Nora Evelyn

Our friends Hans, Tricia, Keller, and Simone recently visited Mickey Mouse down in Orlando and brought Nora back this unbelievably awesome pair of mouse ears. Thanks, Masings!

Nora celebrated her 27 month-a-versary rock star style; in the emergency room. She’s okay, don’t worry, but we finally had our first marginally inappropriate visit to the emergency room where she was diagnosed with a (wait for it) cold (Respiratory Syncytial Virus). In our defense, her breathing was pretty scary, she was physically ill, and her fever was 102.1 before we bundled her up and headed to our friendly neighborhood world renowned level 1 trauma center (complete with helipad). Naturally, she immediately transformed into her normal playful, friendly, happy self when the medical personnel appeared. They administered motrin, talked to us in soothing voices, and sent us home at midnight.

Nora spent today tired, groggy, miserable, and in her jammies. Here she is trying to ship herself somewhere healthier.

Poor Pug. No dog wants or needs a toddler at the other end of his purple leash. Particularly not a lunatoddler (lunatic + toddler = Nora).

Nora got to meet her newborn cousin Briahna last Saturday when we drove out to Shannon and Uncle Brian’s house. New babies are cool, sure, but if you’re a toddler nothing tops a padded ottoman that rocks (particularly when the baby is asleep).

On Saturday morning Nora was showing off for our new friend Cameron and decided to put herself in the oven of her little kitchen. This seemed a modest proposal (and, anyway, she is half Irish) so we helped. Ruggles even got into the fun in what I can only assume is meant to be a particularly flamboyant chef’s hat.

The last time Nora attended a recruitment dinner at Sally & Rich Thomason’s house she was quite a bit smaller and rather less mobile. Now it’s two years on and she’s long since abandoned the luggable carseat bucket in favor of chinese checkers and bear riding. If you’re considering graduate school in linguistics I heartily recommend applying to Michigan if only to attend this chili dinner; it’s great fun.

I think this is a first here on rubberducky.org; a completely second-hand Nora anecdote. Jen and I went to a grown-ups dinner with the maternal family last Saturday so Nora spent the evening hanging at Granny’s house (Granny is currently pronounced [wIni] like Mr. The Pooh). It’s impossible to determine which one of them had more fun. Nora was certainly the more crazy-happy of the two when we came back to get her, but what Granny’s joy lacked for early intensity it has more than made up in longevity.

At some point during the evening’s festivities, my sister Colleen stopped by to play and relates the following story. They were sitting on the floor in Granny’s sewing room (what, you don’t have a sewing room?) sorting spools of thread on a large spool rack thing and Nora was counting them. Nora counted out 10 of them and Colleen said, “Nora, you’re only two years old. You’re not supposed to be able to count this high”. Nora paused, looked up into her eyes, and said, “eleven”.

That’s my girl! The following picture is unrelated but I love it.

Nora has recently discovered that my name is `Kevin’ and she thinks this is absolutely hilarious. We’ve been trying to explain to her that she’s special and gets to call me `daddy’ and no one else in the entire world gets to do that. The unintended consequence of this is that now Nora has taken to saying “Daddy is special” which is not exactly what I was going for.

Anyway, here’s a photo of Nora in the lab with me today helping me set up the first experiment for my dissertation research.

Here on the tropical peninsula of Michigan we don’t get quite as much snow as our friends in wintery places like Maryland or Virginia, but we do get some. Here we find Nora frolicking in the thigh-deep snow outside the purple house.

I meant to post this over a week ago, sorry. Nora made a mask at the free grad students with kids thing. It had pink antennae, a cool blue nose, and, well, you look at it.