Jen and I went to the eye doctor for our annual check-ups and all Nora got was a morning of pure joy hanging with Papa & Baba and these awesome sunglasses. Oh! and this is what a Nora looks like when it reaches 28 months of age.
Yesterday Nora and I refilled the bird feeders for the second time this season. After she’d carefully opened the container, helped me pour in the seed, and reclosed the lid I thought to take a picture.
She then sat perfectly still with me waiting for a black capped chickadee to stop dithering on a branch two meters from the feeder and eat some seed. She waited very patiently for about 3 minutes and then ran waving her arms and screaming “AHHHHHH!!!!!” toward the feeder at exactly the moment the chickadee had made up its mind the coast was clear. I doubt we’ll be seeing that particular chickadee back at our house any time soon.
update: when we got home from school today Nora yelled “birdie came back, daddy!” and, indeed, there was a black capped chickadee eating at the feeder which then promptly flew away, “uh oh! uh oh, daddy, chickadee go bye bye”. Did she correctly identify the bird or did she just get lucky? Either way I’m totally impressed.
Nothing terribly exciting today, just a normal shot of Jen and Nora engaged in one of Nora’s favorite activities: reading a book. In this case it’s “Hop on Pop!”. Her legs look a little naked because she’s wearing big girl pants and has left her jeans off for easier potty visiting. She spent 4 hours in her big girl pants (before taking them off to take a nap) with no accidents and no close calls. Wait. Did I say there was nothing exciting today? I lied.
On Thursday Nora and I went out in the unseasonably wonderful weather to play with bubbles and wait for her mom to walk home from work. Is there more fun anywhere? No. No, there is not.
I’ve been pretty sick these last two days so I cancelled all of my appointments for today and Jen and Nora graciously let me sleep in. The absence of a second adult during the morning routine understandably makes a few things rather more difficult. Getting Nora and all of her gear out and into the car, for example, really requires either two people or two trips (and sometimes, largely on Nora’s whim, both).
Jen left Nora playing inside the house while she schlepped the luggage to the car. Unfortunately, Nora cannot abide an open door and so slammed it dutifully shut. This would have been fine except she also climbed up on the bench next to the door and managed to throw the deadbolt and lock her mother out. So now Jen’s locked outside, Nora’s locked inside, and I’m upstairs asleep with a fever and NyQuil wrestling for control of my brain.
Jen tried to talk our frightened toddler through unlocking the door while Nora ran back and forth between the front window (where she could see her mom) and the front door (where she could hear her). Jen banged on the door, called our house phone, called my cell phone, and tried again to talk Nora through unlocking the door. I slept peacefully through all of this. What finally did awaken me was Nora’s tiny voice when she remembered I was upstairs and figured I could probably fix things:
Help! Daddy! Help! Daddy, keys! Door, Daddy! Help!
She hadn’t tried to unlock the door because, as she understands it, locked doors are opened with keys! Her voice woke me pretty much immediately, I went down and let Jennie in, and I crawled back to bed. When Jen & Nora got to baby school, Nora’s teacher gave us a copy of Alfie Gets In First in which pretty much the exact same thing happens.
The first annual Purple House Pi Day celebration was called on account of illness yesterday. Today, though, everyone is feeling better and we’re all decidedly in the mood for pi. So here’s how the new tradition works:
We got 79.5cm circumference and 25.3cm diameter or a ratio of 3.142292. Not bad for our first try!
Nora and Kacie got to play together at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum on Saturday (can you tell we love this place?). They were excited to see each other and mostly had fun but sharing is hard when you’re 2 and being cousins doesn’t magically make it any easier.
Ultimately I think a grand time was had by all (as usual) and both girls went home happy and exhausted.
Nora has a cape she’ll occasionally wear while playing dressup. Recently she’s taken to wearing this cape and running around the house yelling “super nora!” while it flows behind her.
Last night Nora went to have dinner at Salomé’s house (Anna and Raomir live there too). The food was amazing and Nora had a ball. At times the ball was enormous and bouncy, at other times it was small and part of a game, and at still other times it was quite formal and required a gown. Good Great times.
Nora’s Granny made both of these dresses out of some scraps left over from other projects. Nora’s white dress, for example, is made of fabric left-over from Jen’s wedding dress.
The Original Pancake House in Southfield, Michigan has an amazing Apple Pancake (more dessert than breakfast, honestly) and (wait for it) bottomless hot chocolate. Really, really good bottomless hot chocolate with homemade whipped cream. Perhaps more amazingly, there’s been this large, glowing yellow orb floating in the sky lately. I’m a little alarmed about what might have happened to our thick, luxurious layer of permanent cloud cover, but we’ll take this giant yellow hot thing any day (just don’t look directly at it).
Here’s Nora getting some coat help from Papa, using 3 straws to drink her water, and posing under the giant yellow thing (also with Papa).
