Nora Evelyn McGowan

Nora took her first and second airplane rides yesterday and did a mostly fantastic job. Home airport to Dallas was an absolute dream: she ate during takeoff, slept through the entire trip, and woke up just in time to eat during landing. Dallas to Ontario, CA was a little harder since she didn’t sleep much at all, but she had a great deal of fun playing “slap the tray table” and “eat the book”. Which, I’ll admit, is exactly what I normally do at the end of a long flight.

Nora topped off her successful day of traveling by partying like a rock star all night long. If rock stars poop themselves, spit up, scream ceaselessly, refuse to sleep, and make their handlers worry that the neighbors are going to call the cops at any moment. I’m pretty sure this is how the Rolling Stones do it, but let’s hope tonight’s a little less rock ‘n roll …

You may not be able to tell from this picture, but Nora’s a little under the weather. So under, in fact, that we took her to the Dr. today to make sure she doesn’t have an ear infection. In addition to coughing, sneezing, and being grumpy she’s also been hanging onto her ear.

Turns out she’s just got a cold and has discovered that she has ears (and wants to hold them — what would you do with them?). Probably she’s also experiencing some ill effects from what appear to be (I’m not making this up) teeth numbers 5 and 6.

Nora, in what I’m sure is the first of many such gestures, got herself something to give me for fathers’ day:

I really love my new onesie but it doesn’t fit so I’ve been forced to let the bean wear it for me. Green isn’t really my color anyway. That look on Nora’s face is her “I’m VERY sleepy” face (you can see it in her eyes).

We owe tremendous thanks to Maryann for this incredibly beautiful quilt she made Nora. Nora loves it (and so do we). It’s especially handy now that she’s learning to crawl. Although, at the moment, she can only crawl in reverse. :)

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Back when she was 2 days old, we let Ruggles take care of the baby while we made breakfast. Tonight, Nora comforted Ruggles through a brief thunderstorm. She’s changed a lot in a few months, but Ruggles hasn’t aged a day!

When Anna, Raomir, and Salomé went to Bolivia to do fieldwork this year they loaned us their excellent Schwinn joyrider trailer. Nora and I took it out for a quick spin today and apart from a glaring need for sun protection, it seems perfect. She really seemed to enjoy it and I managed to get to the top of the hill at Barton and Traver without falling over sideways. Yay, us!

I look forward to many, many hours of playing in traffic with the baby.

Our little watermelon and I stopped by Jen’s office today for a brief visit with prodigal Drew and the CIC crew. :)

The big news here at Ruggles End is the cresting this morning of tooth number three! Acquiring deciduous dentition is hard on everyone involved, but Nora has once again proved herself to be quite a trouper. Here she is celebrating the dual victories of her tooth and the Detroit Red Wings:

In other news, there is some circumstantial evidence that our lil’ kiddo waved at us on Wednesday. Further research is required, results are inconclusive at this time, but the PI and her two research assistants are quite hopeful. More on this later.

It’s official. The Detroit Red Wings have won every Stanley Cup since Nora was born. :)

For today’s post we’ve handed the keyboard over to Nora.

Let’s see what she has to say…
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