New Developments

At some point every kid goes from saying words to using words to communicate. It's exciting enough for parents when they just start saying words. I couldn't have imagined how entertaining it would be to hear my kid start to communicate! Here are a couple of examples:

When you tell Norah you're going to do something she wants to do (go to Grammie's, read a book etc.) and then take a minute longer to get ready (I'm always forgetting something!) she motions to you with her little fingers and says, "Com' mon" in a little sing-song voice. She's not demanding, she's just saying, "You said we were gonna do this thing and now I'm all excited!!" She did this several times on our recent trip. Every time we said it was almost time to get on the plane, she'd start walking toward the line of passengers and say, "Com' mon!"

She helped me feed the dog the other day. She stood between Jamie and the pantry, where I was scooping her food. Norah looked Jamie in the eye, pointed to the floor and said, "sit!" Jamie sat, but I think it was more out of habit. I took the bowl of food to the sink to fill with water and Jamie got antsy. She always gets impatient at that point. She started to stand up and Norah put her little hand on Jamie's back reassuringly and said, "Hold on."

Imagine, my toddler telling the dog to be patient! Ha!

Final Pictures of 2009

I know, we're already more than two weeks in to 2010, but this last week has been exceptionally crazy. More on that later. Here's a re-cap of the last days of 2009.

Mark's parents came to visit right after Christmas. We saved all of Norah's presents from them so they could see her open them. On December 30th, Norah had her third Christmas of '09. By now she's a pro.

A little flower from her stocking. Incidentally, in spite of the wire in the stem, this makes an awesome plane toy. She felt very powerful being able to bend the stem all by herself.

Talking Elmo toy. Also note, her very first pony tail! The teachers at daycare put it in for her. They were doing pigtails for all the other girls and she felt a little left out. The Tinkerbell pillow in the background is another favorite. She lays on it and "reads" her books when she ready to settle down for bed.

Elmo slippers. She has a hard time walking in them because she's so busy looking down at her feet.

On New Year's Eve we went over to Mark's aunt and uncle's house. His uncle makes and amazing spread of Chinese food every year for New Year's Eve. Norah had so much fun!

She marched around the house for over an hour with her noisemaker.

And what's a party without a party hat!?!

Of course it kept falling off, but luckily she had people to help her put it back on.

All in all, it was a very successful party to end a very successful year for Norah!

Scarfin' it!

Every morning when I put on my scarf, Norah would look sadly at me and ask, "Norah's scarf?" She didn't have one. Well, a friend of mine remedied that a few weeks ago by making her a baby-sized scarf! It's super soft and warm. My friend had a ton of colors, but I really liked the neutral one the best. Even with the blue on the ends, it pretty much goes with anything.

Although it's common sense I feel an urge to state, for the record, that Norah does not wear her scarf without direct parental supervision. Not that any moms I know would even think of leaving their child unsupervised with a big fluffy rope around their neck. I'm just sayin'.

Anyway, she was so excited about it that I couldn't get many non-blurry pictures of her. But here they are.

PS - If you want a scarf for your tiny fashionista, comment on this post and I'll have my friend get in touch with you for pricing.

When I asked if she liked her scarf she very earnestly said yes, but I think her earnestness makes her look a little sad in this picture.

One big ol' blurry smile!

Goal Posts

So while I didn't make any official New Years resolutions (call me cynical, but what's the point of those things?) I do have a semi-official goal. Last year a friend of mine set a goal to do 300 posts on her blog. For those of you following along at home, that's the equivalent of nearly 10 straight months of blogging every single DAY! Conversely, it's like blogging five days a week nearly every week for the whole year. She accomplished her goal this year and I say good for her, but I'm going to start out just a little slower. She has three kids and I only have one. Hence, I should have about one third the hilarious antics to blog about as she does. This doesn't even take into account the face that she has three boys and therefore is likely to have more like TEN times the hilarious antics. In any case, it got me thinking that 100 posts for this year is probably a good goal since she has 3 kids and I have one. That works out to about two posts a week. Then again, seeing as I managed to post 90 times in 2009, that's not really much of a challenge. One kid, 100 posts is a good goal, but I suppose if I really want to make it a challenge I should allocate a few posts to the daily happenings of the rest of the family. So, for posts about Mark, me, the dog, the grandparents, etc. let's figure another 50. That's a more than 50% increase from this past year. I think that sounds like a lofty-yet-attainable type goal. I'm a fan of those.

Fake Legal Disclaimer: If by some miracle/practical joke of God a second Jones child enters the family this year, said miracle baby will be allotted a pro-rated amount of posts (in addition to the posts already committed to above) in the percentage corresponding with the percentage of this year that the child will be alive. The gestation period will count as 1/2 post for Mom and 1/2 for baby. But seriously, if I was going to have a baby this year, I'd basically have to get pregnant in the next two months and that is SO not happening!

Christmas in Review

Before we get too far into 2010, I figured I should do at least one post about Christmas. It was Norah's second Christmas, but this time she actually participated. I don't think I got a picture of it but she was very good about making sure that all of the paper scraps got into the trash. She'd pull one off and immediately hand it to my brother, the designated trash man. Since she's the only kid, only grandkid and only great-grandkid on Daddy's side, she was pretty overwhelmed by the amount of presents. She managed to get through her stocking and two or three presents before going down for a two and a half hour nap. Then she opened about half of what she had before we decided to wait on he rest until the next day. So here are a few of my favorites:

Playing with gifts from Mark's grandma and aunt and uncle. She got to open those over video conference with them on Christmas eve. The baby doll next to her (from Great-Grandma Jones) is still one of her favorite presents of the whole experience.

This is the before picture. Wonder why she was overwhelmed? The under side of the tree was full of presents too! Fortunately only about half of them were for her. :-)

Me and my little Christmas elf.

What a good little unwrapper.

Telling us what a tiger says. Another one of her favorite gifts. Thanks Uncle Matt!

A girl can never have too many pairs of gloves.

Or too many matching hat and mitten sets!

Another favorite, an Elmo who blows kisses!

The Tao of Tinkerbell

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that Norah is daily expanding her vocabulary. Well according to my friend Jan, that expansion now includes other languages! Jan was Norah’s Sunday School teacher last week and she told me later that the “meow” sound that Norah makes for what a cat says is exactly the correct pronunciation for the Chinese word for “cat”. Jan should know. She spent a few years in China while her husband worked there and is fluent inseveral Chinese words. J

Along with expanding the number of words that she knows, she’s also improving the clarity with which she says them. I have to admit that this makes me a little sad. When your child is first learning to talk, you begin to understand their mispronunciations and quirks so that you can interpret what they’re saying. It almost like you have a secret family language for a while. As “No-no” turns to “Nonah” morphs into “Norah” and “beesh” becomes “peese” and then “please”, we are losing a little bit of that exclusive ability to communicate with her. As our babbling baby becomes a talking toddler we don’t always need to be her translator to the world any more. It’s one of the earliest in many thousands of steps toward independence that parents simultaneously hope for and dread.

There is one word that she uses consistently that still requires interpretation for those who “don’t speak the language”. She mispronounces it every single time. I’m not even sure how she came up with the way she says it. It must be a disconnect somewhere between what she hears us say and what her little muscles can do. Her favorite cartoon character is Tinkerbell. Somehow over the course of growing in her affections for the sassy little pixie, Norah got it in her head that her name is “Beet-Tao”. She got a TON of Tinkerbell stuff for Christmas this year (photos to follow!) and each and every time she would yell out in excitement, “BEET-TAO!!” the moment she saw the blonde hair, green dress and wings. I think it’s super cute that one of the few words that people can’t understand is something she’s so excited about. It’s tempting to say it back to her the way that she says it, but we make it a point to say “Tinkerbell” correctly when we’re talking to her. Maybe it’s a little independent streak that makes her change up the name the way that she does, or maybe she truly just can’t say it quite right yet. Then again, maybe she just knows better than me. I should probably ask Jan how you say, “Tinkerbell” in Chinese…

Tonight we're gonna party like it's....

WAY past 1999! I can't believe that it was ten whole years ago now that we all rang in the new millennium. I'll be honest. I don't have any resolutions. We had a super crazy year this year in so many respects. The only thing I've resolved to do is to be prepared for anything and take things as they come.

Not to get too spiritual on y'all (all three of you) in my first post of the decade, but if I had to pick a resolution, it would be Micah 6:8:

"He has shown thee, oh man, what is good.

And what does the Lord require of you?

To live justly, and to love mercy

and to walk humbly with your God."

That's about all I've got. Time to head to bed for the first time all year!

PS - Mark wanted to make sure that I pointed out that I managed to post my first 2010 post before Jan! Never mind the fact that it's probably because she's still out at her super-fun party. :-)