Nora's Favorite Books

For months and months, Nora has been grabbing books and forcing her way into our laps to read.   Over the past month or two, though, she has really started participating in the reading experience!

Sixth Anniversary: Bethany Beach, Delaware

To celebrate our sixth wedding anniversary, Billy and I took Nora to Bethany Beach for a few days.  It was so nice to be back at the beach for the first time since 2010, and Nora loved it!  It's hard to believe our wedding was six years ago, but when I think about how much life has changed since then, it sometimes feels like even longer.  Either way, I feel so fortunate to be married to someone whose company I enjoy so much, who helps me become a better version of myself every year, and who makes every day with our daughter a true delight.

Since Nora was recovering from a double ear infection and she gets very overstimulated by new experiences, we thought being at the beach from Sunday through Wednesday worked out perfectly.  Plus, it rained for several days after we left!  Next year we think she will enjoy going for a whole week.

On our first trip down to the beach, she was understandably scared of the water and mostly watched everything going on around her.  On day two, she grew very interested in playing in the sand and sent Billy down to fill her bucket with water repeatedly.  By day three, Nora had gotten comfortable enough with the water that she would run down toward it but wouldn't really try to get in unless we took her out.  Billy also dug a huge hole that day, so she had a great time climbing around in there.

This was our first trip to Bethany Beach, and we liked it a lot.  Our hotel was only a short walk from the beach, which was busy but not too crowded.  We were also a very short drive from the boardwalk, which had enough shops and restaurants to keep us occupied without being crowded.  Our only complaint was that the waves crashed really close to the shore, and that made it a little difficult for small children to play in the water.  Apparently this is a negative by-product of beach restoration attempts.

But enough with the description: here are a sampling of my favorite pictures from the trip!

It's hard to hear her in this clip because of the sound of the ocean, but she is counting out her toys as she moves them in and out of the bucket. (It's *not* hard to hear me.  Sorry.)


A few other funny/interesting tidbits:

• Nora is a bossy beachgoer.  "Daddy sit!" "Mommy come here!" "Mo waduh pease!" "Nononono!" "No Daddy!" "Nora's turn!"
• She tasted the sand and did not like it-- thank goodness.  But saltine crackers apparently taste good when dipped in a bucket of sandy ocean water???
• She is surprisingly cooperative about having sunscreen applied to her body.
• When her teachers discover a poopy diaper on the changing table, they say "Ooooh Nora!"  She has apparently decided this is the thing you say when you undress.  So when I would take off my beach cover up, or Billy would take off his shirt, she would exclaim "Oooooh Mommy!" or "Oooooh Daddy!"  When we figured out what she was doing, it made us laugh so hard.
• At one point there was a little boy named Everett playing a few blankets away.  Billy and I both noticed it, since this is my nephew's name, but we weren't aware that Nora had taken note of him until we were leaving.  She looked over in their direction, waved, and said "Bye Evitt!"  Otherwise, she liked watching other kids play but apparently was not in the mood for making new friends.
• Taking a child who naps once mid-day on a beach vacation works out nicely.  We were able to spend a few hours at the beach in the morning, come back mid-day for lunch and her nap, and then return to the beach for several more hours before we needed to get back and get to dinner.
• Right before we left on the final day she made sure to give me a chance to change a poopy diaper at the beach.  Thank goodness I didn't miss out on that priceless experience!

Prospectus Draft Submitted

I finished the first draft of my prospectus on time!  I completed my last read-through around 9:30 last night and sent it off to my professor.  I actually felt a bit emotional when I hit "send" on the email because I realized that it was the first time I'd submitted any writing since before Nora was born.  Since she was born, I have been plagued by the "I have no idea how I am going to do this" feeling.  Every new stage of the process feels impossible.  But the thing I try to repeat to myself is "I may not be sure I can do it, but I'll keep trying until I'm sure I can't do it."  Since I took on the Katherine Anne Porter job, it has felt increasingly impossible to get "enough" work done on my prospectus.  So even though I may still need to spend several months revising this draft before it is good enough to be filed, it felt really satisfying to get the first draft under my belt.  And since it has been so long since I wrote anything academic, it felt good to finally be able to sit down and get all my ideas down on the page.  Blogging and paper writing may be very different types of writing, but it made me thankful that I've continued writing here.  Since I have attempted to undertake some more thoughtful posts, I do think it has kept me from getting *too* rusty.

So once I hit send, I gave myself a bit of a break until I get feedback from my advisor tomorrow.  I slept great, got Nora off to school, watched a little Netflix, took a nap, met Vickie at her pool, and then picked Nora up when she woke up from her nap to join us for some pooltime.  It was a lovely day that left me feeling a bit recharged and ready to hear whatever my advisor has to say about the draft.  I also realized that I have a lot of fun activities coming up in the next few weeks: my first Orioles game of the season, a day at the DC tennis tournament with Vickie, a concert with friends on my birthday, and then our trip to Oregon.  I will still have to squeeze plenty of work in around these events, but it is a relief to know I'll be doing them with this first draft behind me instead of looming ominously in the future.

When we got home from the pool this afternoon, Oscar was much worse for wear after what I thought was a minor injury this morning.  He went from refusing to come up the stairs to screaming out in pain, so we thought he had slipped a disk in his back like he did when Nora was born.  The vet informs us, however, that he must have done something to tweak his neck, so he's on a steroid that hopefully gets him feeling better soon.  It sure is tough to see your dog in pain and not be able to do much to help. That has put a bit of a damper on my planned relaxing evening with Billy, but I'm still enjoying a hard cider, a little TV, and blog updating while we watch the Orioles.

I also wanted to say thank you to everyone who has helped and encouraged me over the past few days.  Billy, Patti, and Chuck watched Nora for several hours on Saturday so I could work, and knowing she was happily occupied helped me stay focused.  I also appreciate those of you who checked in on me over the course of the weekend to see how I was doing!

The Silencing of Women's Voices

One of the main focuses of my academic work is the way women's voices from the American Modernist period have been silenced.  There are a lot of ways this happens to female writers: the restraints they're working under prevent them from producing work, they have difficulty finding reputable and/or profitable avenues in which to publish the work they do produce, the work they do publish is evaluated by gender-biased standards and is sometimes given limited printing runs as a result... the list goes on and on.

Perhaps most troubling for me are the examples of women who were widely published and well-respected during their lifetimes but who have largely fallen out of print and out of consideration in the intervening years.  These are the women who somehow managed to overcome all the obstacles I named above, who found ways to speak and to be heard, but who could not prevent their words from being subsequently erased.

I can (and will eventually have to) write a lot of words about this silencing and erasure.  But I thought some of you who read along with me here might be interested in what it looks like, materially, to do this type of work.

Several weeks ago I had to request a copy of Kay Boyle's My Next Bride through interlibrary loan because we do not have it in our own holdings at UMd.  It arrived in a box because the book itself-- a first edition printed in 1934-- was falling apart.  I supported it with a pillow the entire time I read it and still could not keep it from falling apart in my hands.

Today, I went to pick up a copy of Mary Hunter Austin's A Woman of Genius.  It was then that I realized we had exactly two-- TWO-- books on the shelves that are written by or specifically about Austin.  In a library that has four bookcases, with six or seven shelves each, shelves devoted to William Faulkner.

I realize that we may have several more books about Austin in the holdings that have been checked out, but as you can see, there was no big gap on the shelf from their absence.  This is one of the most prolific female American writers of the 20th Century, and she has been all but forgotten for everything she published except for The Land of Little Rain.  For me, seeing these two books alone on this shelf felt like getting punched in the gut.

But perhaps I should accept it, instead, as a kick in the ass.  Due to some changes in my advisor's travel schedule, I have 4 days to write the first draft of my prospectus, start to finish.  In other words, I have until Monday to figure out how to articulate what specific research project my dissertation will undertake, how it relates to the current scholarship in my field, and how it will significantly improve upon that scholarship.  Here goes nothing.

4th of July

This year we joined the family of Brian's fiance, Lauren, to celebrate the 4th of July at their annual cookout.  Lauren's parents have always been very warm and friendly to Brian's whole family (us included), and the party was a nice opportunity to get to know the rest of her family better.  They live right on the water in Pasadena, and Nora loved exploring their yard, dock, and swimspa!  Since she was fighting what turned out to be a double ear infection, we brought her home rather than staying to see the fireworks, but we hear that from their house you can see quite a few different displays.  So although we missed that 4th of July staple, we were glad to have a chance to don our red, white, and blue and eat until we were stuffed... in true American fashion!

Odds and Ends

I've been so busy with my looming prospectus deadline that I've fallen behind on sharing pictures of Nora.  Here are a whole bunch of them from the past two or so months!

A few weeks ago Nora's school had a "Super Hero Spirit Day" where you they were supposed to wear their favorite superhero tee shirts.  Nora doesn't have one of those, so I used fabric markers to do one better: a whole Wonder Woman costume!  She happened to have red shoes and the perfect shorts, but I knew she was on board with the project when she picked up her Slinky of Truth for the pictures!

 

We got Nora a kiddie pool when the weather got warm, and it is a much bigger hit this year than it was last summer.  She loves sitting in it and splashing all around, and Billy and I like that putting our feet in the chilly water makes sitting out in the yard with her more bearable.  She loves to be outside no matter how hot it is, but sometimes we get quite sweaty playing with her "ousside."

Billy's cousin Jacelyn's family moved from a townhome into a single family home, so they had us all over for a family cookout last month.  Nora is finally old enough to really play with Cash and Lily (rather than just watching them run around and have fun), but I was still surprised by how much she insisted on participating in the slip 'n slide fun!  Jacelyn and Allen's new house is perfect for summer playtime, so we are glad we got to enjoy this day together as a family.

Nora has two teachers in her classroom, and one of them decided to leave the day care center in order to spend the rest of her summer at home with her little boys.  We were happy she has the opportunity to spend more time with her own children, but I know Nora misses her.  We have had such a good experience with the teachers at this location that we are sure Nora will warm up to her replacement quickly.  I already miss Ms. Candice myself-- in part, because now Nora no longer comes home with these beautiful braids!  She does NOT sit still long enough for me to do this with her hair. : )

While they were visiting family in Delaware, our old friends Erin and Brent from my Calvert County days brought their daughter Julia over to visit us for a day.  This was the first time we've seen them since Julia began walking, so it was fun to see her and Nora interact a lot more.  She was a little weary of Nora's rough-and-tumble ways, but I think they will eventually be great friends!

And finally, one of my friends in the PhD program held her annual backyard cookout, so I took a break from what I've been calling "prospectus purgatory" to do some actual socializing.  Since there are plenty of people who criticize the decision to have a child as a grad student, it was extra nice to be surrounded by the classmates who've always been supportive of my decision.  This was the first time those of us who've had babies since we started in the program were able to get them together to play, and it was a delight for me to see them interact. After two year old Cy taught Nora how to pull ice cubes out of the cooler, she spent the rest of the evening trying to find more single cubes in there.  Though you wouldn't know it by their sizes, my friend Maggie's son Xavier was born almost exactly a year after Nora.  I know the nature of our profession will take all these littles to different parts of the country, but I hope I'll get to follow their development online throughout the years.  They have a special place in my heart as Nora's fellow Tiny Terrapins!