Nora Evelyn

I had a terrible, terrible run in (literally) with a box fan when I was a young child. The scars have mostly healed from my stomach but I’ll never forget how frightening it was or how much it hurt. To that end, we took Nora to the doggie grocery store with us today and purchased the quietest fan they had that her fingers couldn’t fit in to. She, as you’ll see, absolutely loves the fan. Unfortunately, the finger test has given her some rather unfortunate ideas about how one interacts with fans. This trickin’, as me Granny would say, will end in cryin’.

the editorial board here at rubberducky.org would like to take a moment away from our normal parenting activities to relate a message to all of the spammers like Trainum34@ymail.com who are constantly trying to get us to link to their crappy ad sites. We’ve never once been fooled by you people and we never will. Okay? It’s particularly easy to not be fooled when you say:

Children are so precious and only should be taken care of in that way! Your blog has given me some great ideas, so thank you and please keep it going!

in response to a blog post about the time we accidentally let Nora climb up on the back of the couch and dive into the pack-n-play. Yes, precisely the manner in which our precious children should find themselves cared for — we’re so proud.

Continuing the nap theme, here’s a picture of Nora getting comfy on the bottom step of our staircase. She was explaining to us as clearly as she could that she was not tired, did not need a nap, and did not want to go upstairs. As you can see, her argument was undercut, somewhat, by her behavior.

Now that we’re clearing out the backlog of posts that never happened (sorry), here’s a couple of cute pictures Jen took of Nora and me* taking a nap.

*yes, it’s me. It isn’t I. There’s a big part of me that wishes I could get away with saying meself but I can’t. Not with this phonology.

I have been remiss! I have somehow managed to post photos from Nora & Salomé’s last ever playdate without posting anything at all either from their penultimate playdate or from Salomé’s 3rd birthday party. I shall right half this wrong now. Sorry, Nora, up until now your babybook has been scrupulously kept in chronological order. I have no excuse but to say that if getting a PhD were easy everyone would be doing it (actually, no, most people have a decent amount of sense about such things).

Anyway.. . Jungle Java is an utterly amazing if slightly filthy crawling, swinging, falling, jumping, sliding, running padded monkey bars on steroids extravaganza (yes, extravaganza!). Nora, Salomé, Salomé’s mom Anna, and her dad Raomir and I all piled into their car (with, of course, all requisite and properly installed safety equipment in use) and headed out for a morning of rainy day play (way back on May 11th).

Nora and Salomé were somewhat reluctant at first and believed they needed our help but eventually realized that grown-ups can only hold you back when there’s proper climbing up and falling off of things to get done.

your SAT vocabulary words for today are: remiss, penultimate, scrupulously, chronological, conspicuously, aureate, and, of course, extravaganza. So update those index cards and don’t forget to use these new words in a sentence (though probably not all in one sentence —that would be conspicuously aureate).

Our little family met up this afternoon with our friends Anna and Salomé for a walk, snack (thanks, Anna) and playtime at the peony garden down at the Nichols Arboretum. When Nora and Salomé saw each other approaching the garden they ran away from their respective parents calling out each other’s names and ultimately meeting in an adorably awkward little series of hugs.

Salomé and her family are, crushingly, done living in Ann Arbor now so this was the last of our little play dates together. Living in a college town means getting to meet and know incredible, amazing, unbelievably smart people who then move on. Life is hard, boo hoo, walk it off.

It was insanely hot but fantastic company and a lovely setting can make up even for small inconveniences like peony bushes bursting into flames as you walk by them and ducks slathering one another with orange sauce as they slowly bake in their feathers. We let the girls escape the blistering nastiness of the day by frolicking in the Huron River. It was lovely and cool and provided the unexpected entertainment of watching, in surprisingly slow, stately succession, a lifejacket, floating cushion, hat, paddle, beer can, water bottle, something unidentifiable, and then 2 sadly soggy looking people floating aimlessly in a paddleless canoe. It’s like a simile (or maybe it’s a metaphor).

Nora was 30 months old today. Happy 2.5th birthday, little one.

p.s. even if you’ve never clicked on a picture before in your life –even if your personal belief system includes an interdiction against picture clicking– click the first image and check out those little faces. *sniff* walk it off.

An actual conversation in our house this morning:

Me: Nora, what would you like for breakfast this morning?
Nora: Chocolate!
Me: We almost never eat chocolate for breakfast, Nora. Would you like some cereal?
Nora: Cookies!
Me: Sorry, kiddo. No cookies.
Nora: Ice cream!
Me: We ate it all up last night, remember? Does Nora want some yogurt for breakfast?
Nora: Bagel!
Me: How about some cheese and banana?
Nora: Mommy, Nora want chocolate.

The picture below is absolutely unrelated to the above conversation. She actually ate peas and macaroni and cheese for breakfast. Yum!

She’s 30 months old now and, really, we’ve totally intended to buy her a bed all this time but you know how it is. What with having my bottlecap collection to organize, Jen’s cribbage league, watching reruns of The West Wing on DVD, and teaching ourselves to juggle we’ve just not had the time to get out to a store. Besides, even if she had a beautiful big girl bed all her own with an organic cotton mattress and adorable cartoon animal sheets she’d probably just climb out of it and fall asleep on the floor in the hallway.

Builds character.

Here are a pair of videos shot outside Papa & Baba’s house in Livonia. Video one is entitled, “Biking is hard” and shows our hero in the denial and bargaining stages of cycling. Video two is entitled, “successful cyclist”. It seems the hard part of biking, for Nora, is remembering only ever to push with one leg at a time. Figuring this out and helping her alternate with her legs has made all the difference. Do please note the understated and, to my ears, very sweet, “my did it!” 14 seconds in to video 2.

Next up: scooting along on 2 wheels with no pedals. Prep the band-aids and neosporin; this one’s going to sting a little.

It would be a fair criticism to say that this is lit a little like the most recent Star Trek film. But that film didn’t feature any stunts as fantastic as this one.