See Nora RUN!

Yesterday was a tad bit painful for Nora.

First of all, she had three days straight of All Daddy All The Time, which meant trips to the zoo, the World Beat Festival, friends over, friends houses...You'd think the girl had a social calendar filled out.

So yesterday, she was all whiney and cry-ey as the day progressed and her peeps weren't around her telling her how great she was, and she was stuck with Just Mommy, who while entertaining, isn't NEARLY the gem of entertainment of anywhere from Daddy to Cousins on up...

So after a morning of whining and carrying on, I decided to reward her relatively bad behavior by taking her to the water fountains in front of the Oregon State Capitol building yesterday.
Suffice to say, it was a HIT.

She SQUEALED when she saw it.

Personally, I think if you can get your kid to squeal with delight once in a day, your medal as a good parent should just be plastered to your chest and you should be able to take the rest of the day off.

But Nora ran into the water with VERY little trepidation, despite the rising winds...and she met a little girl who is three (and Nora was just as tall as her!!) and they played and ran and played some more in the water fountains and its adjoining massive puddle.

When we got home, Nora and I settled into reading some books, and one of them has the alphabet in them. She says "B!" for the letter B, and "D!" for pretty much anything else she sees.

She is starting to try and recognize colors with some success as well, although sometimes you can tell she's just pointing at stuff at random and running her fingers over it til you cheer her, then she'll stop instantly, figuring that she hit the right spot.

It's amazing how in one week, she's picked up a few more words (she says "uh oh" and "owie", and is asking "What's this?" to more and more things.

See Nora run...see Nora learn!