In honor of Mothers Day Nora made a triumphant return to Livonia, Michigan where she charmed everyone she met (in spite of refusing to take a nap). Picture 1 is standing on the front porch at Grandma and Grandpa K’s house (another view). Pictures 2 and 3 are Granny and Nora playing with the storm door (endless fun, storm doors).
We’ve been nursing it in the kitchen for a few weeks and today Nora and I planted a new eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis, eh) in our back garden. Here you can see Nora leaning on her shovel and supervising the installation. She’s a natural.
For most of recorded history, the State of Michigan wrestled with the shame of having within its borders (are you sitting down — ideally in a chair you assembled yourself?) no IKEA. None. No meatballs, no allen wrenches, no Billy Bookcases, nothing. It was a four hour drive to Chicago for a $12 picture frame or 4 hours (Canadian) in the opposite direction to Toronto for a portable kitchen cart island with stainless steel pot hooks and butcherblock top.
We celebrated the end of this epoch of shame as a family today with an outing to the IKEA in Canton where our lovely, beautiful, adorable, fun, charming, happy, sweet little girl found herself transmogrified into the untamed whirling dervish she-demon spawn of a hummingbird and a sleep-deprived monkey. She ran, she screamed, she opened cabinets, she tried to make snow angels on a rug, she zipped another child’s zipper, she flung knobs and knickknacks, she scaled the back of a chair while we were cleaning up the knickknacks and rolled off onto her head, she, in short*, went completely, totally and unbelievably out of her mind loony
We were *those* parents (which is fine with us; she had a great time). We completely failed to get what we went there for (at some point the goal stopped being to make a purchase and became our rapid, safe and nonlitigiously-encumbered retreat to the car). Here’s a shot of Nora putting a place setting through its paces and what she looked like a couple of minutes after we got her back to our rolling fortress of sanity (also Swedish).
Don’t get me wrong; this was a hoot, but we’re going rapidly grey.
Speaking of Sweden: Go Wings!
* too late
I can’t tell if this is learned or innate behavior. There was a bug on the floor in the anteroom of Nora’s school when I picked her up today. It was an interesting bug looking like a cross between a bee and an ant. So I drew her attention to it to show her the interesting looking bug, the strange pincer-looking things on the head, the wings, the large thorax, etc. She walked over, looked thoughtfully at it for a moment and then stomped on it.
Actually, she stomped near it (her aim isn’t great) and then I snatched her up allowing the bug to make its escape.
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I am always a big sucker for Nora’s concentrating face so here’s one more playground picture from yesterday. We’re not sure what this contraption is that Nora is standing in and Salome is standing next to (in what is supposed to be water). They appear to be working out how to steer it, though –which even I can see is a terribly interesting question.
I suspect the basic question is “can this device be made to bring us back to the slide?”
Nora’s school was closed to children today (you’d do it if you could, admit it) so I got to spend the day with her (you’d do it if you could, admit it). The day started out in Livonia having lunch with Granny, had a small accident on her dining room carpet (sorry, mom); and getting Nora’s first ever self-adhesive bandage (she was a trouper; took a knee-first spill on the pavement, cut her knee open, and her entire response was “uh oh!”).
I have no photographs of that part of the day.
The day ended at the annual end of school year grad student picnic. While the faculty were off discussing whether we were worth continuing to feed, we grad students gorged ourselves on burgers & dogs (both flesh and non-flesh varieties) and various yummies. Nora had a terrific time running around while eating (a dream come true), playing on the slide, falling and *literally* biting loose a chunk of rubber playground surface (again, a trouper), and very nearly interacting with her age-appropriate potential friend Salome.
I have many, many photographs of this part of the day. Some of them are here:
It turns out that playground slides are no longer made out of metal. Instead they are made of some plastic-like substance (polyester?) which, whatever it is, is being used incorrectly in this application. I guess the idea is to save children the horror of scorching their bums on a hot, metal slide in the middle of the summer. I’m a survivor of such a scorching and I freely admit that it was awful; but it happened once, taught me a lesson, and was far less bizarre and unpleasant than getting shocked EVERY TIME you go down the slide.
These plastic slides generate upwards of 25,000 volts as one slides down (check out the way Nora’s hair stands up in the first slide picture). Nora and I were painfully shocked today, Salome and her mom shared what looked like an extremely unpleasant jolt and children with cochlear implants risk having them zapped and destroyed. Plastic slides are a bigger problem than the non-existent problem they don’t solve.
We really need to get Nora a metal slide and a set of lawn darts.
Nora (and her mom) got to play in a bouncy castle at cousin Kacie’s 1st birthday party on Saturday. She wasn’t entirely sure about it at first, but she definitely warmed up (enough that it was hard to get her out).
Nora’s school had “wacky hair day” today and she ended up with little pig tails. They don’t really work in these pictures, but they’re awfully cute in person.
