Does it up your chances?

Nora announced at dinner: "If you want to get called on in class, don't yell 'me, me, me!' because it won't up your chances." Up your chances? We asked, and she said that 'Henrietta' says that if you want to lick the batter spoon, saying 'please' will always up your chances. (Henrietta, There's No One Better was an Xmas present. An enjoyable example of the new "permissive" children's literature -- manic, self-absorbed, and frequently disgusting. If you like that kind of thing.)

Anywhoo, Nora was raising her hand in class to answer the question: Does anybody know why we were not in school on Monday? She knew because we went to the library and got a book about Martin Luther King Jr. We wonder if her good memory burdens her though, because her teacher said that she rattled off a biography that included his time in prison, riots, and his assassination. At the dinner table, she was anxious for us to know that she learned from her teacher another thing about MLK -- he sang in his father's choir!

Nora on the stump

Nora gathered an audience of animals, each with a chair, to hear "President Nora" give a speech. She dressed, put her speech (her Winnie the Pooh book) on the music stand, then mounted the podium (stepstool). She started off with some generalities about (Pooh's) hundred acre woods, then touched on the needy children of Tanzania, and concluded with a few remarks questioning Piglet's gender. She then took questions from the audience.

Nora's 4th Birthday Party

Nora's birthday party was at the Audubon Nature Center. After a lecture about leaves, the naturalist lead the kids on a leaf scavenger hunt. The kids made crayon rubbings and then "returned the leaves to nature." The kids were wonderful, and Nora loved being with her cousin, Pilar!

During the leaf lecture, Nora interrupted to made a speech of her own. (Nora is fascinated with speech-making, and often raises her hands up to try out speech on us during dinner.) The one she gave at her party actually made sense: "I want to tell everyone that there are children who don't have water or food or doctors, so we need to collect money for them so that they can have those things." I suppose it was on her mind after collecting for Unicef at Halloween. (The brain-washing is nearly complete!)

Halloween, one year closer

Nora was a white rabbit for Halloween, since we couldn't find a good dog costume. This year, she marched right up to the spooky house -- the one with shrieking music and scary decorations. "Four-year-olds are not afraid of THIS," she said to steady herself. But instead of congratulating her (which is what Nora expected) the guy replied: "That is because you are one year closer to your DOOM!" She high-tailed it out of there. Surprisingly, she did not ask us what "her doom" was. Anyway, she had enough courage to do all the other houses on the block before heading home. Last year she had little interest in the candy, but this year she organized them lovingly by type, and ate 2.

Nora's first media interview

On Saturday late afternoon, Nora and Lisa went by Metro to downtown Washing DC to an anti-war march. Nora gave her first interview, with a woman reporter for ABC radio. Nora spoke into the reporter's mic: "I came here to tell the President -- because this is where he lives -- that he needs to stop the war so that the soldiers can come home to their families." I haven't been able to find out if the reporter used the quote. That was pretty much the message of our group, Military Families Speak Out (http://www.mfso.org/): end the Iraq war, bring the soldiers home, and take care of them when they get home.

At home that night, Nora found a purple sticky note pad and began “writing.” She produced an indecipherable scribble on each of about 20 pages of purple note paper. But, on one note she wrote quite legibly:

"ViO

Lin"

Running to her first violin lesson

After two years of observing other violin students in the studio outside of D.C., Nora (3 and 3/4 years old) started violin lessons this week! She is so excited! Mima will chronicle her lessons at http://clemantinesviolin.blogspot.com/, for anyone who wants to know the all the details.

Nora on jellyfish in Duck, NC

"You can make lemonade out of lemons, but you can't make jelly out of jellyfish."