Life with Nora

Nora loves to raise her arms and stretch them whenever she's not confined in the straightjacket swaddle we wrap her in to sleep. As soon as the velcro comes off, her arms shoot out above her head like some sort of victory gesture. Sometimes Nora will even eat like that. She'll spread her arms out and guzzle her milk as she grunts with satisfaction.

Nora grunts a lot. She grunts when she drinks, grunts when she sleeps, grunts when she farts, and the funniest of all, grunts right after she farts in some twisted baby expression of extreme satisfaction. We get a huge kick out of that.

Nora was the smaller twin, born at only 4 lbs and 9 ounces, so in the very beginning I was inclined to worry about her. But that disappeared pretty quickly because something about her just seems...tough. She seems resilient. Nora knows what she wants and does what it takes to get it. If she wants to eat, she yells, and she gets it right away. If she wants to be held instead of put in the crib, lo and behold I'll get to the end of the day and realize that somebody's been holding her almost constantly. When Nora gets mad, she cries like she's mad, not like she's distressed. She just sounds pissed.

Actually, she sounds exactly like Cartman from South Park. Any of you who have seen that cartoon might remember the way he whines to his mom when he wants something: "But mommmmm...." That's what Nora sounds like. I expect that she'll soon start telling Milo "Respect Mah Authoriteh!"

When Nora gets excited, which happens most often while she's looking at her mobile, she starts huffing in these high-pitched excited sounds. "Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!" This baby girl is so verbal that I have a feeling we're going to have a real talker on our hands when she gets older. She's either cooing, grunting, or huffing in excitement.

Nora has discovered her fist, and is now able to get it to her mouth with fairly reasonable accuracy. For some reason Jake and I both just love this. She is so cute, sitting there sucking away on her fist. The other day Jake was holding her and she started sucking on her fist, and we both said "awwww...how cute." Jake remarked "This makes it all worth it." That's such a lame parent cliche, but I knew

exactly what he meant. Somehow watching our little girl suck on her fist like that, watching her accomplish that major baby feat, it made everything seem worth it. All of the broken nights and all of the tears, all of the frustrating days seemed to melt away as we sat there, transfixed, grinning like a couple of idiots as we proudly watched her shove that fat little fist all the way into her mouth and start sucking.

Mama and Daddy love you, you little grunting fist-sucker, you.