Tonight, for the first time, Norah said, “Goodnight, Daddy.”

Norah, the other night in the kitchen while Brian and I were making dinner:

Walking around the kitchen in my red kitten heels, pink hat on her head, opening and closing the baby gate and saying, “See you Monday.”

(It’s what Yvonne says to her every Thursday afternoon when she says goodbye.)

Tonight, while were reading our bedtime stories, I had a hard time keeping my place in “Ferdinand” because Norah was flipping through the pages we’d already read. I was managing, because we’ve read the story enough lately that I know it by heart, but it was a struggle.

“Norah, what are you looking for?”

“Bee.”

She’s obsessed with that bee. The bee perched on the clover, the one that Ferdinand sits on, the one that stings him and puts the whole story into motion. That bee is clearly the reason why we’re reading the book a hundred times a day. And she wanted to look at him. I guess I hadn’t spent enough time on that page the first time through.

Norah: “Tooting.”

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

Norah: “Music.”

…Pushing Norah on the swings at the park for a full 45 minutes yesterday, just chatting with her and making her giggle. Plus the overheard conversation between two young parents about their 21-month-old (”But he knows ‘more’ and ‘cup’ and ‘doggy’…”), obviously sparked by the way Norah (2 months younger) was chattering with me about the planes in the sky and the slide and the ladder and swinging and a million other things. There’s a fine line between proud and smug, and I try to stay on the right side of it, but oh, am I proud.

…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.

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.

I was sitting on the couch tonight after dinner, reading my brand-new O magazine, when Norah hauled herself bodily into my lap, perched herself on my ribcage, looked at the magazine, pointed at a picture of Oprah, and said, with absolute certainty and no hesitation at all, “Mandy.”

Whereupon I dissolved into giggles

The girl is utterly infuriating, she spends the day crabbing and pushing you away, then whining and clinging when you leave the room. She is never satisfied, wanting “more! more!” of anything you give her. You are counting down the hours until naptime. And then, in her highchair eating lunch, as you are trying to get the dishes washed so when she finally sleeps you can have a much-needed cup of tea, she says, in a quiet voice, apropos of nothing, “Tiny tiny mouse.”

And you love her all over again.

A couple of nights ago, just before bedtime, we stopped over at Tim and Dayna’s to drop off our old patio furniture, which they were taking for their yard. It was warm day, heading towards twilight but not dark yet, time to start thinking about heading indoors. Norah and I had been working in the garden while Brian ferried stuff over to the Smiths, but we went along for the last run, to say hello. The Smiths were all outside, too–Tim in the vegetable garden and Dayna and Aurora with their feet in her little wading pool. We spent some time chatting, knowing it was really time to get both the girls to bed. Aurora had her tricycle out, so of course Norah had to ride it. And it was instant obsession.

“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.”

Brian had a late meeting tonight, so Norah and I took a spur-of-the-moment trip into the city to have dinner with him, since otherwise he wouldn’t get to see her at all today. We were the only people at Ambrosia at barely five o’clock, which was fine with us.

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.