What a funny kid!  It’s been a couple of months since I wrote about this little girl, and she’s just growing up faster and faster.  A huge change is the “Nora do it!!” that I hear at least two hundred times a day.  I am no longer allowed to put on her pants, lift her down off of the stool, turn faucets on and off, close doors, take off jackets, or buckle her chest buckle in the car seat.  (She actually says, “No Mama!  Close the door!  Nora buckle!!” if I stand around too long making sure she gets it…) “Do it!!” “DO! IT!!…”

The other phrase that’s been getting a lot of use is “Me first!” which is kind of funny because Jonah has never really cared about doing something first UNTIL Nora started to care.   But now washing hands, brushing teeth, going to the bathroom, even picking up toys is a race/battle.  My goodness.

Oh, and we hear a lot of “What is?” when she wants to know what to call something.  In most cases, the object in question is some kind of gross trash that she’s found who-knows-where, or she’s trying to pry open my mouth because I have not been sneaky enough in my snacking and she must know what I’m trying to hide.

Another big change for Nora has been that Jonah heads off to school four mornings a week.  For the first week or so, she would kind of wander around the house, saying “Jonah… school… Pick up Jonah.” in a sad little voice.  But now she’s used to the new routines and enjoys the special things we get to do together, namely baby gym and the library story time.  We’ve even had a few playtimes with little friends her age instead of her always tagging along with Jonah and the big kids.

The other huge news of the past month has been the potty training.  After the first two days, she really had the hang of things and has only had a small number of accidents since then (hooray!)  She is so good about telling us when she needs to go (at home and when we’re out) and quickly decided that she only wanted to use the big potty like Jonah.

She’s getting the hang of the ‘taking turns’ idea, which is really sweet.  In the rare cases when Jonah remembers to ask her if he can use something she’s playing with before just trying to take it, she almost always hands it over within 30 seconds, happily saying “Jonah’s turn!”  It’s starting to work the other way, too, when she knows that her turn is coming.  Some small amounts of angst are avoided.  And there are plenty of opportunities to practice turns, since all she wants during her waking hours is to see what Jonah is up to and copy how he’s playing.  She is becoming quite the little pitcher…  :)

Nora’s taken more of an interest in playing with her dolls lately too.  She likes taking them for walks, taking off their clothes and pretending to change diapers, and making ‘guys’ do funny things in the dollhouse.  Playdough is another recent favorite activity (until she starts trying to eat it), and she’s figured out the sweetest way to ask for things she wants to do, standing there looking up with her big eyes and hands behind her back.  “Please, a-playdough.  Just one time.  A quick a-playdough. Peeeease.” (and you can substitute any number of things for ‘playdough’.)

She continues to add tons of words to her vocabulary and is putting long strings of words together to make her point and tell us what’s going on.  Every day she surprises me with something that comes out of her mouth.  She also loves to make up funny songs, based on songs she knows, but substituting other words to make them totally silly.  Jonah likes this, too, and she loves to make him laugh.