The Angry Bear

Nora Lee spends much of the day in imaginary play. From the time we wake up in the morning until the time we go to bed the whole family participates in pretend worlds. We have some regular games that we play and some that spontaneously happen in the moment. Nora Lee's language skills are incredibly good and she is intensely inquisitive. She asks many times each day, "What are you doing? Why are you doing that? Why did he say that? Why did you laugh at that?", Etc. This has been challenging for me because I try to answer her questions as best I can but some of them are complicated answers - and it just gets tiring :) As a way of lightening my mood when the questioning drives me bonkers, I begin responding with an old improv game. When she says, "What are you doing?" I respond with something like " Flying a kite, what are you doing?" and she will say "Climbing a mountain, what are you doing?" We can go back and forth like that for quite a while.

She loves for us to make up stories and in the last few days Matt told her stories about mean bears. (Nora Lee is fascinated with being "mean" and being "nice". Our household is regularly visited by both mean and nice animals. When a mean one comes, we cower in fear and pretend to cry and she protects us. When nice animals come we snuggle them.)

In Matt's recent stories about the "angry bears" he shared that angry bears are really just sad bears. This evening something made Matt angry and he calmly said "That makes me really angry." Nora Lee went up to him and said "You not angry daddy, you a bear. You not angry you just sad."

Wow.

Tea Party

Nora Lee, my mom and I went to Orlando last week to visit Matt's parents, also known as Mimi and Poppy. Nora Lee not only got her own tea set to play with but Mimi took us to a fancy tea where we each got our own plate of crazy goodness. Nora Lee went hog wild. Notice in the photos how she indulges and then the final photo of her on the way home.

I call it "The Sugar Crash".

2 1/2 Years old

Nora Lee is shifting so fast its felt a bit overwhelming to blog about it all. So, I'm just gonna sit down now and write everything that's happening with her this week!

Matt and I think she is getting her two year molars. She has had a fever and been delicate and says her mouth hurts. We've been making lots of yogurt and fruit popsicles and she has been eating a ton of them.

Since my last post, Nora Lee has become completely able to verbally communicate. When she comes to a word she cant say she gets the sweetest look on her face and says, "I can't say that word." She can't say "L" yet either so all "L's" are "Y's".

Her most recent example - "I don't yike wizards."

She is very tender and affectionate. She loved hugs and has started saying adorable things like "I yuv you so much" and "So happy to be here."

She is a master at puzzles and can now easily do 12 piece puzzles without a picture and with no help from us. Last week I took five of her 12 piece puzzles and mixed them together to see what she would do. It took her a bit but when I checked in later she had all five puzzles done. Crazy.

She has been blowing us away with her problem solving skills. We have been talking with her about taking dance classes at some point and one day she said "Nora (she still talks in the third person) take dance class by self. She doesn't know how to drive." I was shocked since I had never talked with her about driving her there. She had realized she was dependent on us for a ride!

Nora Lee has been learning about pretending over the last few months. Her understanding of pretending has increased a lot this week because we took her to see a dress rehearsal of Matt's show "Fellowhip". For those of you who don't know, this is a musical parody of the "Lord of the Rings". She had never seen a play before. I thought we would leave after the first 20 minutes or so but she wanted to stay through the whole thing! I think it blew her mind that everyone was up on stage pretending for so long. Since then she has been singing the songs and watching the DVD.

Nora Lee is very inquisitive. She asks lots of questions and likes to know how and why things work. Her most recent interest is knowing people's first and last names.

She has her dad's incredible memory. We can visit a person a month before and when the person's name comes up again she will ask about their dog by name. I'm a little envious since my memory is not so sharp!

I feel like every six months or so a huge shift happens in Nora Lee and suddenly so much more is expected of me as a mom. It always feels scary and overwhelming when it first happens but then I find my footing, adjust and feel solid again. Most recently, all of these changes in her, require so much focus and constant attention.

I find myself taking deep breaths and slowing down and letting things take much longer so that I can let her wash her own dishes or dig out the plant herself. She wants to do it all and I do what her to learn it all. I feel so blessed to be her mom and have our family. It's incredible for my own growth because the only way to be the mom I want to be and to have a peaceful household is to let go of the small battles and surrender to the moment, to let go of my own ideas about perfection and to embrace the unknown. That has felt scary for me but I'm so much more comfortable in that than I have ever been before and its because of what I'm learning as a mom. God bless her!

An Ode to Mary Poppins

Nora Lee is crazy-go-nuts for Mary Poppins. Here she is singing "Spoon Full of Sugar" and "Let's Go Fly a Kite!" The next video is her version of "Feed the Birds".

Shuffle-Tap-Tap

Nora Lee loves to dance and has both tiny tap shoes and ballet shoes. Last weekend her Auntie Colleen taught her how to shuffle-tap-tap.

In this video she is showing Matt and our friend Lauren what she learned.

Happy Birthday Daddy

Sweet Pics