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.
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).
She’ll never get to meet him, alas, but one trait Nora shares with her Grandad McGowan is being the life of the party. At 27 months old she already has an easy charm and a playfulness that remind me very much of my old dad. Yesterday she and I went out to lunch with her Granny to a lovely little local Livonia place called “Big Boy” where, indeed, the boys tend to be quite large.
Nora decided the table tent advertising breakfast specials was, in reality, her crown. She put it on the moment the waiter drew our attention to it and had to be coaxed and cajoled into relinquishing* it at the end of the meal. Two things really struck me about this (1) she knew she was being silly but (2) she was totally nonchalant about it: didn’t fuss with the hat, never took it off, never pointed at it or anything. She just put it on and carried about her business. But don’t take my word for it, I bring you evidence:
* as an aside, do you notice how “relinquish” is pronounced as if there were an ‘ing’ in the middle of it? I’ll bet it’s hard for you even to say it with a normal ‘n’ sound (try it, I’ll wait). Someday I’ll explain to Nora why this is and she’ll want to be ANYWHERE else in the entire world hearing about ANYTHING else on ANY other subject. Oh well, kiddo, I had to put up with Irish dancing lessons and a Dad who put stuff on his head. Suck it up.
Nora’s fever seems to have broken finally and she’s out with her Papa and Baba today having breakfast at Angelo’s and then heading to the Ann Arbor Hands On Museum for a bit of fun. It’s fantastic to see her healthy-like again.
Faithful dog Puggy stayed home with me to help with my research. Here we see him working on a literature review. Click to zoom, of course.
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).
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.
Uncle Brian came over today to help us install (he did most of the work) a new 3-handle shower valve, taps, showerhead, etc. Goodbye leaky faucet and shower powerful enough to tear an unsuspecting guest’s skin off (sorry, Jill); hello, smooth operating taps made of modern, maintainable components (I once repaired the previous (long-since discontinued) handles by wrapping the valve stems tightly with aluminum foil and then banging the porcelain cross handles on with a rubber mallet).
Anyway, Nora was very excited to have Uncle Brian over for breakfast and when he went upstairs and she heard the shower come on she matter-of-factly announced that “uncle brian clothes off. uncle brian clothes off, mommy. uncle brian clothes off!” This, presumably, was a warning.
Amazingly, our one day home renovation project involving plumbing, minor carpentry, and tile modifications took us … one day! Honestly, the hardest part of the entire project was the decision to reuse our vintage, original tub spout.
We took Nora to another free Rackham students with kids event this Saturday: a free morning of bouncing at the Xtreme bounce zone. It’s basically a giant warehouse with a padded floor and 6 or 7 giant bouncy things (bouncy castles, bouncy obstacle courses, bouncy slides) it was bouncy boot camp for a little bouncy army (including a special bouncy castle just for toddlers and babies). Fantastic fun and worth many times the price we paid to get in.
The best part, though, was Nora getting to see nearly every little kid she’s ever expressed an interest in (Harper, Kacie, and Samantha’s absences were duly noted): Salomé, Oda, Pei Pei, Isobel, Anja. It was really wonderful. At one point Nora saw Pei Pei just as Pei Pei saw Nora so they screamed each other’s names, ran at each other, shared a crashing hug, and then squealed and ran off to attack the bouncy obstacle course.
