Monday, January 18, 2010

Nora Shorts #2

Photobucket

She is a food thief. She sneaks into the fridge and pillages the cabinets. She's not very sly about it, so usually I catch her.

Lately we've had a supply clementines in our house at all times. These I let her steal; I turn a blind eye to the oranges. Also the carrots which I find occasionally in her bed. But back to the clementines.

She tiptoes to the fridge and takes out a clementine and then runs to the opposite side of the house to peel and eat it. She's gotten pretty fast and skilled at the peeling. Sometimes she is nice enough to throw the peels away, and sometimes I find small orange piles of peels in a corner days later.

Some days she steals up to four, and this is how I know: she is very careful to put the clementine sticker on her shirt, so all I had to do is glance at her clothes and count them up. If she changes her shirt in the middle of the day, she will carefully transfer all those stickers onto her new shirt.

speaking of oranges. . .

----

Photobucket

Nora has been getting into some trouble lately. Always at around 11:00am, she searches out Hailey to hit or kick her, or finds a marker to color on the walls with, or some other disruptive, destructive exercise. And always while I'm making lunch.

She gets put on the naughty stool in the kitchen while I finish up lunch, and because of the aformentioned knack and interest in peeling oranges, I always ask her, "Hey, while you're down there and you have nothing else to do, will you peel this for me?"

And she sits on her naughty stool and peels an orange, which calms her down quite a bit. I'm sad to admit it took me a couple weeks of this practice to understand this correlation of misbehavior before lunch was due to the fact that Nora
was
just
hungry.

So now I give her a cracker half an hour before lunch and things run much more smoothly. Except I have no one to peel my oranges any more.

Photobucket

----

Nora is now a sunbeam in primary. The transition from nursery to primary was something we were all nervous about because Nora
just
loved
nursery
so
much.

Everything was just right down her aisle of interests. Pounding playdough. Eating snacks. The occasional song. Lots of independent play. Perfect. So we thought there might be church rebellion when she had to sit still for sharing time and listen to a longer lesson.

BUT NO! She has a great teacher who spoils those little sunbeams and does so well in keeping them engaged in their lessons, and Nora HEARTS PRIMARY.

So much in fact, that last Tuesday before I was even awake, she put on her Sunday dress and shoes and came in and asked me if we could go to church. I explained, no, church only happens on Sundays, and took care of the meltdown that followed.

She now understands that church only happens on Sunday, but even so, sets out her church clothes on Sunday night for the following week.

Also, this is a lesson to me that we really need to get out of the house more.

----

Nora is our resident translator for Charlie. I'll rhetorically ask Charlie if he's hungry or if he needs a diaper change, and Nora will always answer for him: "Charlie says 'yes'" or "Charlie says, 'not really, mom.'"

She always follows her commentary with, "Also, Charlie says Nora is very pretty."

Photobucket

more to come. . .

5 comments:

Pam Emmons said...

I miss this girl. She cracks me up.

Unknown said...

Those pictures are soooo perfect. I love the tyrant pics, LOL! What a funny kid. Don't you love those little "aha" moments -- Oh!! She's HUNGRY!!!
I recently had one of those with Lizzie. She would whine and complain every bedtime and wake up in the middle of the night and sneak into our bed. She often put her pillow or an extra blanket over her head when she finally did go to sleep. Finally I realized that the little nightlight in their room shines right on her pillow and it bugged her! So I made her a little night mask which she LOVES. When she's not being a pill she will put them on and be asleep in under 5 minutes. Yes, she still tries to sneak into our bed, but she goes back more easily now :P

onnuh said...

Dear Nora,

Thank you for the card! I loved your picture, and I could read your name. I love you and miss you!

Love,

A N A N (that's how you spelled it!)

Melina said...

Elise loves the story about Nora and the oranges. She asked me if she could steal oranges, too. I told her only if she peels them. And now she does. Thank you.

Sessions said...

We were talking about Nora just today. Macie said "Nora moved to Ohio? When are we going to move to Ohio?" You guys are missed. Thanks for the update it is fun to read about her personality I love it. I wish that a cracker would keep Macie from Her morning fits!!