Nora Shorts

Nora pretending to be a butterfly.

A while back, we thought that when Nora talked about "My Nora," she was referring to herself in the third person. We have found over the past months that that is not the case. "MyNora" is Nora's imaginary friend. It's been so entertaining and enlightening to learn about MyNora. Here's what we know about her so far:

MyNora lives in Mexico in a real castle, but she comes from Africa. She has red feet.

She has ten brothers and sisters, but her parents were killed by pirates. They are okay now, though.

She has a LITTLE sister named Hailey, and she sleeps on the TOP bunk. She has a baby brother named Charles, and little brother named Jerric, and older sister named Mom, and and older brother named Dad. She call her parents Jenni and John.

MyNora has lots and lots of pets- dogs, cats, fish, and rabbits. Also a baby Gorilla named Chad that she keeps in her bedroom in a crib. And three parakeets she keeps in jars. Named Tweet, Tweettweet, and Supertweet. The rest of her pets are either named Sharina or Merica.

Everything MyNora owns is pink and purple and princess-themed. She has a pink and purple princess bad. Her mom drives a pink car with purple seats. She had a princess wii that only plays princess game. And her favorite shoes are pink sparkly ones.

We save a spot in my car for MyNora and she sleeps at the foot at Nora's bed when she stays over night, which is often.

The interesting thing about MyNora is that she seems to have just a little bit more of everything than we do in our house.

Nora gets to watch two shows on TV.

Well, MyNora gets to watch five.

Nora has to go to bed in five minutes.

MyNora gets to stay up for 100 minutes.

Nora can only have one cookie.

MyNora's mom gives her 1000 cookies. They are all pink and purple.


Occasionally MyNora and I don't get along, and I have to ask Nora to tell her it's time for her to go home.

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It's been about three months since I began this post, and we don't see much of MyNora anymore, and I miss her just a little bit.

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Nora was so excited when she found out that a real firefighter was coming to her preschool.

And then after-the-fact she came home terrified. She had heard just a little too much about escape routes, and testing doors for heat, and crawling under the smoke, and stopping, dropping, and rolling.

That night she could not go to sleep because she was so scared that our house would catch on fire. She requested that I show her all our smoke detectors, so I did, and she requested that we decide on a meeting place outside (just in case), and so we planned.

But still at eleven that night, I heard her crying in her bed. She thought she saw flames, and was still afraid of fire. I could convince her that the fire was pretend, but I couldn't convince her that it was okay to go to sleep.

In that moment, I had a stroke of motherly genius and gave her a hose. A giant pretend hose.
"But mom, why can't I have a real hose?" She asked.
"Because a real hose would do you no good," I explained. "A real fire needs a real hose. A pretend fire needs a pretend hose to put it out. Try it."

And she did with an animated shrrwoosh sound. She put the fire out and finally went to sleep. I gave her the hose every night before she went to bed, and it seemed to do the trick. But the about a week later, lions showed up in her room, so she asked for a sword- a pretend sword to fight off the pretend lions.

The next week, it was leopards, so John gave her a tranquilizer gun (because she felt bad about killing so many animals) and a cage to put them in in case they woke up.

Soon she needed a pretend bag to carry all her pretend nighttime gear in. And now every night I give her the pretend nighttime bag and make sure it's stocked with:

a hose- for fires.

a sword- for fighting lions.

a glow in the dark sleep necklace- so she will be less afraid of the dark.

sleeping pills- to help her go to sleep.

a tranquilizer dart gun- for leopards.

a pop-up cage- "pop-up" so it can fit in the bag, to put the leopards in.

A small price to pay for a full night of sleep.

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She loves potty humor. Potty word humor. I can't get her away from it.

For example: Nora will say, "Mom, let's play a rhyming game. Can you think of any words that rhyme with 'moo?' I know one. POO!"

Hysterical laughter coming from her.

"And here's another one mom. Do you know what rhymes with cart? FART!"

She's rolling on the floor.

"Hey mom, do you know what rhymes with tree? P. The letter 'P,' because, mom, if it was the toilet kind of pee, that would just be gross."

 And she walks off.

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Nora and me on Mother's Day. I'm wearing the crown she made me.

Either she has one unusually sharp set of teeth, or she eats way too fast. I have never seen a child bite her fingers so much while eating.