Wow.  She’s a year and a half old now. It seems like more and more of her personality is coming out every day, too!  And it’s amazing how much she is learning and paying attention to all the time. :)

About two weeks ago, Nora started pointing out the color ‘blue’ everywhere.  My favorite is when she points at a stranger’s hat or jacket and starts screaming ‘blue!’ at them.  Then I realized that I could ask her to pick out a specific color from a pile of blocks, crayons, or cars, and she would do it.  So now she says, ‘blue,’ ‘red,’ ‘purple’ (sometimes), and signs ‘orange’.  Other colors, she will pick out when I ask her.  Jonah loves to notice blue and red things and ask her what color they are.  When she tells them, he excitedly says, “That’s right!!” in a very sweet voice.

Around that same time, she also figured out how to use “No” in all sorts of ways.  She’ll respond to things like, “Should we go change your diaper?” or “Time to go inside.”  She’ll go over to things she’s not supposed to touch and tell herself “nononono.”  When Jonah asks me a question like “Can I have some more milk?” she jumps in with a “No!”  She also listens for when Jonah or I say something silly, and says “noooooo” as she laughs at us.  So we hear this word a lot!

She’s copying more and more of what Jonah does – acting like a truck (complete with sound effects as she picks things up and dumps them out), playing baseball, pouring with the bath toys, and getting excited about everything she knows he likes.  She follows us to the bathroom and sits on the little potty whenever Jonah needs to go, and likes to get her own little pieces of toilet paper.  Much to my surprise, she’s even figured out how to climb up on the kid-sized wooden chairs in our kitchen.  Once she fell off, but since then, she remembers and points to the chair and signs ‘ouch.’
Since Nora loves going outside, the occasional warmer weather this month has been great.  She often asks to go to the swings before she even eats breakfast. She goes (slowly) down the slide by herself.  The new sandbox is a favorite spot, and she likes picking flowers and finding snails (ugh!) in the yard.  The other day, I opened her curtains after naptime, and she pointed up to the sky, yelled “Blue!” and ran to the back door.

Nora gives lots of kisses now, too.  It’s really cute because she points to the spot on your face right before she kisses it.  Not sure where she got that idea, but it’s pretty sweet. :)