Nora this week got a package in the mail from her friend Salomé. The package turned out to contain our new Bolivian friend “New Baby.” Nora’s creative streak with names continues! Then on Thursday afternoon Nora and Salomé shared a fantastic conversation via Skype. Frankly, I was skeptical that two toddlers could have an engaging video chat but it was really fun and lasted about half an hour.
Last weekend we took Nora to a nearby spray park (a normal park, no admission, with giant metal sculptures that spray water on you — you’ll see). I’m going to put up a massive post with tons of pictures later today but for now I hope you’ll enjoy this video we shot of Nora realizing why it was, exactly, that she was wearing her bathing suit.
Nora’s pal Salomé has been mentioned once or twice here in the past but has taken an understandably less visible role since moving so far away we can’t even see the same stars. She hasn’t forgotten her friend Nora, though, as evidenced by this wonderful postcard that showed up at the blue house this week (click for alpacas).
This is not the first mail Nora has ever received, but it *is* the first ever to be written by a friend. It is also definitely the first to feature potatoes on the postage.
Just over a month ago (before Nora’s first haircut which we still haven’t told you about), Jen went to a conference in Lexington, Kentucky and Nora and I had to muddle through a week without her. Here are some shots I took during a visit to Granny’s one lazy Sunday afternoon in June.
We went to Papa and Baba’s house back on June 13th to help celebrate Uncle Eric’s birthday (which he shares with United States flag day). Here are some photos of the girls playing.
Nora’s Aunt Colleen, cousin Beth, Nora, and I went to the zoo last Friday and had a blast. She particularly enjoyed the penguins and the train, was freaked out by the size of the tigers, and spent the entire day successfully dry in big girl pants.
Our friends Susan and Jordan came over Thursday night for dinner and some very important musical improvisation time. “It’s like STOMP! without having to stand up”, raves one reviewer (me).
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.
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.