Nora Evelyn

There are few things I consider a greater waste of time and resources than lawn maintenance. I haven’t gotten around to a better solution yet, though, so every once in a while I’m forced to break out the old CMM1000 electric mower, get it working again, and mow all of the various plants to a more or less uniform height. This month, Nora decided to help but I’m not a big fan of rushing to the emergency room so I let her help by being carried around the yard and giving me directions.

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 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.

This park is pretty phenomenal –the wet and dry parts were each probably the best such play spaces Nora’s ever been to. All the elders in attendance were jealous that these facilities weren’t around when we were kids (of course, we got to play with actual Lawn Darts so it wasn’t all bad).

We started the day on the wet part. Played until her tiny lips were nice and blue, toweled off for climbing and swinging fun, switched back into swimsuit for more water (is anything more pleasant than putting a wet swimsuit back on? ), and then it was off to Buddy’s Pizza where Granny treated us all to dinner. All in all a pretty spectacular day and it took at least another day and a half for Nora to calm down afterwards.

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]

Nora came to Northside school Tuesday night to help us vote and then to help us play on the playground. Respect for the integrity of the voting process prevented photography of the countless hordes inside the gym (there were 4 of us who weren’t working there if you count Nora), but here are some photos of the celebratory afterplaying.

It’s important to engage your children on an intellectual level. As such, we are strong believers in serious, structured, goal-oriented play. It’s essential to establish a goal for each play session and to keep to the agenda. Speaking of the agenda, it’s also of fundamental importance that one set onset and offset times for each play session and keep rigorously to the schedule. Children need structure to feel loved.

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. ;)