Oma's Visit

In June, my mom came to visit us for about a week.  It was great to see her, and it was a lot of fun to watch her relationship with Nora grow in person.  Nora is at an age now where she gets really excited anytime someone she knows from pictures is coming to visit her.  Before she sees someone for the first time in a while (whether it's a few weeks or a few months), she asks to see pictures of herself with that person (kids these days!).  Since Mom also sends Nora little video clips often, we spent several days getting ready for her visit.  I've said this before, but it's so nice to live in a time where Nora feels completely at ease with my mom right away, no matter how long it's been since she saw her in "real life," since she sees her on video and video chat fairly often.

We had great weather while Mom was here, so we got to enjoy a lot of outdoor activities!

We spent an afternoon at Aunt Vickie's pool: check out Nora's cool Portland Thorns hat Oma brought her!

We all got to go to an Orioles game together!  This is the only game I've made it to all year, and the Orioles got blown out-- so I'm glad I was with good company.  If they have to lose to someone, I'm happy for it to be the A's.

We went to a little festival at a park near our house that had crafts for Nora to try and included a hay ride (sans hay).

And Mom, Nora, and I went to Down's Park on the Chesapeake Bay to see the owls, play on the playground, throw rocks in the bay, and take pictures for Billy's Father's Day collage.

Sidebar: This is our third iteration of the "DAD" collage, but it's the first year Nora has been able to paint the letters herself!  Here are a couple of the out-takes I liked best:

While Mom was visiting, Nora's favorite song of the moment was "Say Hey (I Love You)." Originally sung by Michael Franti, I think Nora's teachers play her the dreaded beloved Kidz Bop version.  Here's a video of her singing the chorus!

Nora's Narratives

As she gets older, Nora's attention span is getting much longer and she is starting to love stories.  She follows the plot of in kid shows and movies, and she's happy to sit through longer books, often announcing what is going to happen next.  Since she often chooses to repeat the same books, she is even beginning to memorize exact sentences from them.  I recently recorded her participation in reading one of her current favorites, "All By Myself," to show that she likes to "read" the book while pointing out other things she notices one each page.  In this case, there is a mouse on every page, and she seeks him out each time even though he is only mentioned in the text once.  As a mom who knows that paying attention to detail can make a life more full, and who is currently writing a dissertation about marginalized writers and characters on the margins, this makes me feel amazed and proud.  : )

We discover new proof of her ability to follow a narrative every day.  Yesterday she twice she recounted memorable plot moments from her current favorite story, Frozen, which we have in book and DVD form.  One time, she said "I have to go kiss Hans" as she walked down the sidewalk away from me and Billy, and the second time she said "Let's go bring back summer!"  I think everyone who reads this blog probably knows I am much more on board with the second suggestion than the first!

She loves listening to us tell made up stories, but insists that each one feature her in some capacity.  She's also learning to tell her own stories, many of which begin with "once upon a time" and include someone "walking down the street" at some point in the 3-4 sentence narrative.

Stream of Consciousness Car Ride

A few years ago, there was a car commercial where a Dad puts his chatty daughter into the back seat of their car.  He buckles her in, shuts the door, when he gets around and into the driver's seat, she is still carrying on a very lively conversation with herself.  I don't think I was pregnant yet when it aired, but Billy and I were confident that if we ever had a daughter, she'd be like that.

She is.  Nora talks the entire way to and from school.  I don't know if anyone besides me will find these conversations interesting, but I recorded a portion of a commute so I could look back on it and see what she was like at this age.  If you're willing to spend 12 minutes watching Nora ride in a car, you will hear her compare our outfits, remind herself to be careful when she coughs, describe which family members she wants to go see, roar at the bear sign we see every day, identify her cousins and who lives with Baby Julian, and run through the gender of every person who comes to mind.  She also sings Twinkle Twinkle, Where is Thumbkin, a mashup of Skidamarink and Dominic the Donkey, and begins Rain Rain Go Away before the phone cuts her off.



We never taught her any difference between boys and girls, and it has always surprised me that she almost never mixes up male and female pronouns when talking about people.  In any case, she's very interested in categories right now, so announcing who is a boy and who is a girl is apparently quite fun.

Nora Playing and Singing

It's hard to get Nora to do anything on video these days.  She loves to say cheese for a single photo, but she gets shy and/or annoyed anytime I try to record her doing something new or funny.  Today, though, I did manage to get video of her playing "partners," one of her favorite games for the past few weeks, as well as singing an entire verse of "Twinkle" before changing the words.  Enjoy!

Nora's Favorite Books

For months and months, Nora has been grabbing books and forcing her way into our laps to read.   Over the past month or two, though, she has really started participating in the reading experience!

Sixth Anniversary: Bethany Beach, Delaware

To celebrate our sixth wedding anniversary, Billy and I took Nora to Bethany Beach for a few days.  It was so nice to be back at the beach for the first time since 2010, and Nora loved it!  It's hard to believe our wedding was six years ago, but when I think about how much life has changed since then, it sometimes feels like even longer.  Either way, I feel so fortunate to be married to someone whose company I enjoy so much, who helps me become a better version of myself every year, and who makes every day with our daughter a true delight.

Since Nora was recovering from a double ear infection and she gets very overstimulated by new experiences, we thought being at the beach from Sunday through Wednesday worked out perfectly.  Plus, it rained for several days after we left!  Next year we think she will enjoy going for a whole week.

On our first trip down to the beach, she was understandably scared of the water and mostly watched everything going on around her.  On day two, she grew very interested in playing in the sand and sent Billy down to fill her bucket with water repeatedly.  By day three, Nora had gotten comfortable enough with the water that she would run down toward it but wouldn't really try to get in unless we took her out.  Billy also dug a huge hole that day, so she had a great time climbing around in there.

This was our first trip to Bethany Beach, and we liked it a lot.  Our hotel was only a short walk from the beach, which was busy but not too crowded.  We were also a very short drive from the boardwalk, which had enough shops and restaurants to keep us occupied without being crowded.  Our only complaint was that the waves crashed really close to the shore, and that made it a little difficult for small children to play in the water.  Apparently this is a negative by-product of beach restoration attempts.

But enough with the description: here are a sampling of my favorite pictures from the trip!

It's hard to hear her in this clip because of the sound of the ocean, but she is counting out her toys as she moves them in and out of the bucket. (It's *not* hard to hear me.  Sorry.)


A few other funny/interesting tidbits:

• Nora is a bossy beachgoer.  "Daddy sit!" "Mommy come here!" "Mo waduh pease!" "Nononono!" "No Daddy!" "Nora's turn!"
• She tasted the sand and did not like it-- thank goodness.  But saltine crackers apparently taste good when dipped in a bucket of sandy ocean water???
• She is surprisingly cooperative about having sunscreen applied to her body.
• When her teachers discover a poopy diaper on the changing table, they say "Ooooh Nora!"  She has apparently decided this is the thing you say when you undress.  So when I would take off my beach cover up, or Billy would take off his shirt, she would exclaim "Oooooh Mommy!" or "Oooooh Daddy!"  When we figured out what she was doing, it made us laugh so hard.
• At one point there was a little boy named Everett playing a few blankets away.  Billy and I both noticed it, since this is my nephew's name, but we weren't aware that Nora had taken note of him until we were leaving.  She looked over in their direction, waved, and said "Bye Evitt!"  Otherwise, she liked watching other kids play but apparently was not in the mood for making new friends.
• Taking a child who naps once mid-day on a beach vacation works out nicely.  We were able to spend a few hours at the beach in the morning, come back mid-day for lunch and her nap, and then return to the beach for several more hours before we needed to get back and get to dinner.
• Right before we left on the final day she made sure to give me a chance to change a poopy diaper at the beach.  Thank goodness I didn't miss out on that priceless experience!

Body Parts

I was doing really well with documenting Nora's development on video until a little after one year.  Then it became difficult, both because she had so many new skills each month and because she was much more aware of being recorded.  Now she is so used to talking to her West Coast family on video chat that she gets angry when I try to record and there is no one on the screen to talk to her.  But this morning she finally let me get a video of her pointing to all the body parts on her baby.  This was definitely one of her earliest skills, and at this point, her most reliable.  She can also say the correct names of all the body parts if you point them out to her.



The other identification skill she does well with at this point is naming animals and making their noises. She can count to ten on her own, though she usually stops at three or six.  She also sang through all the ABCs in order once recently, but she usually just sings them in random chunks.  Her colors are coming along more slowly.  Right now, the answer to "What color is this?" is always the same: "Red."  I guess that makes it her favorite color?

Half Birthday Girl

Yesterday was Nora's half birthday, but I can hardly believe she's already a year and a half old!  We have entered full-blown toddlerhood around here.  She may be short, but with a full head of hair and a full mouth of teeth, she looks nothing like her baby self.  She is constantly on the move!  My attempts to capture some half birthday photos all left me with one conclusion: she's much too busy for my iPhone camera these days.

Nora has so many "skills" these days that it would take me all day to try to remember and list them, but I'll try to give the nutshell version.  She's talking all the time, acquiring 1-2 new words every day.  It's easy to understand her most of the time, but she does have a few "words" she says regularly that we don't understand.  She sings parts of her favorites songs, she loves to dance, and she is thrilled by every dog she sees.  Lately she has taken up running at full speed and has the skinned knees to prove it.  She's very friendly and outgoing around people she knows but shy in new situations until she gets comfortable.  She can properly identify and point to few body parts, Elmo, and several family members and classmates in pictures and/or on screens.  She makes us laugh constantly.  She's very affectionate, and spirited, and proud of herself, and silly, and curious.  She knows some multiple word phrases, and when I say "I'm Mama," she knows to point to herself and say "I'm Nora," so she's on her way to sentences.

The other very welcome development of this week is that she has finally warmed up to the BOB stroller!  She let me kick off her half birthday with a three mile run on my favorite nearby trail, and every time we passed someone walking or running with a dog, she would call out "doggie!"  The soreness in my arms confirms she is much heavier now than she was the last time we attempted this!

Her 18 month doctor's appointment today went off without a hitch.  She only got one shot, which she didn't really mind since it was over before she was really felt it.  When I picked her up, I said "I know that hurt, but it is much better than getting Hepatitis.  I promise," to which she responded "Okay" as if she actually understood.  : )  She weighs 23 lbs 13 oz, is 30 3/14" tall, and her head circumference is 19".  Our pediatrician says these are all good improvements, mostly on pace with her previous growth, though she did move up a bit in height percentile.  She's into 18 month clothes now, although she sometimes fits better into 24 month tops because of her little buddha belly.

But maybe you'd rather see for yourself what she's up to these days.  Here is a video we shot last week to wish her Uncle Nate a happy birthday!

Name Practice

For the past few weeks, Nora's vocabulary has expanded rapidly.  She seems to start using at least one new word accurately every day.  She's also getting better at pronouncing her words, including names, and can often point to the person a name belongs to when she's looking at a picture.  Although both of these videos have been shared to various places on facebook, we are so proud of our little talker that I wanted to post them again here!


 



These days, every baby is "Everett" and every bald guy is "Nate," so it pays to have a distinctive look!

Finally a Snow Day!

Today was supposed to be my last day to get work done on my "Spring Break," and though it is officially spring, we had our first significant snow accumulation since Nora was born!  Billy still had to go into work, so Nora, Oscar, and I were on our own to play in the snow.  Today was not a good day to discover that my DSLR battery was dead, but we did the best we could with my iPhone so we could share this milestone with her family.

First we had to get her dressed in her snow gear.  She was quite thrilled by her snow pants, and I was thrilled that they were not bought in vain.  Though they are still much too long, her belly barely fit!

She was pretty intrigued by investigating the snow on our deck.  As usual, she kept a very serious expression on her face the whole time.

She had trouble standing up when she fell down into the snow, so the deck turned out to be the perfect place to play.  She could use the railings to help pull herself back up.

Once she got herself oriented, we began working on our snowman.  I decided to use mixing bowls to form the snowman's body, which turned out to be a good idea because Nora could participate.  Once I showed her how to pack the snow down she was intent on helping me each time.

She was less sure what to do with the domes when I started putting them together in the shape of the snowman.

Once the body was finished, Nora helped me put in the snowman's parts.  Again, this was serious business.  Patti gave these parts to Nora for Christmas, and each one is on a long peg that you shove into the snow.  We were so glad to have them because they were easy to use, made our snowman look professional, and were probably the only reason I thought to make a snowman in the first place!  Thanks, Gram!

I held out three hats for her to choose from, and she picked the Orioles hat-- a good fit for our man, and the only one with colors that matched his parts.  Once the hat was on, she seemed very proud of herself, and she thought the snowman was too funny!

After her mid-day nap, I went outside to slide the snowman over so his parts wouldn't fall into the neighbor's yard when he began to melt.  When I came back in, Nora was standing at the door, holding her coat, and demanding to go back outside.  Her clothes had all dried off, so we got her dressed again and tried to take Oscar for a walk.  Either he is getting old or he has already shed his winter coat, because he wanted back inside almost immediately, so he watched us from the window.  The snow was slushing up, and we discovered that Nora prefers puddle stomping over making now angels.  She was not a fan of the flakes falling in her face.

She was a fan of doing face plants into the snow.  She did it three times in a row.  She would just get this curious look on her face, put her hands in front of her, and lean forward.  The first time she kind of kneeled into it slowly.  The second two times she just flopped.  This actually made me laugh out loud.

When we came back in and got out of our snow clothes, I decided it wasn't a real snow day until everyone has some hot chocolate.  I put some in her warmed milk, and she played along long enough to pose for this picture, but after about three sips she threw her cup to the ground.  I guess she was not a fan.

Needless to say, I got much less reading done today than I had planned, but our snow day was definitely worth it.  Now I have at least one reason to look forward to next winter, but I am more than ready to say goodbye to this one.  I can't wait to have her in warm clothes again so I can see her chubby little arms and legs!

The Toddler Room: Effects on Toddler and Mama

Nora loves the toddler room.  Why wouldn't she?  Yesterday when we walked in, one of her friends said "Nono!", rushed over to her, gave her a hug, and then led her by the hand over to the play carpet.  Her "friends" in the toddler classroom are actually her friends.  She gets a snack or a meal every twoish hours.  She blows bubbles, completes art projects, reads books, sings songs, plays outside with toddler-appropriate equipment, and dances to music.  She no longer even considers crying when I leave or when I return.  Mama, that's for babies, I imagine her thinking.  She has even started regularly napping for over one hour on her cot because her teachers had the good sense to place her next to their best sleeper.  Evidently, when she wakes up, looks over and sees that he is still sleeping, she pretends she is, too.

Nora started in the toddler room at 15 months, so she would've had a considerable amount of language development since that time anyway, but we feel like she's had a language explosion.  I couldn't even begin to create a comprehensive list all the words she says regularly with increasingly better clarity.  She is a little parrot, repeating everything we say and every noise she hears.  When Billy clears his throat, she clears hers.  When I lock the car as we walk into the house, she chirps "beep!"  When she pets or kisses Oscar she tells herself "nice, nice" because we are always emphasize using "nice touches" with him.  After we sing about the people on the bus going up and down, she walks around chanting "uppydown, uppydown, uppydown."  When her Uncle Nate is on FaceTime and asks her what's on TV in the background, she says "I dunno!" with perfect inflection, like she means it. This ear for sounds and pitches comes from Billy, I am sure.  He hears background noises that I am completely oblivious to, like when we are watching a sporting event and he gets annoyed by the pep band playing the same songs too much.  "There is a pep band?" is what I am always thinking.

As a working mom, most of the guilt I had about leaving Nora with others during the day has been eradicated by her sheer excitement about being at school.  Now that she is at an age where social interaction is more beneficial for her than my one-on-one doting attention would be, day care is a good place for her to be.  This should be good for me, too, and emotionally it is.  But professionally, I am realizing that guilt is a powerful motivator.  I got so much more done every day when regret about leaving her to complete my exam reading was dripping out of my pores, when the sight of every young child out and about with its mother made me cringe, and when Nora burst into tears nearly every time I arrived to get her at the end of the day.  But Liz, you couldn't have maintained that level of productivity much longer without losing your mind, you might be thinking.  I hear you.  (If you are actually thinking, Liz, operating at that level of productivity has already caused you to lose your mind, I politely decline to hear you.) My hope is that it's just taking me a little bit longer to adjust than it's taking Nora.  Now that she has settled into school, and I have settled into teaching, and I am beginning to settle into my library job, I hope this will lead to me settling into prospectus writing.  This week we are off for Spring Break, so I have made some good progress.  Time will tell, I guess.

Did you catch the part where I mentioned that she dances now? Over the weekend we discovered that she is especially partial to "Jump in Line" by Harry Belafonte.  Whether she likes this because of its beat, its instruments, or its prominence of what she thinks is the word "Nora," who knows.  But since her other main preference is for electronic music and rap songs about thrift shops, we gladly watch her pretend she's a hurricane in all kinds of weather... on repeat.

Down the Carpet Hill

Billy taught Nora how to carefully navigate her way down the stairs on her belly.  He showed her how to look to her side, take one step at a time, and secure each foot carefully before stretching her foot down to the next stair.

She has had enough of that.



I would say this is a mid-speed slide.  When she's wearing her fleece jammies, which seem to present no friction at all, she goes so fast that she can't help but squeal with delight.

Saturday Pancake Breakfast

On Saturday mornings, Nora gets to eat pancakes for breakfast.  She thinks they are yummy.



Other details to note in this video: It's not everyone who can pull off a micro leopard print bib with macro leopard print jammies.  As you can see, Nora has created a Fisher Price parking lot behind her chair.  And, as always, Oscar's toenails need to be clipped.

Valentine's Day

This year was the 10th time Billy and I celebrated Valentine's Day together-- whoa!  We are not big celebrators of the holiday, but we do usually find small but personal ways to acknowledge the holiday.  This year he ordered me some delicious chocolate covered strawberries and I brought some tiramisu home for him.  The "sweetest" part of the holiday for us, though, was sharing it with Nora!

Last week, we were notified by her teachers that they would be having a Valentine's day party with the kids, so they gave us a list of names so Nora could give everyone Valentines.  Now that she is scribbling, and since I have no shortage of cardstock in my craft drawer, I thought it would be fun if we made her Valentines ourselves.  I was doing this mostly for myself, since I enjoy crafts, but I was excited to see how much she enjoyed making them, too.  She loved squishing her fingers around in the paint, and she was much more cooperative with making the handprints than she has been in the past.  I was expecting her to mess a lot of them up, but since she made such nice prints, we decided to keep going and make some Valentines for family and friends who are not in her class.

Once the paint was dry and I had cut the handprints out, I gave her a silver marker and helped her to draw some scribbles over the top of each one.  She took this very seriously!  After the first time I took one handprint away and handed her the next one, she began deciding when each print was "done" by setting it aside and grabbing another one.  I could not believe it.  Some of the prints got a lot of scribbles, and some only got a few, but she worked her way through them just about one at a time.

Then she left it up to me to assemble the different parts.  We were pretty pleased with how they turned out!

I tried to get her to model the one I made for us to keep, but she didn't quite understand what I was asking her to do.  She pressed it up against her belly and walked around holding it there securely.

We worked on these over the weekend, but while Dad was at work on Monday, we made him a special card.  This time I let her handle the paintbrush, and she thought this was amazing!  I am not sure what types of art projects they've been doing at school lately, but she seems to specialize in pointilism... both with her marker and her paintbrush.  We snuck the card into Dad's laptop bag, so he saw it when he arrived at work on Valentine's day and took this picture.

On Thursday morning, we took her valentines to school and all of the teachers in the toddler classrooms gathered around to gush over them.  They complimented her on how perfect the handprints were, asked me how I got the heart spaces in the prints, and one of them even said "I've never even seen that on Pinterest!"  Nope-- that idea either came out of my imagination, probably thanks to  of the Childraft Make and Do book.  As a child, I made and did every craft in that book that didn't require paper mache (which I found messy, gross, and too much work to clean up).  I loved making the Valentines with Nora so much that I hope this will become a yearly tradition for us.  I have never considered myself an "artist," but Mom always encouraged my crafty side, so I hope I can pass the enjoyment of it along to Nora, too.  I loved how much she participated in the process this year, and I'm sure it will be even more fun when she starts coming up with ideas for crafts on her own!  Plus, if she makes her own Valentines, she'll never have to give a boy who irritates her a card that says "Be Mine."  Maybe it was the early stages of my type A personality talking, but as a child I was always frustrated that the packs of Valentines didn't come with more that just said "Happy Valentine's Day." I was mortified that a boy might think I liked him just because I had to save the really generic ones for the boys I really couldn't stand.

When I picked Nora up, their Valentine's day party was winding down.  She was wearing the crown her teachers had made her and helped her cover with heart stickers, and she was taking the final bites of a cookie.  By the looks of her face, she made quick work of her mini cupcake.  This was the first time I let her have juice, so I thought she'd gulp that down, too, but apparently she was more interested in the sweets.

When we got home, we pulled her box of valentines out and went through them.  One of them was attached to a baggy of goldfish crackers, so you can guess which one she liked the best.  Her teachers helped her put her handprints on a Valentine for me and Billy, too, which was cute.

Everything is better with Nora included, but that was definitely the case with Valentine's day this year!  She received some valentines of her own in the mail, as well.  I'll leave you with a video of her showing off the one she got from my mom.  We hope all of you celebrated Valentine's day in your own special ways, too!