Happy 3rd Birthday, Nora!

In some ways, it's hard to believe Nora is turning three today.  On the other hand, it's hard to remember what life was like before she joined our family.  She regularly does things I wasn't expecting her to do until she was older, which long since dissociated her from "babies" or "toddlers" in my mind. I guess those are some different ways of saying the same thing: "three" feels like the age she should be.

How to describe Nora as she turns three? The thing family and friends regularly comment about is how well and how much she talks.  Her teachers seem most surprised by how attached she and her best friend Layla are to one another, and though they seem to love playing together we sometimes hear about them bickering with one another like siblings.  We understand why people are surprised by her because every day she does at least one thing that amazes me and Billy.  The things she can remember, the astute observations she makes, the ways she finds to explain what she is thinking, and the ways she makes us laugh still catch us off guard.  Billy invented the "I like" game, where she takes turns naming things she likes with the other person.  We love this game because it highlights what she is thinking about and what is most memorable to her.  When she "reads" to herself or with one of us, she often recites several sentences in a row with complete accuracy, regardless of the complexity of the language.  Whatever the "terrible twos" are, she skipped them entirely.

Nothing about two year old Nora was terrible-- even her tantrums-- but she is testing us more these days.  She is such a rational child that we can more or less talk her out of tantrums and bad behavior.  Brief time outs alone in her room, after which we speak to her about what got her there in the first place and give each other big hugs, continue to be very effective.  She often has to be reminded to put on her "listening ears."  She naps easily in her room at home, and if she wakes up early, she plays quietly until her two hour naptime is up-- but at school she often refuses to nap entirely.  When she disagrees with us we regularly give her two options-- "You can do X or you can do Y, but you cannot do Z"-- or we bargain with her to incentivize good behavior.  Of course, this means she has gotten quite good at her attempts to bargain with us, too.  Lately she has gotten so good at stalling before doing something we ask her to do that we just find ourselves laughing at her attempts.

But enough of talking about her. Here is the video that captures a little bit of what she's like these days.




We celebrated Nora's birthday with the family at a Navy tailgate on Saturday.  The day we planned for all the family to come to the game happened to be the weekend before Nora's birthday, so it worked out great.  She loved having me, Billy, Gram, Pop, Oma (who is visiting), Aunt Vickie, Tres, Uncle Brian, Maggie, Aunt Mary, Uncle Gary, Heather, Jeremy, Jacelyn, Allen, and Cash and Lily celebrate her at the game.  When she went to bed that night, she asked me to tell her a story about "everybody who came to my football party because they love me very much!"  I didn't remember to take any pictures, unfortunately, but here is one my mom sent me of Nora with her cupcake!

I did remember to ask Tres to take pictures of the party we hosted for Nora's friends.  Thank goodness, because his pictures captured so many happy smiling faces that I missed when I was trying to greet all the parents.  Nora asked to have her party at the same place as Layla's (of course), so we invited her school friends and our friends' kids to join us at Rolly Pollies.  Here are a few of my favorites:

And here are a few videos Patti sent us of Nora enjoying the gym!

We can't wait to see what the next year has in store for Nora and for us! If you're interested in taking a look backward, you can click over to Nora's second birthday, Nora at one year old, Nora's 12 month video, Nora's first birthday, or Nora's birth story.