I've noticed that Nora's expressing herself in a more sophisticated way sometimes. When we're talking her answers are slower, more thoughtful. I can sometimes see the wheels turning in her head. One night last week, she woke up a couple of hours after bedtime with a slight temperature. She got in my bed with me and we read a few more stories and just talked about things for a little bit, until she was feeling better. We were talking about fruit--which types of fruits grow on trees, which ones grow on vines, that kind of thing. I asked her how blueberries grew and she knitted her forehead a little bit and said sleepily, "Umm... I think they grow on vines or something?" Wrong answer (I reminded her about the time we went blueberry picking with friends a while back), but in the past she would have shouted out an answer, right or wrong, without thinking about it first.

Couple of funny/interesting things she's done lately:

• She got a Cinderella Barbie for her birthday. She was playing with it and chattering about her glass slippers, when she realized that Cinderella's (painted-on) shoes were blue. She said, "Hey, how come her glass slippers are blue?" I said, "Umm, maybe they're blue glass?" "Or maybe her feet are just blue," Nora decided.
• She took two plastic Easter eggs and figured out a way to launch one out of the other. She called this her "lever." I observed that it was, in a crude sense, a lever. I don't know where she got this or if I'm understanding her correctly, but it's kind of cool.

I feel like I should have a third thing, but I can't think of anything right now! I did want to write this down now before I forgot it, though.