Nora Evelyn McGowan

tolerating each other :)

clunis — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:35:29 +0000

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.

supernora!

clunis — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 01:44:30 +0000

Nora has a cape she’ll occasionally wear while playing dressup. Recently she’s taken to wearing this cape and running around the house yelling “super nora!” while it flows behind her.

Dinner at Salomé’s

clunis — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:30:12 +0000

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.

pancakes!

clunis — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:15:08 +0000

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).

nora’s eye view

clunis — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:24:57 +0000

Nora took this photo of Jen yesterday morning. She was pretty proud of herself.

life of the party

clunis — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:34:13 +0000

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.

puggy helps with research

clunis — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:42:10 +0000

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.

RubberDucky, You got yer ears on?

clunis — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:59:01 +0000

Our friends Hans, Tricia, Keller, and Simone recently visited Mickey Mouse down in Orlando and brought Nora back this unbelievably awesome pair of mouse ears. Thanks, Masings!

kid in a box

clunis — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 02:15:10 +0000

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.

Dances with Pug

clunis — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 01:50:18 +0000

Poor Pug. No dog wants or needs a toddler at the other end of his purple leash. Particularly not a lunatoddler (lunatic + toddler = Nora).