo from this past weekend when she climbed into a milk crate and began pretending to drive: steering gestures, yelling *beep* *beep*, bobbing from side to side, etc. She learned to pretend drive from her Baba (sometimes the jokes practically write themselves and the true sign of wit is to leave them unsaid –formless but inescapable).
Nora also acted as general contractor for our pantry installation this weekend. Here’s a shot of my feet preparing to hang new cabinets and Nora explaining how to proceed. When I finished she ran around the kitchen yelling “yay, dada! yay, dada!” which is pretty good for employee morale.
Today is day one in our little “can Nora sleep in a big girl bed” experiment and the preliminary results are incredibly promising. I converted the bed (took the front off the crib) right after she got up this morning. Here she’s sitting in it for the first time (wearing a towel because she was gearing up for a run at the potty chair which, you understand, requires one to be properly attired). Her afternoon nap went as smoothly as ever (actually, she dropped her monkey and cried until I came in and retrieved him for her. Despite putting herself *into* bed she seems unaware that she can put herself back out again. We’re not complaining).
Bedtime went even more smoothly than usual. We finished teeth & bath, put her in her footy pajamas (“shoes! mama! shoes!”) and she climbed into bed herself, snuggled monkey, told us “bye bye” and went straight to sleep. Amazing. Can it last?
