Nora Evelyn

July & August may be unbearably hot and humid. December onward may be bone-chillingly cold. But in-between them, every year, comes the best reason I know of to own teeth. Cider mill time! (aka Autumn).

We took Nora to the Dexter cider mill and great fun was had by all (including the bees). Then we went to a quiet spot we know by the river to sit on a bench, watch the water, and hang upside down from playground equipment while making sugar-fueled monkey noises. A more bucolic scene you couldn’t reasonably wish for.

We do apologize for the radio silence here at RubberDucky.org of late. As I believe I’ve mentioned before, graduate school is hard. Here are some photos of Nora helping me bake cookies.

It was the best of fruits, it was the worst of fruits. This first picture is a photograph of Jennie a couple of years ago holding a tomato her parents had grown.

This second picture is Nora a couple of days ago holding a tomato her grandparents grew.

I definitely see a strong family resemblance in the tomatoes.

One of Nora’s favorite things right now (and we’ll love every second of it while it lasts) is to be helpful around the house. Last night she helped me make dinner (cornbread, steamed green beans, and sandwiches). We cut and scraped the kernels off some leftover grilled corn from Sunday’s dinner and followed this recipe modified from Mark Bittman:

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 cups medium-grind cornmeal
1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder (no aluminum)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
kernels from 2 ears of grilled corn
2 eggs
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1 1/4 cups milk
1 tsp vanilla

Method

1. put the butter in a 10″ cast iron skillet, stick it in the oven, and preheat to 375ºF (190ºC)
2. combine the dry stuff
3. combine the wet stuff in a separate bowl (yes, this includes the sugar and corn)
4. combine wet and dry gingerly and without too much fuss about lumps
5. bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown and delicious

Photos

Last Saturday, after picking up our veggies, Nora took a bit of a tumble off a low wall on her way to see the big green foot. She still wanted the picture taken, though, so here’s what Nora looks like when she’s crying (and a picture of some comparatively happy cherry tomatoes).

p.s. 5 minutes later she was laughing and playing and chasing a little girl named Morgan around a tree.

Nora was eating cheese and crackers today while I made her lunch. She picked up one of the crackers, snapped it in half along the diagonal, and exclaimed, “daddy! 2 triangles!” and made me go look at them. I showed her the right angles and tried to explain a little bit about the lengths of the three sides. I appreciate that she doesn’t get a lot of this stuff, but knowledge is cumulative and has to start somewhere. It was pretty cool.

So later we’re eating our lunches and she gets this excited look again and says, “The top of the cup is a circle!” and showed me with her fingers by tracing a circle in the air parallel to the top of the cup. I was blown away. I explained that if you take the intersecting plane out of parallel with the table top then the slice it makes in the cup is an ellipse rather than a circle. She nodded and said, “and the cup has MILK!” and then she poured the milk all over herself.

We haven’t done an eating post in a while, so here’s a shot of Nora enjoying some macaroni and cheese and an embarrassing amount of branding. It’s like she’s a little NASCAR with all the logos and ads. [this space for rent]

These cupcake pictures (surely by now you know you need to click, yes?) are from yesterday (July 10^th) but never got posted. Nora’s doing a cool thing lately with references to time. She’ll say “yesterday” to mean any time prior to today and “last night” apparently means any time prior to today but I remember that it was at night. This morning she told me that “yesterday” she and her mommy went to meet Farmer Jeff to get vegetables (this happened 2 weeks ago) and yesterday (earlier this week) she told us that “last night” she’d seen a friend of ours eating dinner at a restaurant (friend has been on another continent for months).

Sadly, as she’s half Irish this may be as far as her conceptualization of the passage of time ever advances. ;)

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!

Red Robin: carnivores and herbivores haven’t dined alongside one another this happily since the late Cretaceous period.