Nora developments

Nora will be 20 months this weekend, and we've had a couple pretty exciting developments in the past week or so:

1. Potty learning. This is not at all something we're pushing, but Nora has started telling us when she has to use the potty, and then she has actually used it. And for its intended purpose, no less. We're nowhere near saying goodbye to diapers—she's only used the toilet successfully about five times this week—but it's so exciting to have the end in our sights.
2. She has started saying "I love you." Melt-my-heart adorable. She can be a feisty little thing (see the video in the previous post), so moments of pure tenderness are just impossible to resist. And so I eat her up.
3. Her height is no longer an encumbrance. She carries a plastic orange chair around the house with her so she can reach absolutely everything that has ever been out of her grasp. As soon as she could stand, she was climbing, so it's sort of a surprise that it's taken her this long to realize that nothing is truly out of her grasp, but now that she has it totally figured out, we're in trouble. I can't even begin to describe the tantrums that happen while I'm cooking dinner and basically fighting her back from the gas stove with a wooden spoon as she's screaming, "Stir! Stir!" Reason 239 to call for takeout.
4. She has started visiting a drop-in daycare in the neighborhood a few hours a week, and she loves it. The second time we went, she recognized it as soon as we pulled up and said, "Friends!"