Nora Evelyn

You’ll never guess where Nora went on vacation last week. Here’s a hint:

Nora and I visited the Matthaei Botanical Gardens during spring break for a little no-cost fun. We learned that chocolate, bananas, and olives comes from trees and that vanilla comes from a flower. We tried very hard to fall into two separate koi ponds. We ate a picnic lunch in the lobby. We pretended to touch some cacti. We stomped on a translucent walkway. And we had a lovely pretend tea party at which, Nora informed me, her old friend Salomé was present. It was certainly nice to pretend to see Salomé again. It’s amazing how big we imagine her to have gotten.

[ as always, be sure to click on pictures ]

A couple weeks ago, Kevin and I had eye doctor appointments. Nora was with us for a few minutes, until Grandma came to take her to breakfast. Nora was nervous, because she thought she might get a shot (having recently had just such an experience at the pediatrician’s office) but all was well once she got a ride in the chair:

Also, this picture is from Nora’s 39-month-a-versary.

It’s taken nearly 4 years and a fairly massive investment of time, affection, and research dollars, but we finally have the fully autonomous self-regulating automatic cheese grater* we’ve always wanted.

* note: cheese grater is not fully autonomous, particularly self-regulating, or remotely automatic.

This is how Nora felt about Christmas this year. I hope your solstice-proximal holiday celebrations contained this much joy and excitement for you.

Nora had her second (and, as it happens, final) third birthday party tonight at her Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Many thanks to everyone (at both parties) for the cards and presents and excellent company and birthday wishes! This has been quite a week and we’re not sure how Nora is going to cope with the return to non-holiday & non-birthday life! Just look at the way the joy is positively dripping off her in the movie, though. She’s one very happy little girl and we’re two unbelievably lucky (and happy) parents.

Here is Nora’s last monthaversary post before turning 3. Three. She’s going to be THREE years old the end of this month.

crazy.

These pictures were taken way back on September 26th. It was our 12th wedding anniversary (seriously) and Nora was exactly 2 years and 10 months old (seriously!). Here she demonstrates the kind of gentle, supportive parenting skills we’ve modelled for her by strangling her doll and then giggling uncontrollably about it.

We drove out to Dearborn to pick Jen up from a conference and have dinner with Uncle Eric but, as you can see, he was on duty and was too busy serving and protecting to take a dinner break (even for Nora). In these photos she’s 2 years and 9 months old. It’s been about two years since I last baked black and white cookies!

It’s highly likely that this will turn out to have been a mistake, but when Nora found a cape recently (a lightly-used breast feeding cover up thingy) and started wearing it to school and insisting that we and others call her “super nora” we did nothing to discourage it. In fact, there may have been a certain amount of picking her up and running around with her so she could fly. It’s entirely fair to interpret this behavior as having encouraged her.

Happy 2²⁄₃ birthday, Nora. You are, indeed, quite super.