Nora’s Aunt Shannon and Uncle Brian gave her this awesome fairy (princess?) dress for her birthday. Here’s the jumpy video we caught of the first moments after putting it on. Nora thinks it is a butterfly dress and who are we to correct her? :)
Since we were in Evanston for Halloween this year, one of Jill’s friends told us about a fun activity aimed at the small set: the Fairy Tale Trail. Basically they divide up an enormous room into nine smaller rooms, each with a different theme: Alice in Wonderland, the Three Bears, the Little Mermaid, Jungle Book, etc. Each room had murals all over the walls, theme-related toys, and big people dressed in character. Nora loved it.
There is nothing I can say to make these pictures funnier than they are on their own. Enjoy!
Nora and Jen were playing with pony tails and, apparently, decided that Nora needed exactly 3. The result is some delightfully silly hair but, I think you’ll agree, Nora looks far too grown up in these pictures! Where did our little baby go? Or, to steal a lyric from the second worst song in an otherwise fun musical*, I don’t remember growing older. When did she?
The worst song is the rarely-performed “Now I have Everything” by that radical rascal Perchik, that crazy student who started all the trouble.
Not only did we enjoy the company of great friends and a Great Lake in Evanston but Nora’s Great Aunts came up from Indiana to spend the evening with us on Halloween. We had a lovely stroll, an enjoyable dinner, and then the playful acrobatic performance of one Nora E. McGowan to warm us on what was otherwise a somewhat chilly evening. Thanks for joining us, Marge and Ginny, and we’ll see you this weekend for Thanksgiving. :)
Nora adored Lake Michigan and had much to say about the water, the boats, the sky, Chicago’s skyline, etc. Here she is enjoying the view near Northwestern’s campus.
This post is wildly overdue (what can I say? If graduate school were easy all socially-awkward lunatics would do it). We headed out to Chicago on the train a few weeks ago with this crazy, romantic notion that it is possible to travel within the United States as if it were a modern, civilized country with a maintained infrastructure and an understanding that sometimes people with luggage may want to get from one large, urban center to another without driving a car. This is unrealistic and would have resulted in a terrible mess of a trip were it not for the timely rescue of our great friends Fred & Jill.
They met us at Union Station, fed us, entertained us, loaned us Fred’s car for the weekend (!), played with Nora, came (along with our friends Peter and Leah) out to Evanston several times to play with us, and finally Fred saw us back to Union Station (carrying Nora’s car seat on his head) for our trip home. There is a tremendous joy and beauty in the world and much of it comes from friends like these.
Nora had some words she wanted to type. She does this a lot lately. She climbs up in one of our laps, asks to type, and then tells us the word. We tell her what letter to type (except for Nora, she knows those letters on her own) she finds it, presses it, celebrates, and moves on. It’s incredibly fun (and she types slightly faster than one of my friends who is a professor).
jisoo
nora
daddy
nokina
nora
nokina
bike
book
mouse
mason
measuring tape
Jisoo, Nokina and Mason are friends from school. My poor measuring tape is one of her favorite toys.
We’re very far behind on blog posts and we’re going to try to right that condition a little bit today and tomorrow. Here is a pair of shots of Nora loving life in a giant bed all to herself in the hotel in Evanston.
One of the things we did on our recent trip to Chicago was visit the Museum of Science and Industry. There was a LOT going on there, most of it over Nora’s head (literally!), but there were a few things she enjoyed:
