Nora Evelyn

These cupcake pictures (surely by now you know you need to click, yes?) are from yesterday (July 10^th) but never got posted. Nora’s doing a cool thing lately with references to time. She’ll say “yesterday” to mean any time prior to today and “last night” apparently means any time prior to today but I remember that it was at night. This morning she told me that “yesterday” she and her mommy went to meet Farmer Jeff to get vegetables (this happened 2 weeks ago) and yesterday (earlier this week) she told us that “last night” she’d seen a friend of ours eating dinner at a restaurant (friend has been on another continent for months).

Sadly, as she’s half Irish this may be as far as her conceptualization of the passage of time ever advances. ;)

me: Nora, want another piece of pizza?
Nora: *shakes head* I already have one.
me: okay.
Nora: you cook my pizza.
me: yes, I did.
Nora: you cook my pizza Nora!
me: yes, I cooked the pizza for Nora.
Nora: thank you! thank you, daddy!

Nora’s pronunciation of baby has moved from [didi] (sounds like deedee) to [bebi] (the standard pronunciation of baby). She puts together novel multiword sentences all the time now. Has learned to use generic references to objects (e.g. “I want this one”, “Nora want pink one”, “this one too hot, daddy”). She’s never, ever stops talking (often talking while asleep like her old man). As I type this she’s curled up in my lap singing the alphabet song, hiccuping, and explaining to me that I need to read her her snowman book or her mickey mouse book or the llama llama book. In other words, I need to stop typing and start interacting with her.

Nora wrote a new song yesterday; perhaps it is technically a mash-up?

Twinkle twinkle little star,
Nora poop all day.

If Adam Sandler releases this as a single let this post serve as proof of prior art.

Nora pinched one of my tortilla chips (visible in her mouth) and this is the face she made when I asked if I could have it back.

On a related note, Jen’s parents are in Mexico right now. We explained this to Nora and told her they’d gone in an airplane, but she’s conflated this with the trips Jen and I have each taken in the last month or so. I had this conversation with her this afternoon:

Nora: Papa & Baba go purple house?
Me: No, sorry, sweetie. Papa & Baba are on vacation.
Nora: airplane.
Me: That’s right! They went in an airplane.
Nora: Papa & Baba Baltimore.
Me: Are Papa & Baba in Baltimore?
Nora: *earnest nod*

We hope you’re having fun in Baltimore, Papa & Baba!

I am sad to report that Mr. Schnee is no longer with us. I found out about it from Nora so I’ll just quote her directly:


(running inside and tracking snowy boots across the living room)
Snowman fall down!
Snowman ouchie head!
My Nora's* snowman fall down!


It’s both true and our little peanut has quite the flair for understatement. Mr. Schnee’s head basically exploded upon impact with the ground. He has passed on. He is no more. He has ceased to be.

I explained to her that it was okay and that we’d make a new snowman the next time it snows. Unfortunately, Nora doesn’t quite have the concept of “next time it snows” so she pesters us 30 or 40 times/day with, “new snowman! new snowman?”

Actually, time has been pretty interesting with Nora lately. As recently as 2 weeks ago if you asked her what she ate for breakfast she’d list things she’d like to eat right then. Starting today or yesterday, though, she’s able to run through a comprehensive list of everything she had for breakfast. She’s also able to remember that yesterday we saw Papa & Baba or Uncle Jim.

On December 24th she did a pretty cool thing. She saw, just before bedtime on the 23rd, that I was making cookies. Naturally, she asked for a cookie and Jen said, “no cookies now, but you can have a cookie in the morning.” And the first words out of her mouth when she got up the next morning were, “cookie! Nora cookie!”

I have another post coming tomorrow without any pictures but this one should feature audio and be of interest to my linguist friends (particularly phonologists!).

* yes, she often marks the possessive with “my Nora’s”. She will also simply say “my” or simply say “Nora’s”. The redundancy honestly seems to be emphatic. She definitely has no problems with the deixis of I/me/you/we/his/hers/mine/yours/etc.

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.

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!

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 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.