Nora Evelyn McGowan

Nora celebrated her 27 month-a-versary rock star style; in the emergency room. She’s okay, don’t worry, but we finally had our first marginally inappropriate visit to the emergency room where she was diagnosed with a (wait for it) cold (Respiratory Syncytial Virus). In our defense, her breathing was pretty scary, she was physically ill, and her fever was 102.1 before we bundled her up and headed to our friendly neighborhood world renowned level 1 trauma center (complete with helipad). Naturally, she immediately transformed into her normal playful, friendly, happy self when the medical personnel appeared. They administered motrin, talked to us in soothing voices, and sent us home at midnight.

Nora spent today tired, groggy, miserable, and in her jammies. Here she is trying to ship herself somewhere healthier.

On Tuesday we attended a fantastic event at the University for students who are also parents. There were hordes of happy kids, a corresponding number of nerdy parents, a clown, a station for making masks, a station for making wands, an unbelievably ill-advised baby pool filled with water and ducks, and free food. What’s not to love? It was also Nora’s twenty six monthaversary and her first (known) consumption of celery that hadn’t been stir fried.

Many thanks to the fine folks at Rackham and University Unions (and whomever else was involved) for a great evening of not being in our living room.

Being as today is both Thanksgiving (U.S.A.) and Nora’s Birthday (Universal), Nora’s Papa & Baba were gracious enough to let us turn their fabulous Thanksgiving dinner into a 2 year old’s birthday party. Many thanks to Papa & Baba Kusnir, Granny McGowan, Aunt Christine & Cousin Kacie, and Kacie’s grandparents. It was just too bad Uncle Eric couldn’t be there (but someone has to keep Thanksgiving safe).

Nora enjoyed her cake, got to open a bunch of great presents, made a good show of opening the cards and looking at them first, had great fun with her cousin Kacie, and used a grown-up potty chair for the first time. It was a big night! Everyone’s happy & exhausted.

Good night.

(more…)

It’s been another year and Jen and I have now been married for 11 years (though I think we’ve aged ten in the last two) and Nora is 22 months old today. Here’s a shot of Nora this evening during towel time. She says “bunny bounce!” at the end of her bath then pulls the plug, puts her duckies up on the edge, puts her shampoo back in its cup and stands up with her hands in the air repeating “bunny bounce!”.

Today is Nora’s 21 monthaversary! She’s been 7 months old 3 times now; she’s one month more than 4 times as old as a 5 month old; she’s 3 months shy of her second birthday; ≤ 30 months ago she started to exist; she has 16 years and 3 months before she has to move out (just checking to see if anyone reads this far into the sentence).

Happy Anniversary, Nora! We celebrated by going out for pancakes with Grandma & Papa. I also celebrated by designing a future playtime activity wherein we bake a bunch of cookies together, measure their circumferences, measure their diameters and then find the ratio of circumference:diameter for each cookie. I call it “baking a pi” (baking, experimentation, the scientific method, measurement, ratios, pi). But this geekiness is all in her future; today playtime looks like this:

I think Nora might be tired of our incessant picture-taking:

It’s impossible for us to believe, but Nora celebrated her 19 monthaversary today. To celebrate we all went out to dinner and Nora got to use a big girl cup with no sippy top. Our crummy camera missed the adorable moment of Nora doing “cheers” with her Mom. She lifted her cup, held it out toward Jen’s, called out ‘cheers!’ very clearly, clinked cups and then did this:

We fed her anyway. :)

As of this morning Nora’s been with us for 18 (mostly) beautiful months. It seems like only yesterday she was born but we can’t remember what life was like before she got here. It also seems like yesterday that any of us got any sleep because it was yesterday when any of us got any sleep! For reasons that remain somewhat mysterious (I’m blaming precocious 2 year molars) Nora hosted an all night thumping and screaming rave in her crib last night.

Here’s a surprisingly spry little bean eating breakfast from a plate (and not throwing the plate to the floor). She also climbs up into her own highchair now and tries to buckle herself in, but I feel like photographing or filming this behavior would tacitly condone it. Anyway, it’s important to accessorize for the most important meal of the day:

Happy eighteenmonthaversary, Nora! We’re utterly exhausted by you but wouldn’t have it any other way.