Nora Evelyn

We have a mini tradition here at Ruggles End. Most Sundays we make my whole wheat, oatmeal, walnut pancakes while listening to ABBA songs on YouTube (I never said it was a wholesome tradition). Usually Nora tries to help. She will, for example, bang a potato masher in an empty pot, scatter all of our tupperware throughout the house, or put both pot holders over her arms and run around hugging things. This Sunday she actually helped by interacting (in a positive way) with the pre-cooked food. here are some pics of her whisking the wet half of the batter (the completed batter gets almost no mixing and is, like dealing with the hot griddle, strictly Dad business).

oh! At breakfast Nora ate more pancakes than either Jen or I.

I love newspapers. I don’t care if they’re an archaic construct whose news is out-of-date before the paper is even printed. They make me happy. Specifically, the Detroit Free Press makes me happy. And after 177 years, the Free Press is stopping daily home delivery in an attempt to survive in a world gone electronic. I miss my newspaper.

Here’s Nora reading yesterday’s paper:

Nora’s Grandma and Grandpa are wonderful people who come over one day each week to watch her while we’re at work (say “each week to watch her while we’re at work” 10 times fast to yourself). Here’s a great shot Grandma apparently took of Nora and her Grandpa studying the “squeaky pig kisses” page of “animal kisses”.

Today is Nora’s sixteen monthaversary! It’s honestly hard to believe that in only sixteen months she’s transformed from this tiny, helpless little ball to a vibrant, irrepressible bipedal tidal wave of joy. She has 16 teeth (holding fast to her average rate of 1 tooth per month of life for, one hopes, the last month); can show you her tummy, nose, head, and self if asked; says “hi!” and waves; seems to now only use “dada” to mean me and Jennie; and finally weighs enough to use a forward-facing carseat. She is a very chatty kid when she can see you in the car. :)

Happy sixteenmonthaversary little one, we love you!

The bright, happy, striped onesie Nora wore today (see the roomba pictures) has kind of a cool history. First, as I understand it, it belonged to Charlotte in New York. Charlotte’s mom passed it on to Zara who now lives in Virginia (sly, cup and lion face). When she eventually outgrew it, the onesie moved once again to Ellie. Ellie wore it for her time and passed it on to us. Nora has worn it a lot (even to meet the stanley cup). Soon, though, she too will outgrow this onesie and it will return to the sisterhood.

Or something.

Our robot babysitter is great — it cleans the floor while watching the baby. It also teaches her valuable lessons like: pushing buttons can make things go or stop, sometimes our friends step on our toes (but they don’t mean it), if you’re stuck in a corner — turn, watch out for the edges of rugs, keep working until your task is done, and if you’re exhausted and need more energy keep crying until someone comes and takes care of you.*

Do please also note her stompy, new blue outdoor shoes. She is deeply enamored.

[ EDIT: oops! once again it turns out that I am recycling jokes. But joking is one of our greatest natural resource and unless we recylce them now our children may never know our joy. ]

* actually, they both came pre-wired with this last one.

Nora’s favorite part of the indoor playspace was, tiny little hands down, the firehouse. Here are some pics of her having a great time transcending gender stereotypes:

We took Nora to this weird commercial indoor playspace thing on Saturday and she had a fantastic time. Her favorite part, though, was afterwards when we browsed the store part of the place and we let her shop for socks*:

*we restored everything to its original condition and bought her a new pair of outdoor walking shoes by way of apology to the store and its staff.

On Thursday evening Nora came down with the stomach virus I gave her and was too sick to go to school. She was much, much more upset about not being able to go to school than she was about being sick. Here are some photos we took while she was getting each of us our shoes, putting on her hat, trying to get her coat down from the coat hooks, getting her lunchbag and an infant communications sheet, and generally trying to talk us into taking her.

I promise we really do feed the baby a life-sustaining diet rich in fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy, and protein. It’s not my fault that eating cauliflower doesn’t make Nora smile like this.