A Grand Greeting

I have watched this 13 second video of Nora at least 30 times since it was uploaded in the "Nora Marie" shared album on my phone. 

I love everything about it. 

I love hearing her sweet breath sounds (that, I guess, we can hear so well because they are bouncing off that wooden chest).

I love her glance upward and the break of her face into a smile at seeing something that delights her.

I love the little burp that escapes as she begins wriggling toward the new target.

I love how that delighted, determined little human expends every ounce of energy she can muster to get to what she loves.

To get to what we love is worth that kind of energy!

And I love that it's the dog, Zeke. 

It all still makes me smile.

Now the reason I'm blogging about it is not just because Nora's one of my cute grands and I want to show her off. But seeing this made me think about some premarital advice Lou and I got that we actually took to heart. 

We were encouraged to always welcome each other home. Like stop whatever we were doing and go to the door and greet the returning spouse.

And, for the most part, we have done and still do that.

If I'm home and hear the garage door/back door, I know he's home and I "stop, drop and greet" if possible.  And Lou does that for me too.

 No condemnation if that's not you and your spouse's jam. Different strokes for different folks. But Lou and I have found that simple greeting practice so sweet. 

          Now, how in the world did I get from cute little Nora crawling and burping her way to Zeke to premarital advice?

I have to confess, sometimes the associations my mind makes surprise even me, but this connected because, like Nora's face breaks into a smile at the thought of being near the source of her delight, my face breaks into a smile for the same reason. 
As she does whatever it takes to get to her delight, we do too. It may sound silly, but sometimes I am in the middle of something that I don't want to necessarily interrupt, but I "make" myself go greet because, well, Lou's worth it. 

One other thing I love about the Nora clip. She is completely free in her delight. She loves Zeke and doesn't care who knows it and doesn't care how much energy she's got to expend to get to him. Why do we sometimes get to a point where we aren't as obvious about our delight in someone?  Or as determined to let them know they are the object of our delight? 

Thanks for so many good reminders, Nora girl. I'm guessing that while this might be the first thing I glean from a grand, it won't be the last.