Nora Evelyn McGowan

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.

Nora’s off school for a couple of weeks and, this morning, accompanied her mom and me to campus. Jen had to work for an hour or so so Nora and I walked to my office. During the walk Nora said the following (that I understood. there were several things I couldn’t figure out):

“truck, car, car, car, truck, bus BUS!!!!”
(claps hands, sees a truck backing up)

“*beep* *beep* *beep*, doggie!, *owwwww*, *woof* *woof* *owwwwww*”

A big yellow lab licked her head a few weeks ago in a park and nearly knocked her over (I need to post pictures from that outing, btw, someone remind me!). So every time she sees or thinks about a dog now she says “owwwww!” and rubs the spot where his nose bumped her. It can be a blind Yorkshire Terrier half a mile away and she’ll still say “owwwwww! and rub her head. There’s something in that about semantic categories and representatives of a class, but I bore people when I talk about linguistics here.

“truck, birdie, *hee*, dada shoe, nora shoe, dada shoe, shoe, mama?”

(looks around for mama, I say “mama’s at work” which she genuinely seems to understand)

“nora shirt, dada shirt, nora, nora, nora, nora, roll it, pat it, roll it pat it,”

These are from “patty-cake” which her mom & grandma have taught her. The only part she really likes is the roll-it and pat-it part. She does the hand gesture for rolling and pats herself on the chest or tummy for “pat it”.

“*beep* *beep* *beep*”

(“lawn mowers don’t beep,” I tell her, “even riding ones.”)

“down! Nora.”

When she’s down, “down!” means “up!” and when she’s up “down!” means “down!”. You can hear her saying “down!” on the Nora & Beth video we posted a few weeks ago.

This will not be one of our typical posts so those of you who only look at the pictures and don’t read any of the text (Erin, McGranny, I’m looking at you) can feel free to come back later tonight. :)

Last evening Nora and I set off alone to reclaim my newly-repaired macbook from the Apple store. I got an entirely new logicboard because of a defective $2.00 headphone jack (linguists need headphone jacks, people with macbooks need AppleCare). Nora happily said, “hello!” to each of the iphones individually but stopped dead in her tracks in front of a mac pro with a giant LCD monitor. Actually, ‘monitor’ doesn’t really do it justice. It was too large to be a large screen television. You’d need to reinforce your desk. I think Times Square has a large bare patch on one of its buildings. She stopped in front of this monstrosity, raised her finger to point at it and with awe in her voice called out ‘apple!’ very loudly*.

Want the secret to receiving great customer service? Bring along an enthusiastic toddler who’ll stand in the middle of the store and dance & sing the name of the product the sales folks are trying to get others to buy.

On the way out of the store (after the best customer service of my life) Nora pointed at the GIANT screen again and this time yelled ‘bubble!’. Watching herself in the Hands-On Museum bubble video we posted has become her favorite pastime. She made me show it 3 times during lunch today alone (the highest I’ve let it go in a sitting was 18 times — she’s watched it twice while I’ve been typing this). So I pulled up her blog on the giant screen (my HTML layout looks just silly when the resolution is most efficiently given in scientific notation) and, without even considering that the giant screen might secretly be connected to similarly giant speakers, pressed play.

It was fantastic. There was a 7/10 life-size scaled Nora dancing, enjoying the giant bubble maker, and yelling so loudly that everyone in the (already dangerously loud) store turned to look. I didn’t turn it down. The place is supposed to be loud, right? Apple wants people to buy speakers so they hook up giant speakers and let people do more or less whatever they want with them, right? And home video of one’s kids has to be responsible for at least as many high-end computer purchases as Portal and Half-Life, right?

Then I witnessed the unimaginable. Nora wasn’t watching bubble. She was clinging to my side and staring around the store at all of the other people and, I swear, trying to disassociate herself from the situation! I managed to embarrass a toddler!?!? I’m going to be good at embarrassing a ‘tween. I hope there is a contest.

(now she’s watched bubble 5 times while posting this)

* she has no idea about the brand. she saw the apple logo, it’s an apple, she’s terribly fond of apples. later at the grocery store she did the exact same thing when I pushed our cart next to the bin of apples, but that time she stopped saying it because she had snatched a Fuji for herself and her mouth was full of apple.