Pictures!!!!

If this series of photos doesn't show the variety of things Nora is learning to say and do...nothing will.

As each week (every day really) ticks by, our girl learns to do new things, from riding bikes, to talking on the phone! And sometimes it's just a new fresh facial expression!
She's even learned to search for strawberries in the strawberry patch in the back yard...

She LOVES strawberries and raspberries, and we have a bumper crop of strawberries in the yard this year.

She will often want out first thing in the morning, and I try to get her to wait til the afternoon so the strawberries have a chance to ripen with the day before she goes back out after them again!!
We took her to the toy store the yesterday -- there's a really nice little educational toy store (rather nicely situated between a fabric store and Targe), and she ran up and down the aisles, just randomly stopping at whatever caught her eye. It's amazing to me how different she is once she's been somewhere before...this time she got SO much more excited as she recognized where she was, and started squealing and running around.

What cracks me up is that she runs with the expectation (presumably) that she can outrun me. I may be an older mom, but I'm still faster than a 1 3/4 year child. LOL

Nora's been investigating, rather gleefully, the joys of playgrounds.

She is SO much like her cousin Hannah (who's now 17.5 years old) in that she RUNS everywhere...Hannah was notorious for breaking into a run around 18 months and I don't think she stopped until kindergarten.

Nora sees a playground, and I have to break into a run to catch up with her these days...and we LOVE spending time on all the slides, and her discovery of every kid thing that's fun at the park!

She LOVES slides. She hates swings. But she's learning...to ride bikes and her tiger rocking horse toy that her Oma gave her.
The thing that really amazes me as I watch Nora grow, is how unique EVERY child is. My daughter is special (because she's mine), but really, when you go to The Kids Club in town or somewhere else where you get a lot of little ones in one place, it's amazing to see the range of skills and abilities of children of ALL ages!

But this one stole my heart last week, as Brian was out of town for work for the second week in a row...

Nora finally figured out that she could talk to Daddy on the phone, and that she could talk to him, so as I had him on speakerphone, she GRABBED the phone out of my hands and started saying "HI! HI! HI!" and "DADDY!!!" into the phone.

After staring at it on the floor for some time and wondering how so big a man got into so small a phone...