No Halloween Pictures! Sorry!

I had an unfortunate injury which prevented me from going trick-or-treating (it actually prevented me from standing up at all for an entire week)! So...no pictures this year. Nora did go, and she had a great time, but there was no documentation. But here are some other cute pictures, because I know it's been forever.

John carrying Nora up the hill towards our house. I don't know why I really like this picture.


These pictures are from our "sculpture walk" on campus. We walked across campus with Nora's preschool class and then took the city bus back to school. So fun! We do love taking the city bus.







Let's see...what else is our little cutie pie up to? She went skiing today, up at Mount Baker. I wasn't able to go, but John said she was amazing and loved it. She even went down once by herself! And she told me all about riding the lift. She said "I didn't fall down, mom. But someone falled down and the chair lift stopped. Everyone stopped because someone falled." When she got home, she asked John "Are we going skiing again nexterday?" For "yesterday" she says "lasterday" and for "next week" she says "nexterday." :-)

She is officially smarter than I am

Saturday:
I am enjoying a lovely, sunny afternoon in the garden, weeding with Nora. John pulls into the driveway, doesn't speak, doesn't make eye contact, just briskly walks into the house and shuts the door. Nora says "I'm tired of weeding." I say "Daddy is home; maybe you can play with daddy." Nora goes into the house and I enjoy five minutes of glorious peace and quiet, save for the sound of bearded irises being wrenched from the earth (I've decided that I am done with bearded irises).

Nora returns. "Mommy, Daddy says mistake won."
"What?" I ask.
"Daddy want me tell you MISTAKE WON!" She is emphatic.
"Who is 'mistake'?"
"His team!"
"Oh! Michigan State won! That is very exciting for daddy." (and now I understand why he rushed into the house without so much as a wave in our direction).

Later in the day, she says to John "What did your team won?" John replies, "fame, glory, the respect of their entire state!"
"That's all?" She says. "They didn't win any flouride for their babies?" (Don't ask me where she gets this stuff. We hardly ever talk about flouride, and certainly not as a prize for people's babies).

Today:
On our way out of a birthday party, I ask her to please use the bathroom before leaving. She asks "why?" (if I had a dime...). And I say, "because I know you're going to fall asleep on the way home." To which she replies, "I'm still going to fall asleep in the car if I peep." Touche.

Pictures:

Here she is in a really cute outfit (courtesy of Sophie Zhu Zhu) on the way to Hannah's third birthday party. Suddenly, the girl who wanted her head shaved now wants pony tails and lots of clips!




Here she is making a hat at Laoise's birthday party. Again, note the pony tails. We had a whole conversation this morning that went something like this:

"babies wiggle. babies don't be still, right mom? Babies pull out their pony tails, right mom? Big girls stay still. Big girls don't pull their pony tails out. I be so beautiful ("bootiful"), right mom?"


And finally, today she told me that "only Chinese people can go to the Moon party. You're not Chinese. You can't go." (The Moon Festival hosted by the Northwest Chinese Cultural Association was today). Then Nora must have decided that I could get in as her guest because she is Chinese, and she said "if you are someone else's mommy you can't go to the moon party." !!!!! She is a hoot!

Toddlers Rule

We are in the middle of what I refer to as "Love Fest 2009" at our house. Nora has gotten to this amazing and fabulous age; she thinks we are the most wonderful people in the world (not that we aren't). Every once in a while, she says "I love you mom. Very much." For no reason at all. Or she calls me her "best girl." So adorable. The other day, we were going to daycare and she said "Did you remember my slippers?" and I said, "I'm sorry! I forgot", and she said "That's okay, mommy. I still love you. I'll love you no matter what." [clearly I am writing these things down for when she is a teenager]. She says she never wants to move--because she loves her office (the sunroom). She doesn't want to go to college, because she is "already smart." She wants to help with EVERYTHING--setting the table, putting away the dishes, sweeping the front walk (she loves long-handled things), picking strawberries, getting my shoes. She is always saying "let me know if you need any help."

Today I brought home two pieces of baklava, made by a friend at work (HEAVENLY). John ate a piece and Nora ate about half of hers. I went to the gym :-) Anyway, Nora wanted to save hers for later, but was very afraid I might eat it, so John said, "you can write your name on the bag so mom won't eat it."

Here's what she wrote first:

John said "that is not going to work."

So she wrote this:


Impressive, right?

And here she is, just being cute.

Welcoming Fall

We've been slowly getting back into the swing of things here. We've been enjoying perfect fall weather and trying to take advantage as much as we can before classes start on Wednesday (gulp).

We went to a great apple farm last week with some friends and Nora was able to live out her dream of riding in a golf cart! She was so delighted, she barely slept the night before.







Nora got another hair cut. She wanted it really short "just like daddy's" but we decided to go for a cute bob instead.


Here she is, in our incredibly overgrown garden, helping daddy pick vegetables. We had so many cucumbers and tomatoes, that we were giving them away in front of our house...until some annoying kids stole the chair we were using as a vegatable stand. Since then we have been less generous with our produce.



Nora had her preschool orientation on Friday. She was so, so excited to see all of her friends and be in the "big kid" room with teacher Carolyn. She is not a baby anymore, as she frequently reminds us. She spends a lot of time telling us what she can do that babies can't ("babies can't do that mommy, right?"). Despite her new found maturity, she never wants to move out of our house. She said she doesn't want to go to college because she's "already smart." She says she loves her office in the back hallway and wants to stay here forever. So sweet.




Here is a sweet picture of her on the boat, trying to be serious.


Big milestones:

She can just about write her name.
She gets herself dressed and undressed now (and she's very proud of herself, because "babies can't do that.")
She's almost gotten her pronouns straightened out. There is still the occassional mix-up with "he" and "she" though.
She is drawing "scenes" now, rather than just people. She drew a great picture of herself surfing with Vicki walking on the beach in the backgroun. Vicki looks like a halibut.
She says really terrific things that just make me giggle. She told me I was "medium pretty" the other day (and when her uncle Mark asked "do you think I'm medium handsome?" Nora said "I don't know. I can't see your hands"). On our way in to Fred Meyer the other day she said "I'm guessing the blue cart is in the store." And before school last week, after I commented on how much I loved a picture she had made for her teacher, she said "I be happy to make you one too, mommy."

Summer Fun

We've been taking full advantage of summer this year. It's been go-go-go since the beginning of August!

Summer began with a haircut. Nora wanted her head shaved (really), but we settled for just bangs.




We had a great vacation out east with the aunties and cousin Eldon! It started with a rather early flight. We all think she looks like her dad in this picture :-)

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

We spent two days on Guemes Island, with friends:





And, finally, we had a wonderful weekend on Shaw Island, kayaking and playing on the beach:





Lucky for us, summer is not yet over! We are headed to Tofino, Canada for more beach time, more kayaking, and surfing lessons for mom. It's just one adventure after another, with no end in sight.

Life is good.

Happy Summer!

I know it's been a MONTH! What can I say? It's a busy time of year. Here are some pictures to make up for my laziness.

Nora's first cleaning at the dentist. She was such a trooper!






At a recent birthday party






The first pony tail in a long while:

How wrong am I? Let me count the ways.

There were a few things I didn't see coming. I knew I would someday have to carry a screaming, kicking, scratching child out of the mall one day (in fact, I thought it might happen with a fair bit of frequency, but since I don't like the mall, I've been lucky). This day came, finally, last Sunday, while swimsuit shopping in Macy's. I can hardly blame Nora, as she hadn't had a nap--we are experimenting with nap-elimination, much to our dismay--and we had ice cream for lunch. Also, truth be told, swimsuit shopping is my second-to-least favorite shopping activity. I was able to try on maybe three ugly suits before Nora came completely unglued and started burying herself in every clothes rack in the store, while calling with her very best outside voice "MOMMY! You can't see me!!!" Finally, exasperated, I said "the rules are that you need to stay close and you look with your eyes, not with your hands" (HA). She proceeded to touch everything and run away from me as fast as her little legs would go. And she is a quick runner.

It took me about five minutes to get to the car with my flailing, sobbing child. Luckily, none of my students were at the mall to witness this scene. By the time we got home, Nora was her sweet, charming self, proclaiming her love to me and making me pretend coffee (which I desperately needed).

These are the types of things I expected when I became a parent.

What I did not expect was how wrong I would be all the time. About everything. "Actually mommy, that's not an airplane; that's a space shuttle." "I'm not a baby, I'm a little big kid." "You thought I was in the bathroom, but I was upstairs." "That's not pink, that's purple." "That's not my juice. That's my pretend tea." It goes on and on and on. It sounds kind of cute in the retelling, but it's "actually not." I suspect that I will be wrong for the rest of my life. Or at least until she's 25 and realizes (as I did of my own father) that I was right about most things.

Nora and I had a VERY busy couple of days (she is still asleep at 8:00 a.m., which is not all that unusual, but she is really OUT). We went to Seattle on Friday afternoon to meet up with a friend who ran the first Seattle Rock-n-Roll half-marathon on Saturday. We walked around town, ate dinner, went to the race expo, etc. We spent the night in a hotel (Nora didn't want to leave the hotel), woke up to watch part of the race and meet up with our friend, Vicki (who ran SO FAST!!!!) and then went to a birthday party at the Imagine Children's Museum in Everett, which is an amazing place. Finally, we made our way back home, relaxed for a bit, then went to a baby shower until it was time to come home and crash. It has been a gorgeous, fun-filled weekend. Last night, after Nora got out of the tub, she said "I was a really good girl today!" Yes, you were, honey!

The night before the race, we walked to the expo and back; Nora was fascinated by all the artwork on the streets.



We had a great dinner at a cheap little Asian restaurant. Our waitress' name was "Nora" and that was very exciting for us all (that's not our waitress, that's Vicki, bulking up for the race).



The Rock-n-Roll runners. This is close to the end of the half and middle of the full marathon. The music was GREAT!!! (Vicki had been finished for quite some time and we were making our way back to the hotel).


Imagine Children's Museum for Sophie Zhu Zhu's birthday. Nora LOVES all things driven, and her new request is "I want my own one of that" whenever she sees a big truck, bus, or construction vehicle.