Whispering Hope

I couldn't resist sharing the sweet photo I snapped when Uncle Johnny stopped by to visit. Norah loves Uncle Johnny!

Norah has been getting more and more talkative. She already has a lot of words (some of them more accurately pronounced than others--but she's consistent with them, which at least tells me she understands the concept of talking). At one year of age, she can say: "Daddy", "Bye Bye", "Dog" (which really sounds more like "dah", but she uses it for dog every time), "Snack" (always pronounced with a question mark at the end, as if in great anticipation) "Duckies" (more like "duh-dees"--we go to visit them every night in the bathtub), "Bird", "More", "Milk", and a very occassional "Momma" (most of the time she insistantly calls me "Da-da". Oh, and how can I forget her most favorite word, "Hi!"

She says "Hi!" to nearly everyone we come in contact with. Her favorite place to greet people is Walmart. Every person, every aisle. Thankfully, we seem to grocery shop at the same time as a lot of other very friendly people, who are always kind enough to acknowledge a friendly baby girl.

Another place Norah loves to greet friends is when we go to church. Now, this wouldn't such a big deal if she limited herself to greeting folks in the foyer, but no, she prefers to continue her loud salutations in the auditorium, especially when it is quiet, like during the sermon. Last Sunday morning was our hardest one, to date. She was just being loud. Finally, when she started to pump up the volume in the middle of communion, Jason and I opted to migrate to the training room, where we spent the remainder of worship assembly with a very wiggly, loud baby who was seemingly not responding to any form of discipline.

When we returned home for lunch, Jason said a humorous (but honest) prayer, asking God to give us wisdom and patience for raising and disciplining Norah, and to help us to be "more stubborn than she is". God is fast to answer our prayers. When we went to church Sunday evening (which, truth be told, we were both dreading a little, considering the way we had to fight Norah that morning), Norah fell asleep in the car and slept through about half of the service. She woke up just as Foree was beginning his lesson. This is when she usually looks around for people to say "Hi!" to. And she did just that, but apparently some of our early morning discipline had sunk in, because when she found her "greet-ee", she simply whispered a raspy and subdued, "hi". At first I thought it was a fluke, but she continued to do it all throughout the remainder of church! Her first whispers were in church. I thought that was pretty cute. Granted, I know she was still distracting the people around us by conversing with them during the sermon, but at least she's learning to be quiet(er). We'll keep working on good manners as she grows and matures, but for now, we're just proud that she's learning to whisper.

We've continued to work on our whisper ever since, and she's doing marvelous. Of all the things she's learned, I think I'm the most tickled by this one. It was just so unexpected. We never dreamed she could learn to whisper so young, so we never even tried to teach her, and here she just surprised us by coming up with it on her own! (Although, I really do think it is God's loving way of telling us to "Hang in there, she's gonna be just fine")