Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Where the Boys Aren't...

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Caitlin is my goddaughter and Nora's godmother and so on the occasion of her graduation from St. Catherine's University (an all-women's college), we thought it only appropriate to ditch the boys and fly off to the twin cities without them. (Well, that and we feared additional censure from the administration if Owen had another unexcused absence.)

Conveniently, cousin Blaine lives nearby and let us crash at his place. Even more conveniently Grandma and Grandpa Z drove up from Iowa City to chauffeur us around town with a ICPD approved car seat installation. And probably most conveniently, a number of Grady family members live in the greater St. Paul, MN metro center so we also got to see Uncle Glen & Aunt Cheryl, Cousin Bryce, Jodi & Louden, Uncle Al & Aunt Araceli as well as Caitlin, her boyfriend Paxton and proud parents Aunt Ellen & Uncle John on our extremely brief visit.

While Nora wasn't into the official events (security at the graduation mass offered to escort us to our car if we wanted to leave...), she really enjoyed St. Kate's campus, particularly the radio controlled goose at the duck pond -- the only thing that would drag her away was the promise of cake (my God that girl will rally if the word "cake" is invoked). She didn't get a lot of time with her godmother, who, understandably was pretty busy, but Nora got a lot of extra time with Grandma & Grandpa Z and cousin Blaine when they babysat for her while I attended the graduation and she boycotted nap time.

The graduation was pretty memorable (and not just because the President of the University informed us during the ceremony that we were completely safe in the auditorium despite a tornado warning). There's nothing like seeing the baby girl you held while they poured water over her graduate Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude. Now if only she had decided to move to DC instead of South Carolina for grad school...

(To see all the pictures from Caitlin's graduation weekend, click here)

Sunday, May 22, 2011

When the Girls are Away, the Boys Will Play

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Mommy and Nora flew out to Minnesota for Caitlin's graduation, so it was just us boys this weekend. Mom Mom happened to be out of town as well to give a lecture series in Japan, so we teamed up with Grandpa Don for some baseball and some sailing.

On Saturday we went up to Baltimore to catch the Nats play the O's on the road with Grandpa Don. Owen was a bit skeptical of seeing a baseball game in an AL park. When we told him about the plan to go see the Nats in Baltimore, he was excited until we explained that in the American League they have designated hitters so pitchers don't hit. He broke into tears when he heard about the DH rule, worried about the poor hitters that wouldn't be allowed to hit even if they wanted to. He rallied for the game, but sadly the Nats used up all their offense beating the O's 17-5 the previous night, and they couldn't pull out the win for Owen on Saturday.

On Sunday we met up with Grandpa Don again, this time to go sailing. There wasn't much wind, but that might have been a good thing, since Owen was intent on playing all over the boat (with his life jacket and a tether of course). His favorite part was going up to the bow to ride up and down as we went over a wake, though a close second might have been playing fetch with Molly, the resident labradoodle at Hartge's (no word yet on how that will impact Mommy's stance on getting a dog ;-).



(click here for all the pictures)

Friday, May 20, 2011

Oh No, No No

Nora has really become much more vocal lately, and one of the cutest things about her developing speech patterns is that she calls Owen 'Oh No' and herself 'No No'. We've been meaning to capture this on film, but by the time we finally got around to doing it, her pronunciation of 'Nora' had evolved to 'Nah'. Oh well, it's still pretty cute.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Mother's Day, Birthdays, and Nora Kisses

Well we've missed a few weeks of blogging, we celebrated Mother's Day with a brunch at Jaleo's again this year, and had a low key birthday for Elaine (our birthday dinner at Volt had to be pushed back to June due to Grandparent/babysitter travel schedules). Somehow we managed to avoid taking any pictures of these fine celebrations, so instead here's a cute video of Nora kisses.