But oh, the fun we have when Quinn gets to “knock” on Nora’s door and Nora hurries to answer her pint sized summoner.

I was thrilled that I got this post nap reunion on record as it was particularly joyful. It’s a little shaky since I was trying to film with one hand and support Quinny in a standing position with the other. But I think you will still be able to feel the love.

I guess Nora doesn’t see the actual backpack part of a backpack too often. Therefore, if she wants to recreate those oh so cool backpack straps, all she needs is a long necklace.

Which is where I’ll start with the latest little things they are up to —

• Making each other laugh. The other night, Nora was making random, rather loud nonsense exclamations at dinner. “Aaaaaaannnnnnnnaaaaaa….Dadddddddddddddaaaaaaa…” Right when I was inhaling the air for a declaration that she was being too loud and a little silly, Quinn looked right at her and started giggling. Which egged Nora on more and then it all ended up being pretty funny in the end. Who knew?

• Nora made up a saying — “Uncle Beau-coo” that will consistently, and I mean has a 100% success rate, make Quinny laugh. We don’t get it, have no idea how she came up with adding a coo to Uncle Beau’s name, or what about it is so hi lar i ous to Quinn, but it’s become totally normal for me to say, “Quick, Nora, make Quinn laugh.” “Quinn! Uncle Beau-Coo! Uncle Beau-coo!” And Quinn’s cries turn to giggles. Just like that. Why didn’t we think of it?

• We are up to our necks in Princess dress up, figurines, and dolls. Nora’s favorites are Belle and Cinderella, mainly because those are the only movies we think she’s ready to watch. (I didn’t remember so many of them being so scary at times. I mean, Snow White has a stepmother Queen who sends someone to kill her and then the trees grow claws and eyes and then the Queen becomes a super ugly old lady who is struck by lightning and then falls to her death?!? Calm down, Disney.) Cinderella, by contrast, is such a cute little story with the mice and whatnot. Although she hasn’t asked about the missing mom yet and sorta thinks the dad is “sick” throughout the whole movie. I didn’t want to tell her that the story killed him off.

Anyway, some of Nora’s favorite princess things to do:

• Wear a fancy dress and walk down the stairs to see it trailing behind her.
• Dropping a shoe on purpose. I could NOT find the matching shoe I wanted to wear to Josh’s Google party and finally found it at the bottom of the stairs. Of course.
• Randomly yell, “You can go ahead and STARVE!” like the Beast yells at Belle. It’s one of her all time favorite lines. Such great writing.
• Sing along to the songs. The one that always gets me is when she sings along to the reprise of Beauty and the Beast when a choir joins in with an “Ahhhh, ahhhh, ahhh, AHHHHHHH!” She’s right there with them. (I don’t know how to write music or choir singing parts, so I hope that “AHH” translates. It’s probably supposed to be an extended b flat or tenor or something. But I’m going with Ahh.)
• Say, “Mommy, I’m going to LOCK YOU IN HERE!” then closing the door and running away as fast as she can.

If you aren’t into those movies, all references are lost and I’m sorry. But Nora will be happy to give you a full rundown of both stories.

Meanwhile, Quinny has experienced a renaissance era of learning little tricks.

• After she learned crawling, she focused on that for about, oh, two months. And she has crawled everywhere. And has dismantled everything she can. All very, very quietly. When I go back and look at Nora’s videos at this age, she was all about the babble but didn’t crawl until much later. Quinn has been the quiet type who’s more interested in being on the move. But it seems she’s suddenly decided that she’s officially mastered crawling/exploring and is ready to branch out into other areas. Which now include clapping, waving, and high fiving. I think Nora is as proud as we are.
• Quinn also LOVES her new baby dolls. Give her anything with a face and she lights up like a little Christmas tree.
• Quinn is starting to tune in to what Nora is doing and the toys she’s playing with. She’s been doing her own thing with her own toys but now she starting to crawl towards Nora to play with whatever she has. It’s not exactly Nora’s favorite development. “Mommy, can you move her?” All those times Nora has taken Quinn’s toys away…we thought Quinny had forgotten…but she’s ready to even the score…(I’ve seen too many movie trailers lately….)
• And one thing that Quinn has definitely moved into is the Separation Anxiety Stage. By “Separation Anxiety,” I mean she cries so hard she hyperventilates when I drop her off at the church nursery. And it takes her a while to warm up when we go somewhere or have people over. It’s so sad because up until now she’s been in the stage where anyone could hold her and she didn’t seem to notice or care. So everyone expects that same laid back attitude but are instead greeted with a quivering lip warning that will quickly dissolve to tears and a red face if she isn’t returned to Mommy ASAP. But I’d be totally lying if I said it didn’t make me feel a teeny bit special. I feel sad for everyone else but it’s still touching in a very selfish way. I know she’ll grow out of it soon. Probably before I’m ready for her to.
• Somewhere along the line, Nora decided Quinn is her best friend. Josh pointed out that Quinn hasn’t really done anything to earn that status. They haven’t really played together and Quinn doesn’t even talk yet. But for reasons only she knows, Nora consistently says her best friend is Quinny. “Quinny, you my beeeeeest friend.”
• And lastly, it seems that Quinn is suddenly aware that she can get Nora to react to her if she does something to her. She’s started to tug on Nora’s clothes or hair. Sometimes Nora laughs and plays along.
  “Quinny, are you teasing Nora?”
  “I want her to tease me, Mommy!”
  Sometimes I have to intervene. But it’s fun because they’re starting to experience that special sister relationship. You live in quarters that sometimes seem too close, you have to share your toys and parents’ attention, and sometimes your hair gets pulled. But there’s someone who is always there who knows how to make you laugh. A best friend.

We are so, so, so thankful for the blessings God has given us this year and that we have our own set of little best friends running/crawling around our home.

So we took Nora to Target (Is there any other store?) and found a Belle doll. We explained before we even set foot in the store that Belle would NOT becoming home today. We were just going for a visit. So we let her see it, hold the box a moment, and then went home. And stayed home for several days. We put a picture of the doll on the wall and kept pointing to it. “Don’t you want the Belle doll?!?!?” We even had a whole story about how Belle had to use the potties in her castle. Princesses have to live in clean, dry castles and can’t have wet floors. Desperate.

Nora slowly earned pink sticker after pink sticker. One evening around 6:30pm, she earned the last one. Despite the fact that it was nearing bedtime for her and Quinn, we immediately packed everyone up and shipped out to Target.

Heading into the store…

At the end where she’s saying, “Run, run!” it sounds like she was super excited and eager to get into the store. While that was true, it was more because she was very nervous that an approaching car was getting too close for comfort. While I applaud her caution, I promise it was plenty far enough away.

As you can tell, Nora was thrilled to be out of the house. She’d been quarantined for almost a week. FREEDOM IN THE WIDE, WHITE AISLES OF TARGET!!!!!

To the Pink Aisle!

At last!

That night, she proudly tucked Belle in next to her. Under the covers and everything. Best friends.

Of course, after all that, Belle has been taking a nap for a long, long time (as in days) in a doll bed in the playroom . . . I can’t resist- Who does she think she is, Sleeping Beauty? Ba dum ding!

Nora Praise:

~ She still pronounces her name “Nah Nah” and since she is the person with whom I spend the most hours conversing, guess what? I sometimes call her Nah Nah now too. I’m not sure I can stop. So if you hear that one slip out, whoops. (She pronounces her full name as Nah Nah Pays Teague.)

~ She leaves out the preposition ‘for.’ “Here go, Mommy, this you.” “Wait me, Daddy!”

~ Oh, Little Bear. I could probably write a whole post on ways Little Bear has influenced Nora’s vernacular. Whenever we go for a walk, she will pause every few steps to ask “Are we still going the right way?” It’s something Little Bear asked Cat when they were on a walk and she loved it. How ironic that she’s inadvertently asking a very valid question, given my Superhero Power?

~Another LB: One character on LB uses a walking stick. So now, in any natural setting, Nora selects a walking stick which she proudly holds in her hand and generally prizes as a beloved, precious object for the entire walk. However, there are two problems with her walking sticks: one- she generally chooses very small sticks which are incredibly fragile. The other- she brings the walking sticks home, forgets about them, casts them aside for other playthings, only to remember her highly regarded twig after finding it in decimated pieces on the floor. Then she sobs and wails, “Oh, REMY! That was my WALKING STICK!” This has happened twice now and almost a third time before I remembered to hide her latest stick from our oh-so-eager-to-chew dog.

~ Anytime we are driving and point something or a place out to her, her immediate question is, “Can I go see it?” Every. Single. Time. On our drive to Savannah, she must have requested to see 50 different objects/places.

~ Anytime we are see an interesting place on tv or in a book, she asks, “Can I go there?” It can be Cinderella’s castle, San Francisco, the moon. Doesn’t matter if it’s near, far, real or imaginary. She wants to go there.

~ She’s started writing scribbles. When asked, “What does that say?” she almost always answers “I love you, Quinny.”

~ Read carefully, people, this one is important. All of us are now divided into two groups. There are “Very Nice” People and “Not Very Nice” people. You do not, I repeat, do NOT want to find yourself on the wrong side of that line. It is hard going to find your way back. “Mommy, is she very nice?” “Daddy, those guys not very nice.”

~ The bonus is, if you are deemed “Very Nice,” then you are decidedly not a Scary Monster. “Mommy, is that girl nice?” “Yes, she’s very nice.” “She’s very nice? She’s not a Scary Monster.”

~Nora is not one to think long and hard about a name. All of her small stuff animals/dolls are Baby ____. Baby Panda Bear, Baby Polar Bear, Baby, Other Baby (She has two baby dolls.) We recently got her two tiny frogs that she absolutely insisted on calling Baby Frogs. Collectively. Trying to explain to her that there are two frogs and we can name one frog Baby and the other one a n y t h i n g else did not work. “Their name Baby Frogs.”

~ She has this filler word that I can’t quite pronounce. It’s like, zeh zeh zeh or stha stha stha or something. It’s the equivalent of “um.” If you go back and listen to her singing Old MacDonald on the Sing Along with Nora video (you know, in all your free time) you can hear it.

~ She is going through a serious nature phase here. She LOVES collecting anything from outside. She brings in twigs, leaves- both green and shriveled brown, flower petals, pinestraw- if it’s in our yard, it’s been in the house. It’s also her way of showing she likes you. So if she brings you a dead, crumpled leaf, you’ve been accepted.

Quinn Abigail

~ Quinn is most likely the most pleasant person I have ever woken up. She will be in a deep sleep that we will have to interrupt to take her somewhere and all she does is squint, cover her eyes, and break out into a grin.

~ If she’s already awake and ready in her crib, she starts kicking with excitement as soon as she discovers you are headed her way. “THIS IS THE BEST THING THAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME, EVER!”

~ She is super interested in anything that is playing on the television. She pays equal attention to Barney, Toy Story, and CNN. Should your head be in the way, she leans way over to the side to get a better view.

~ Quinny’s really into touching faces.If you are within arm’s length of her, she holds up her little padded hand and starts stroking your cheek. It makes you feel cherished.

~ Along with a better grasp using those tiny hands has come the Klepto phase. This morning I opened a sock drawer and she somehow swiped a pair of socks out before I could. She’s getting very fast, that one. It’s a little stressful when she gets a good hold of anything containing liquid. I have to figure out how to get it out of her little Kung Fu grip without spilling everywhere.

~ She just figured out how to go from a sprawling position to a sitting position. But late at night, she can’t remember how to lay back down. Last night I went to check on her after hearing her whimpering for a few minutes. I found her sitting in bed, sniffling, half asleep and slightly swaying in exhaustion.

~ Quinn’s a Remy fan, just like her sister was. She giggles uncontrollably whenever she gets to pet him.

~ She’s also a huge Nora fan. I don’t know if anyone can make her laugh like Nora can.

~ She’s been working on this latest skill for awhile…

Then we found the illustrated story in her Jesus Storybook Bible. (It’s for kids, technically, but I would seriously recommend it to anyone. I absolutely love the approach this version takes and it has completely changed the way I think about Christmas and Easter. But I digress.)

A few weeks later, as we were driving to Birmingham to visit family, we drove right into a loud, fairly intense thunderstorm. Nora was crying (“I don’t like the rain so much”) so we reminded her of the story and how Jesus was in charge the whole time and he told his friends not to be afraid. Moments after we got to the part where Jesus told the rain to go away, we passed through the last of the rain of our storm. Nora looked out the window with wonder. “Jesus made rain go away?” It was such a grace that she was able to connect the story with a real experience.

And an obsession was born. Nora wanted to read and reread this story in her book. The actual writing is a bit above her head, so we paraphrased. Many a time she retold her version of the story to us. She was overjoyed when she realized a mini illustration from the story was included on the cover. “Mommy! Ook! Thunder booming!”

I was finally able to get one of those retellings on camera and I’m so glad we have it. One of my favorite details is that one of the pages is torn as a result of countless turns.

Without further ado, Nora will now retell her version of Jesus Calming the Storm. (I did my best on the subtitles, but I’m not sure I got them all right. You’ll get the idea.)

Over the summer we transitioned Nora to a Big Girl Bed. (I promise, there’s a connection here.) At first, she wanted nothing to do with it. But she got the hang of it and started to like it. A big girl bed is fun- you can have a pillow and covers, lots of stuffed animals in the bed, and you can get in and out all by yourself. Especially out.

The first time Nora unexpectedly got out of her bed was early one morning. Josh walked out onto the landing because he had heard a noise and was startled to see Nora there. She was just sitting at the top of the landing, criss crossed legs, staring between the railings.

“Hi, Daddy.” Like she had been calmly expecting him.

“Nora, how long have you been waiting there?”

“About twenty minutes.” (This is her standard answer to anything that lasts awhile. Jonah was in the whale 20 minutes, Quinn is 20 minutes old, etc.)

A few days later, I was in a deep sleep when I heard our door bang open, Nora yell, “MOMMY! THUNDER BOOMING!” and a peal of thunder, simultaneously. I was so out of it, all I could think to do was pull her into the bed. We waited out the storm together. And I think that was the moment an idea creeped into Nora’s conscience. (I can get out of bed…at night…)

Then a few nights later, she opened our door again. This time I was slightly awake when I thought I heard the door latch slide out of place. But when I looked over the foot of the bed, all I could see was the door opening very, very slowly.

My heart was beating a little harder as I said, “Nora?” (Please be Nora, of course it’s Nora, it HAS to be Nora…)

Suddenly she was in my view. “I can get in Mommy Daddy’s bed?” She sounded totally alert.

I, of course, jumped. And took her back to bed as soon as I recovered.

Another time I was in the kitchen around 9pm. Just as I closed the pantry door I thought I heard the echo of a door opening above me.

What happens next is what I like to call the Jack in the Box effect. I had a good idea of what I was expecting to see as I walked to the stairs. Even so, as I glanced up and saw a little figure floating in a white nightgown, I had a complete fight or flight reaction kick in. My brain recognized that it was only Nora as the adrenaline coursed through my veins so my scream turned into “AAHNORAAA!”

“Mommy, read me one more book?” Pause. “What’s wrong, Mommy?”

A few nights later, I was in the kitchen again, washing dishes with music quietly playing. Josh was out for the night and there were occasional rolls of thunder in the background. All in all, a rather creepy setting.

So I couldn’t tell if it was my imagination or not that I kept hearing things. I would think that I would hear a noise, turn off the water and lower the volume on the music. I would listen for a few moments, wouldn’t hear anything, and go back to work. The process repeated itself for about 20 minutes. (Literally, not in a Nora way.)

Finally, just when I was convinced I really had heard something and it was getting closer to me, Nora worked up the courage to hop into the kitchen. She then giggled at my very surprised, sharp inhale reaction. When I asked why she was up, she used the thunder excuse again.

And then there was last week. I thought we had made some progress about the whole staying in bed (and not freaking Mommy and Daddy out) thing. I was having a bizarre dream that we were on vacation and a monkey had just thrown up on our deck. Trying to get the ill monkey to leave, I kicked rocks at him. One hit him square on the eye. As he held his hand to his eye and stumbled away, he started vowing to get his revenge. (This was probably a result of seeing trailers for Planet of the Apes and Contagion.)

Anyway, I was already a little freaked as I was roused out of the dream. As I was waking I heard someone sneeze. Practically blind without my contacts/glasses, I couldn’t see anything at first. I sat up and tried to figure out where the noise had come from or if it had been part of the Sick Talking Monkey dream. I thought I saw Remy on the floor near us. It was only when he moved a really long leg that I realized it was actually Nora half asleep in a fetal position on the floor. I’m not quite sure how long she had been there or what she was doing before I woke up. I can tell you she had some thread from my sewing area caught around her leg.

As much as I love and enjoy that little girl, sometimes she unknowingly scares me out of my senses.