Me: “That’s okay, just say excuse me.”

Norah: “Music.”

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…However, she pooped in the tub today. They say pride goeth before a fall.

…The Weepies are my favorite band right now. Their CD Hideaway is in constant rotation in my car. The past few days, I’ve discovered that Norah loves them, too. As we’re driving, I’ll catch her echoing the words. I tested her today while we were playing–she can finish almost every phrase I sing. (Not always perfectly, though: “First the thought, and then the act” turned into “First the socks, and then the act” in her ears.)

…Playing in the family room yesterday, she turned to me, apropos of nothing, and said, “Zero….Nothing.” “Zero….Nothing.” Took me a minute to figure out–she was thinking of a Sesame Street episode, the one with poor whiny number Zero (”I’m Zero….nothing. That’s what zero is.”). We haven’t watched that episode in weeks.

…And tonight, she started stringing words together: “Take it Mommy” while outside playing with Brian, about a ball she apparently wanted to show me, and “Washing the duck,” while in the tub, washing the duck. She’s barely 19 months old, and I am blown away.

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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.

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Whereupon I dissolved into giggles

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And you love her all over again.

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“Tricycle,” she said. “Tricycle. Tricycle. Wheels. Tricycle.” We counted the wheels, helped push her along, told her she was doing great. “Tricycle. Tricycle.”

Then Aurora got all up in her face, half kidding, half frustrated: “Say something else! Say anything but tricycle! Say potato!”

“Tricycle.”

“No! Not tricycle! Don’t say tricycle! Say leaf!”

“….Tricycle.”

“No! Don’t say tricycle. Say window!”

“….Tricycle.” And I think Aurora might’ve been really mad, but I was laughing, so she was laughing, so Norah was playing to her crowd, and we were all cracking up.

When it was time to go, there were tears, and the whole way home, we heard, plaintively from the backseat, “Tricycle. Tricycle.”

The next afternoon, of course, we decided to buy her a tricycle.

And oh, I have never seen a girl happier. All through the store, it was “Tricycle. Tricycle.” In the car on the way to dinner, it was “Tricycle. Tricycle.” And when we got home to try it out, she was in heaven.

We went up and down the street for a long time. She can’t really work the pedals yet, but she’s tall for her age, so she can reach the ground and push herself along that way. And she loves to be pushed down the street fast fast fast. The basket at the back is always filled with her treasures, pebbles and pinecones and little twigs.

Soon she decided to put Doll in the seat and give her a ride. “Stroller,” she said, pushing the tricycle down the sidewalk.

For days after, the first word she said every morning was “Tricycle.” And it took a lot of convincing to get her to agree that we should wait for the sun to come up and the dew to burn off before we could go out and take a ride. “Tricycle.”

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It’s been a beautiful day today, sunny and just warm enough, so when Norah and I got home we took Reba for a walk and then played in the backyard. I did some weeding and Norah ran around with her watering can and a cup, “helping” me and making Maple Tree Soup.

Then we played for a bit on the deck (which we finally got cleaned off for the season–I don’t know why we put it off so long. I can’t wait to drink my coffee out there, now we’re in this fleeting golden period after the cottonwood and the helicopters and before the Japanese beetles). I was pinching off spent daylilly blossoms and putting them in a little pile on the deck bench. Norah discovered them and said “Messy.”

“That’s okay. Things are messy outside sometimes.”

She started to gather the curled-up flowers, dropping them one by one into her little red bowl (”Put it.”). Soon she had a respectable pile, anchored by a few of her rocks at the bottom of the bowl. And of course the next step in her very important work was to empty the bowl, flower by flower. I sat on the deck chair watching her, so serious-faced, intent on her project.

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She had her 18-month checkup on Friday, and of course I always wish she were a little less shy with the doctor and showed off all the great things she can do, but, predictably, he was pleased with her anyway. She weighs 27 pounds, so her weight gain is really slowing down (she’s weighed 26 pounds since the 12-month visit), but she is making up for it in height. She is 33 inches–which puts her in the 90th percentile for girls her age. I knew this already from doing stuff with my moms’ group–she is taller than a lot of the 2-year-olds. Lucky girl.

A few little stories from the last week or so:

Norah is fascinated by lawn mowing. She loves to sit on the screen porch and watch Brian when he mows, and anytime she hears one of the neighbors start up a lawnmower she perks up and says “Mow.” So the other day when I was making dinner, I turned around and she was pushing her little pink plastic lawn chair across the kitchen floor in front of her, saying “Mow. Fast. Kitchen. Busy.”

If you ask her what her last name is, she will say “Fen-ding.” It’s rare that you’ll get her to say her first name, but when she does, she calls herself “Ra-ra.”

The other day, Yvonne was standing at the kitchen sink doing the lunch dishes, and Norah came up behind her, wrapped her arms around Yvonne’s legs, and said “Love.”

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Norah has learned how to make fish lips, and will do it if you ask her for a kiss. She also knows how to give Eskimo kisses.

She can, very occasionally, count to five, and she is obsessed with letters. At restaurants, instead of coloring, she just wants us to write letters for her, over and over, marching across the page like steadfast soldiers. She got her big foam letters out of the closet, the square ones that interlock, and has been carrying D around the house. We talk about how R is for Reba, D is for Daddy, G is for go. Of course, all letters are B to her. Just like all numbers are 2 and all colors are blue.

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But it was a little wooden piano. And from the very minute she saw it, Norah loved it. Tantrums forgotten, she was down on the floor in an instant, banging on the keys. “Buttons,” she said. We explained that they were keys. “Keys. Keys. Keys,” she chanted, fingers on the white and then the black. “Norah, you’re making music! What pretty music!” we cheered her on. “Meeza. Meeza,” she repeated. She was a dervish, all movement and action, banging on the keys, bopping her head, crowing “Meeza. Meeza. Piano,” then turning in a spinning little dance. “Dance. Dance.” It was wonderful. She was beside herself with joy.

Then Brian stretched out on the floor beside her and began picking out the notes to Baa Baa Black Sheep. He didn’t sing along, just pecked the keys. “Baa,” said Norah. “Baa. Sheep.”

We looked at each other, drop-jawed. That’s not a song we really sing to her. If anything, she should have recognized Twinkle Twinkle, which we sing every night and which has the same tune. But she knew. We were amazed. She is certainly her father’s daughter.

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