Nora, Girl About Town

Here are some of my favorite photos from the past few months, which also do a pretty good job of capturing what we've been up to this Spring and Summer.

Nora on Opening Day of baseball, supporting Team Vowels:

Reading with Anne-Marie and Julian:

Easter fun with Cash and Lily:

Cuddling with Daddy:

First trip to the movie theatre-- she thought Rio 2 was all right but she REALLY liked movie theatre popcorn and Junior Mints.

Mother's Day 2014

Hanging out with Uncle Brian:

Throwing rocks at Quiet Waters Park:

Riding the carousel with Aunt Vickie at the Bowie Baysox game (wearing her hat in the style of All the Way May):

I assume this is what everyone means when they say they had a "dinner party":

Butterfly face painting from Hamden's HonFest:

Her best school friend Layla's birthday party:

Lunch and duck feeding at Friendly Farms with Gram and Pop:

Boat tour through the Annapolis Harbor:

Fourth of July at Aunt Nancy's with Aunt Vickie:

Reading with Aunt Vickie: 

More reading for Julian and Nora (sorry kids, your moms met in a literature MA program):

When Nora had her eyes checked by our pediatrician's pediatric vision scanner at her 30 month well visit, we discovered that her left eye failed the test.  A visit to the ophthalmologist revealed that she is extremely farsighted-- the prescription in her left eye is an 8.0.  She quickly acclimated to wearing a contact lens in that eye, and when we returned three months later, her ability to see with the contact in improved dramatically.  Now our ophthalmologist wants her to wear a patch on the good eye about two hours a day to continue the improvement.  We weren't sure how she would feel about wearing the patch, but since she is quite proud that her muscles are growing strong, we told her the patch would help her eye grow strong like her muscles.  She insisted on wearing it immediately, and her only objection is when we tell her it's time to take it off.  We feel so fortunate to have caught her eye condition early, to have found a good ophthalmologist who Nora likes, and to have a daughter who is so eager to take on life's new experiences.

A few months ago, my Aunt Carrie sent Nora some seeds to grow.  We started out putting them in a little planter, where a lot of the seeds started to sprout:

We then transferred them into the yard, but I guess I don't have a photo of that?  When the first zucchini was ready, Nora was anxious to harvest it:

We have put them in pasta and we've put them on the grill, and now she is even started requesting "a slice a zucchini, please" as a snack.  Look how proud she is of eating food she grew!

So, yes.  I'm 40,000 words into writing a dissertation chapter that still feels like it has no argument, is getting nowhere, and only yet mentions 3 of the 6 novels I mean to cover ... but life is good.

Oma's Visit

In June, my mom came to visit us for about a week.  It was great to see her, and it was a lot of fun to watch her relationship with Nora grow in person.  Nora is at an age now where she gets really excited anytime someone she knows from pictures is coming to visit her.  Before she sees someone for the first time in a while (whether it's a few weeks or a few months), she asks to see pictures of herself with that person (kids these days!).  Since Mom also sends Nora little video clips often, we spent several days getting ready for her visit.  I've said this before, but it's so nice to live in a time where Nora feels completely at ease with my mom right away, no matter how long it's been since she saw her in "real life," since she sees her on video and video chat fairly often.

We had great weather while Mom was here, so we got to enjoy a lot of outdoor activities!

We spent an afternoon at Aunt Vickie's pool: check out Nora's cool Portland Thorns hat Oma brought her!

We all got to go to an Orioles game together!  This is the only game I've made it to all year, and the Orioles got blown out-- so I'm glad I was with good company.  If they have to lose to someone, I'm happy for it to be the A's.

We went to a little festival at a park near our house that had crafts for Nora to try and included a hay ride (sans hay).

And Mom, Nora, and I went to Down's Park on the Chesapeake Bay to see the owls, play on the playground, throw rocks in the bay, and take pictures for Billy's Father's Day collage.

Sidebar: This is our third iteration of the "DAD" collage, but it's the first year Nora has been able to paint the letters herself!  Here are a couple of the out-takes I liked best:

While Mom was visiting, Nora's favorite song of the moment was "Say Hey (I Love You)." Originally sung by Michael Franti, I think Nora's teachers play her the dreaded beloved Kidz Bop version.  Here's a video of her singing the chorus!

Bubble Bubble Pop

I'm way behind on sharing pictures here on the blog, but I took some good ones tonight and have a chance to post them, so I'll start with those.  I'll try to share a few more from my backlog soon!  We took these while Nora played with the bubble machine Billy bought her. There are several stages of bubble play for Nora:

Trying to catch bubbles on the wand:

pouting because her neighborhood friends haven't come out to play ("Where are my kids?"):

popping:

kick popping:

mouth popping:

laughing:

insisting that she be allowed to take my photo (she did this all by herself with my DSLR!):

Setting the Blog to Private// Ocean City

Hello!  If you're reading this, you've found my "blog" in one form or another.  When I said I was going to set the blog to private, I did not realize this would require people to create a gmail account in order to view it.  So, I've sent invitations to everyone who talks to me about the blog offline as well as those friends who asked to be kept on the reader list when I posted about my plans to keep it private.

I have also scheduled every post to be emailed to me, at which point I plan to forward the email to all the people who've suggested they want to read the posts.  This way, you should get all posts sent immediately to your inbox without having to visit the blog (and without having to create a gmail account to see it).  Some of you may be reading this in your inbox as a result of this process.  My goal is to turn the "blog" into more of a "newsletter" for family and friends, where it is safe to share pictures of Nora and family activities.  If you decide you do NOT want to receive these emails, or I'm sending them to the wrong email address, please feel free to tell me so and I'll remove or update your email name.  It won't hurt my feelings.  Conversely, if there's someone you think I'm leaving out, please send me the email address and I'll be happy to add them to my contact list.

Now that the administrative details are out of the way (and clear, I hope?), I wanted to share some pictures from our recent trip to Ocean City with Billy's family.  There were about 15-20 of us there together, depending upon the day.  Billy's mom, dad, aunt, and uncle had scouted out locations in the fall and found us a great building where we could rent three condos at the same time.  The location made it easy to get down to the beach with the kids, and Nora loved having so much time to spend with Cash and Lily all week.  It was a lot of fun to see them together, and having so many adults around meant Billy and I also got to enjoy some time to relax while other people helped look after Nora.  Billy's relatives have been vacationing in Ocean City for generations, so they have all the necessary preparations down to a science.  This meant I also got a break from planning and preparing meals, as well.  For me, though, the best part of the trip was getting to see Nora participate in all the old family traditions for the first time.  It was a joy to see her take joy in playing in the sand and ocean, going to the boardwalk, eating Dumser's ice cream, and riding carnival rides.  It was also a joy to see how excited everyone in Billy's family was to have her join in these traditions.

Billy, Jacelyn, Brian, and Heather went to great lengths to replicate this picture of them that was taken in the late 80s.  Then we had the second cousins pose for a similar picture-- maybe they'll recreate it as adults someday, too!

We spent one day down at the boardwalk, which meant we got to visit the bench that Billy's family members bought in honor of their grandfather.  The next morning, when we asked Nora what she had done the day before, Nora said "We went to see the bench with Gram's daddy's name on it!"

Thanks again to all the family members who helped plan this vacation!