Nora Evelyn

There are few things I consider a greater waste of time and resources than lawn maintenance. I haven’t gotten around to a better solution yet, though, so every once in a while I’m forced to break out the old CMM1000 electric mower, get it working again, and mow all of the various plants to a more or less uniform height. This month, Nora decided to help but I’m not a big fan of rushing to the emergency room so I let her help by being carried around the yard and giving me directions.

this was was really high! look at her in relation to Jen. Also note that she’s apparently conducting a wall climbing clinic during her ascent (she’s explaining how one climbs a wall as she climbs). Best part: as she crests the top and stands up she says, “kinda slippy” with her adorable little substitution of /l/ with [w].

It was the best of fruits, it was the worst of fruits. This first picture is a photograph of Jennie a couple of years ago holding a tomato her parents had grown.

This second picture is Nora a couple of days ago holding a tomato her grandparents grew.

I definitely see a strong family resemblance in the tomatoes.

One of Nora’s favorite things right now (and we’ll love every second of it while it lasts) is to be helpful around the house. Last night she helped me make dinner (cornbread, steamed green beans, and sandwiches). We cut and scraped the kernels off some leftover grilled corn from Sunday’s dinner and followed this recipe modified from Mark Bittman:

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 cups medium-grind cornmeal
1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder (no aluminum)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
kernels from 2 ears of grilled corn
2 eggs
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1 1/4 cups milk
1 tsp vanilla

Method

1. put the butter in a 10″ cast iron skillet, stick it in the oven, and preheat to 375ºF (190ºC)
2. combine the dry stuff
3. combine the wet stuff in a separate bowl (yes, this includes the sugar and corn)
4. combine wet and dry gingerly and without too much fuss about lumps
5. bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown and delicious

Photos

Tonight at bedtime I was singing Nora the Pogues’ “Dirty Old Town*” when, about halfway through, she said to me: “Shane MacGowan. Shane MacGowan.” *pause* “I Nora McGowan. Shane MacGowan. I Nora McGowan.”

“Yes, dear,” says I, “but your teeth will last longer.”

* yes, I often sing Pogues songs as lullabies. “Waxies Dargle” is a particularly fun one as is Behan’s “The Auld Triangle.” The song leading into “Dirty Old Town” tonight was Men at Work’s “Overkill.”

Last Saturday, after picking up our veggies, Nora took a bit of a tumble off a low wall on her way to see the big green foot. She still wanted the picture taken, though, so here’s what Nora looks like when she’s crying (and a picture of some comparatively happy cherry tomatoes).

p.s. 5 minutes later she was laughing and playing and chasing a little girl named Morgan around a tree.

Nora this week got a package in the mail from her friend Salomé. The package turned out to contain our new Bolivian friend “New Baby.” Nora’s creative streak with names continues! Then on Thursday afternoon Nora and Salomé shared a fantastic conversation via Skype. Frankly, I was skeptical that two toddlers could have an engaging video chat but it was really fun and lasted about half an hour.

This park is pretty phenomenal –the wet and dry parts were each probably the best such play spaces Nora’s ever been to. All the elders in attendance were jealous that these facilities weren’t around when we were kids (of course, we got to play with actual Lawn Darts so it wasn’t all bad).

We started the day on the wet part. Played until her tiny lips were nice and blue, toweled off for climbing and swinging fun, switched back into swimsuit for more water (is anything more pleasant than putting a wet swimsuit back on? ), and then it was off to Buddy’s Pizza where Granny treated us all to dinner. All in all a pretty spectacular day and it took at least another day and a half for Nora to calm down afterwards.

Last weekend we took Nora to a nearby spray park (a normal park, no admission, with giant metal sculptures that spray water on you — you’ll see). I’m going to put up a massive post with tons of pictures later today but for now I hope you’ll enjoy this video we shot of Nora realizing why it was, exactly, that she was wearing her bathing suit.

Nora was eating cheese and crackers today while I made her lunch. She picked up one of the crackers, snapped it in half along the diagonal, and exclaimed, “daddy! 2 triangles!” and made me go look at them. I showed her the right angles and tried to explain a little bit about the lengths of the three sides. I appreciate that she doesn’t get a lot of this stuff, but knowledge is cumulative and has to start somewhere. It was pretty cool.

So later we’re eating our lunches and she gets this excited look again and says, “The top of the cup is a circle!” and showed me with her fingers by tracing a circle in the air parallel to the top of the cup. I was blown away. I explained that if you take the intersecting plane out of parallel with the table top then the slice it makes in the cup is an ellipse rather than a circle. She nodded and said, “and the cup has MILK!” and then she poured the milk all over herself.