I feel like Norah has grown so much in the time since I’ve written. I hate feeling like that–I want to capture every moment. This afternoon we were walking hand in hand across the field toward the school playground, and I was telling her that in just a few years, this would be her school, and my heart seized up. I don’t want my little baby to grow that big just yet.

But growing she certainly is. She counted to 7 today (though she always skips 1, used to being started off by Mommy, I guess). And she keeps amazing us all with her memory. On Saturday I was reading her When Daddy Travels, a particular favorite of hers, but one we haven’t read in awhile. Just to see what she would do, I kept leaving out the last word on each page, and she kept filling them in for me. (Mommy: “When Daddy goes away, Lilly and George try to be happy, but they are…” Norah: “Sad.”) She got every single one. Later she was looking at Olivia, which we really don’t read that often, and she pointed to the picture of Olivia and Ian smearing on their mother’s lipstick and said, “Lippy.” I told her yep, that’s right, and she pointed to Ian and said, “Copy.” Because the text on that page says something like, “Ian’s always copying.” She remembered. Last night I pointed to a picture of a camel and she said, “Poop”–she was thinking of Everybody Poops, which has a two-page stupid joke about camels and their poop.

It’s like her mind is primed, spongelike, ready to soak up whatever it’s given. She absorbs everything. Yesterday Yvonne sang her “On Top of Spaghetti,” and Norah thought it was so funny she made Yvonne sing it again and again. By the end of the morning, she could fill in the last word of every line in the first verse, and by today she’s got all three verses down. You sing “On top of–” and she says “spaghetti,” and then you sing “All covered with” and she’s got “cheese” out before you’ve quite finished. In that sweet little voice, garbling half the words.