Raising kids is easy, like the cake!

I'm telling you, people with one kid who is undamaged have nothing to complain about! Kids are easy! Now, if you have more than one kid, okay, but one kid? Piece o' pie, I tells ya!

Take Norah. How easy is it to raise her? She eats pretty much anything you put in front of her. She loves vegetables. That may be weird, I don't know, but she loves them. Can't get enough of them! As for watching her - E-Z! We close all the doors of the bedrooms and bathrooms so she can't get into things. I put her down, and like a wind-up toy, she's off! She's walking all the time now, so she just putters about, looking for trouble. She's remarkably well behaved. We have had to move a few things out of her grasp, but she has not gone after the CDs or the books yet. She just wanders around, picking up toys and playing with them, moving on to something else, trying to get into cabinets and the treasures inside, which is the only time I really have to intervene. She loves the syrup bottle for some reason. Earlier in the summer she figured out how to get the cap off, but luckily I stopped her before syrup was all over the floor. Now we keep the syrup out of her reach.

If I'm not doing anything, I will sit on the floor with her and she brings me books and points at the pictures in them, saying, like her sister, "Dat?" As usual with small children, I can tell her what the pictures are dozens of times and she will never get tired of them. Today she did something rather cool - she looked at a picture of a fish and then stared up at the fish we have on the counter (in a tank, fret not). She did it again later, for Krys, so it wasn't a fluke. She's starting to put things together, which is quite cool.

I don't know if all kids are like this, but she's easy. I just keep an eye on her, and she does her thing. After Mia, who needs constant supervision, it's a treat. That sounds like a horrible thing to say, that I neglect my child because I'm able to, but I just mean that I don't have to sit with her because she can't sit up and I don't have to carry her everywhere and I don't have to worry because she's not eating at a particular meal. I still keep track of her, but it's nice to let her wander around and discover things on her own.

Of course, she loves things she's not supposed to have. One of her favorite toys these days is my belt. She picks it up and cruises around with it. She just discovered Krys's ear plugs (I snore) and think they're the coolest thing ever. She also finds Krys's deodorant fascinating. But on the whole, she doesn't get into things that she's not supposed to get into. And she can entertain herself for good chunks of time, which is nice when Mia is awake and I have to focus on her.

So that's Norah. Difficult? Who said little kids are difficult? When she starts wanting to date, then she'll be difficult! Then I will have to put her in a cage, not unlike this:

Let's see her try to date when she's in the cage!