Nora has decided to really commit to walking in the last week or so. She has been trying really hard to get from place to place on her feet, and if she falls down, she’s slightly more likely to stand back up and try again than she is to just take off crawling. On her longest trips, she’ll go from the kitchen down to Jonah’s bedroom and is getting better at changing direction and turning corners, too. She also loves to be ‘chased’ and just absolutely cracks up when I catch her. Jonah enjoys watching this game, too.

We’re also seeing a new little side of Nora coming out, which is her testing/taunting side. She seems to like seeing what reaction she can get out of someone, especially Jonah. Sometimes, she will crawl over towards him really fast with her mouth open as if she’s going to bite him, but will stop short and just put her face against him and not really bite. Or she will come quickly over to his train tracks like she’s going to grab them or knock them over, but will stop with her hand just above them. Both moves almost always elicit a “Nononono Noranoranoranora!” or my favorite “Silly Noooraaa… Jonah is not a snack!” and she will crack up and hurry away. (Of course, sometimes she does actually bite or knock things over, but still…) She also likes to pretend she’s going to climb on the brick hearth, and then giggle with one leg up on it until I say something, and then the same thing – cracks up and runs away. Oh my…

Nora has a new ‘word’ – quack! When she sees a duck or we ask her what a duck says, she’ll say, ‘Quack!’ When we sing ‘Five Little Ducks’, she happily fills in the quacking parts. She also says ‘car’ (which sounds a lot like her ‘quack’) but she knows what she means. :) She also loves making loud, growly noises that make us laugh, and she is starting to sound uncannily like Jonah with some of her protesting/whiny sounds, so that from another room it’s almost impossible to tell who it was.

Her signing is a lot of fun, too. The signs she will do are: more, please, thank you, bird, sleep, change diapers, socks, shoes, up, eat, drink, orange, bread, light, fan, all done, loud, book, and bath. One day she woke up before I finished my naptime sewing, so I stuck her in the pack-n-play for a few minutes, and when I was putting my machine back in the case, Nora squealed and signed ‘all done’. Pretty great.

At mealtimes, Nora is very interested in eating what the rest of us are having. She will still eat pureed food, but is doing great with chewing and feeding herself all kinds of little pieces of things on her own. She absolutely loves bread and any kind of crunchy cereal and a few times this week has had exactly what the rest of us were having for dinner, just cut up smaller. Hooray! She’s even had a teeeeny bit of cheese for the past three days and seems fine with it, so that’s a great sign!

As far as her interests go, she’s still really into cars, trucks, and trains, and is actually starting to get pretty good at driving them on roads and tracks just like her big brother does. She also really loves to see pictures of babies, and often wants us to take down picture frames and photo albums to squeal at. She got a couple of dolls for her birthday and Christmas and likes to give them hugs spontaneously throughout the day. What a sweetheart. :)