We have an ongoing debate about who Anneliese looks like, and whether or not she looks like Nora. Why this matters, I'm not sure, but I think about it a lot. A while back we were visiting with Jason's family. They shared some old photos I hadn't seen. Everyone has always commented that Nora looks strongly like Jason, which I kind of see, but to my surprise she doesn't resemble him at all in his baby and childhood photos. I think she looks more like Jason's brother, Chris, and when I saw baby pictures of Chris I saw that Anneliese resembles him strongly as well. Go figure. Of course, Jason and Chris have a similar look to them, but their features are a little different. I'd like to think my own genetics have an influence on how my kids look, but so far there's not much evidence of that! Anneliese may have my mother's thin lips. Otherwise, I got nothing.

As for whether or not she looks like Nora, well, kind of. She looks more like Nora in pictures than she does in person (IMO) and she especially looks like her from certain angles. Here's a recent shot:



Just for fun, here's Nora at the same age. (I chose this photo because I cut part of her head off here just like I did in the above picture of Anneliese. Man, I'm good.)



Dunno. What do you think? I'm asking the two of you who actually read this blog.

Jason's been telling Nora some stories that he made up about two animals, Charles Squirrel and Olivia Robin. Olivia's name was actually Lydia, but Nora started calling her Olivia and it stuck. Charles is a slightly dim-witted squirrel who lives in a tree in our backyard. Olivia is a robin who helps him figure out what's up. I actually don't know a lot of the details of the stories since that's their thing. But it's very cute; very A.A. Milne if you ask me. The sweetest thing is that Nora seems to think Charles and Olivia are real. She calls out to them when we're in the backyard and cranes her neck looking for them. When she sees a squirrel she says, "It's Charles Squirrel!" in her cute little lisp. As she is approaching four she is becoming so worldly--not in a bad way, but in a "I'm more wise to the world" way--that I am just clinging to every little expression of her 3 year old innocence. Tonight I asked her to tell Anneliese a story about Charles Squirrel, and she made one up all by herself. It had a beginning and a middle and, well, kind of an end, she lost interest after the climax and mostly dropped it. In a nutshell (hee!), Charles had made friends with a catapillar and when he began to form his cocoon, he didn't know what was happening so he asked Olivia Robin to explain it. Olivia did, and then he got to see his caterpillar friend become a butterfly (a "baby butterfly," actually), and all was well. Jason walked in in the middle and was surprised to hear her telling a Charles Squirrel story that he hadn't made up himself. He said she may have borrowed slightly from a Wonder Pets episode, but still. I'm impressed with her skillz.

And now, a quick story about me. The other day I heard a segment on This American Life about a rat in a toilet. This was from an episode called "Urban Legends." It was an old urban legend that was actually proven to be true. The person in the segment vividly described a time he was using the bathroom and a rat actually came up into his toilet and scared the bejeezus out of him. Tonight I was using the bathroom here at home and I heard a scary scritching noise. I nearly jumped out of my skin, sure that I was about to come face to face with a snarling, beady-eyed creature. Luckily it turned out to be nothing, but now that I know of the possibility that a real rat could enter a home through a toilet, I think I'll always be a little paranoid.