Norah

The many faces of Norah:

 Toddler Narcolepsy strikes again

This has become Norah's favorite game this week which, oddly, she calls "Boat". So, her bed is the boat and these are all the passengers...whom she methodically places around her and then pretends to sneeze and throws them all off.

 Blisssssss

The above picture reminded us of one we had in 'the archives' so I went digging. Below is a photo taken exactly 2 years ago in April 2011. So it was taken was just prior to her 1st birthday and above she's a couple months from her 3rd birthday.

This weekend is St. Patrick's Day so we have plans to go to a few events in Dublin - mainly the big parade. Tomorrow (March 14th), we're heading into the city to have a personal tour of St. Patrick's Cathedral by our church rector/preist/pastor, Canon Patrick. He also happens to be the rector of THE St. Patrick's Cathedral so he offered to show us around. Oddly, after a year and 3 months in Dublin, we have yet to see one of the city's most famous landmarks so it will be nice to see it with him.

A Gift for International Women's Day

Now, let me start with the fact that I hesitated to share this. I made sure to ask Wayne's permission, explicitly, because the gift and its note were so meaningful to me. I don't take "blogging" his words lightly, but thought they were so incredible that I felt compelled to share them.

 I first learned about Mary Robinson, not by living in Ireland (oddly enough), but by reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography. (She was the first female President of Ireland, who later became the head of the UN Human Rights' Commission, member of The Elders and generally, a champion in every way for the oppressed, the downtrodden and the voiceless.) Nelson Mandela references her, a host of times, so I knew she was a woman worth researching. First I found her biography and read that. Next, I knew I wanted her autobiography but was too cheap to pay what they were asking at Eason's (Irish "Barnes & Noble" or "Chapters"). But today, on a day I didn't really give 'two thoughts' to, Wayne surprised me with her book. (I'd take presents on International Women's Day over "Valentine's Day", any day of the year. Wait...)

The real gift though was the note. I wouldn't dare trivialize what he said with some monologue about what an incredible man he is (that's implied). 

 "Gloria, On International Women's Day, I thought perhaps I could start a tradition in which I find some way to fuel your natural passion and fire for justice with a gift, a note, or maybe just a reminder of how awesome women are, but how hard they have to fight to be so. This may help inspire you to continue searching for that outlet for your own genuis. This book is a symbol of our time here in Ireland, and also of so much more. It reminds me of you - when I see the book I think about your own ability to change 'big' things. I hope I can be a support for you as a woman in this world that still fears womens' voices and their transformative potential. Love you always, Wayne"

 

We were out to dinner at a sushi restaurant in Dun Laoghaire (Total aside: fantassstic by the way, for a teeny-hole-in-the-wall. While we waited, the waitress even brought Norah a wooden toy sushi set to play with! Awesomess-unrivalled.) Anyway, we're sitting there and Wayne asks if I would like a surprise. (um, yes please) So he pulls out this unassuming paper bag from Hodges & Figgis (a very famous bookstore in Dublin; perhaps the oldest?). ANYWAY.... after seeing the book and finishing the letter, I was in tears. This has not happened since he proposed to me in...what, 2008? Clearly I'm not a crier. But this...this absolutely floored me and I honestly don't even want to spoil it by 'going off' about what he means to me. It's just....something I'll keep with me always (I mean, literally, in my treasure-shoe-box).  

 

Annnd then, in really unrelated news, this is how I found Norah during her nap today.

(didn't notice Pooh Bear in the same position until now) :)

 

Am I a Stay-At-Home Mom?

(yeah, check me out - above - I figured out how to embed photos in the blog! Two years later.... Photo cred: Yours Truly)
Recently I've been doing some reflecting on the idea of being a "stay-at-home mom". Now, most of you will say, "Gloria, you've been home, full-time, with Norah for over 2 1/2 years now, you ARE a stay-at-home mom" - to which I would then reply, "No, not so fast...I can't say I agree. I'd like to unpack this further". Annnd, if you're still reading this, I thank you. (warning: this is a long one and it's quite uninteresting, unless you care to read my ramblings on motherhood/nothing in particular)
I was recently writing one of my best friends, Trysh, about this topic. While I've been home for 2 1/2 years, and will be for the remainder of our time in Ireland (as I'm not allowed to work during our time here) I still don't really identify with the label "stay-at-home-mom". I would seriously hesitate before writing that down on a form. I see myself as a therapist who is at home for these years while Wayne pursues his Ph.D.; as someone who will return to "the workforce". And to be clear - as someone who is lucky enough to do this. To be able to home, full-time during these first years is an amazing thing. I don't mean that I'm merely biding my time until I can work outside the home again.

I was telling Trysh how I see some of my friends, or my lovely sister-in-law Kelly (who is expecting her third baby next month), who want nothing more than to be home for the next twenty years. They love it, everyday, and they're REALLY good at it. They bake, they have rock-solid routines for cleaning and activities, and they revel in the job of being mom/teacher/wife/partner, etc. Part of me really envies that conviction because, in their minds, there's no other 'job' pulling them; there's no waffling about what their goal is. In my case, I love being with Norah everyday and I love watching her develop from within the security of our tight bond but I ALSO think about what I'll do after this phase in our lives. We think about when to have a second child, if I'll stay home with that one too, and what I desire, professionally. Wayne is often the one bringing these questions to the fore and he encourages me to keep thinking about what I want to do. In his ideal world, I'd have the children, and he'd stay home with them. Maybe that'd be my ideal for awhile too....while being an international human rights lawyer, the prime minister of Finland/Ireland/Sweden, AND/or a privately wealthy therapist/activist for low-income populations running a community-led-activism agency in Seattle with Wayne, Bill, Daniel, Matt, Haruko and Mary. :) Big aspirations and only the last one might actually become a reality (minus the privately wealthy part).

I digress (again). For the most part I feel great about the weekly schedule I have with Norah - we're busy everyday. She has play school on Monday and Tuesday, we go to the gym/running and her music class on Wednesday, gym and playdates on Thursday and playdates or toddler group on Friday. In between these outings/appointments, we go to shops for our daily grocery trips and play but what it all comes down to is, sometimes I feel I don't focus enough energy on keeping her sufficiently stimulated. (21st Century mom here with 1st-world concerns.....)

On the fateful days when I'll peruse Pinterest - which, inevitably, leads you (me) down rabit holes of blog posts parading peoples' awesome-ness- I end up feeling majorly under-qualified for the title "stay-at-home-mom". For instance, I went on Pinterest to do research for my friend Tara's baby shower (top secret), but then I started looking up activities for toddlers (naturally). Well, if you've ever done this before, you'll know, there are a guhhh-ZILLion blogs written by SUPER creative women (have yet to see one by a Dad, sadly), who, seemingly, do rock-star-awesome developmental activities with their children....every...single...day. They are incredible...they are really good at what they do and... they overwhelm me a little bit.
If, for some reason, you have time to click on these, here are three examples:
This stay-at-home-mom who is also a teacher:
http://amomwithalessonplan.com/themes/
50 Activities to do with Toddlers:
http://handsonaswegrow.com/category/activities/toddler-activities/
A super-duper home-schooling mother of three:
http://creativewithkids.com/5-engaging-toddler-activities-from-the-recycle-bin/

To be clear again though, I don't aspire to be one of these super crafty, activity-wieldin', home-schoolin' moms. That's just not me and I'm content with that. (Nor do I ascribe to the idea that children need to be over-scheduled in order to assuage parents' own anxiety levels about creating "prodigy-children" who never have a moment of peace). It's just that, once per year I start to feel like I suck at being a 'teacher' for Norah and need to remedy that. I also realized I go on binges of being "crafty mom" and then it fades away. I accept that. Last year we made sock puppets and.... homemade play-doh. Yep, it was a jam-packed year. (No, I'm kidding, it's not as if we had a boring year. We went to Portugal, Oxford, Seattle, Ontario, and Copenhagen; all far better than any activity I could put together with felt and pom-poms) Well, apparently, it's Spring time again and I'm feeling that urge to have "play-with-a-purpose" for Norah. I wonder if my dear husband notices these binges in my creativity with Norah-play and is just kind enough not to tease me about it. :)
So onto this year's binge: we played with flour in a big bowl (she loved it), then we added some oil (squished that around), then added water and put it in a ziploc bag. THEN, we added food coloring (squish, squish), cut a hole in the corner of the bag and let Norah use it as finger paint. So, you can imagine, I felt pretty accomplished (said with only slight sarcasm), and I didn't freak out about the mess (that's almost the bigger deal here - that I let Norah play with something messy and fun and didn't get all obsessive-compulsive. Epiphany: maybe this is actually developmental training for ME.).

And THEN, today we made Cloud Dough/Moon Sand out of flour and baby oil. The recipe is 4 cups flour with 1/2 Cup of Baby Oil (and I believe vegetable oil would do the same). It feels like fine sand but then it's mold-able as well.
Side-rant:  It also dawned on me today that only parents in our generation put all this focus on creating specific developmentally-minded activities for toddlers - and feel the misplaced guilt in not doing so - because we've gotten so far from what our lifestyles used to be. Now I don't mean to go all "Montana-homestead" on you, I just mean, for us living in cities, we've drastically changed our day-to-day activities, especially so for children. If you live on a farm, or in the country in general, everything is "tactile" and "sensory". You know? You don't spend money creating these activities for your children. You send them out to play in puddles, in the mud, in the garden, in the sandbox, etc. (better known as, Auntie Kelly's house!) We're essentially re-creating things, artificially, that outside-play fosters automatically. Only in the Western World would we use Flour (a source of food) to create games for toddlers to simulate things like....mud. Truly. That's really all we made... mud, out of flour, with food coloring in it. It's a little ridiculous, and embarassing, if I think about it for too long.
But here I am, living in 2013 in our highrise of 100 apartment units made from glass, concrete and steel. So, in our concrete block, here we went again today with "Cloud Dough" (or Norah said she'd like to call it "Pink Car Sand". No idea) Now, I'm saying a lot of this, a bit facetiously, because clearly there are immense upsides to 'city-kids' as well. Norah is well-versed in public transit (trains & buses), socially outgoing, a world traveller at 2 1/2, and just generally a cosmopolitan toddler. We're incredibly grateful for our lifestyle here but sometimes, we (I) romanticize the perks of country-living as well.

And apparently this will keep, in a sealed container, for many months. That way I don't feel so bad about "wasting" 4 cups of flour. :) Where's a muddy yard when you need it?

From what I hear, Opa Beldman was notorious for the 'tongue-out-while-working'. Wayne is always commenting that Norah is definitely related to her Opa B.!

After watering our flowers on the balcony, Norah said, "Just leave me out here mama, I have so much work to do"

"Parents in the world, don't believe their kids's work. They just don't know. Everything in the world, starts with everything that I have to do." Verbatim. hahahaha! I love this child. She speaks truth.

"I'm setting up a stall for the market with so many gifts. Can you help me prepare the stall, Mama?"

Pointing out and explaining each and every item in "the market stall".

A friend posted this on Facebook today and I just loved it. This guy, makes me feel better about being a parent. I love that we have these in common.
http://jasongood.net/365/2012/12/46-reasons-why-my-three-year-old-might-be-freaking-out/
Anyone who has a 3 year old, has ever had a 3 year old, or has spent any significant time with these little people will appreciate the above list by comedian/writer, Jason Good:
A little taste from "46 Reasons Why My Threee Year Old Might Be Freaking Out":
His sock is on wrong.
His lip tastes salty.
His shirt has a tag on it.
The car seat is weird.
He’s hungry, but can’t remember the word “hungry.”
Someone touched his knee.
He’s not allowed in the oven.

Also, can I just add, there's something horribly wrong with your 2 1/2 year old saying to you, (while throwing her head back) "Ughh....I'm boorrred." I thought they didn't learn this phrase until at least 9 or 10. Tonight, after fashioning a pretty cool craft-stick on the end of a piece of yarn for threading plastic beads (ok, now I'm bored) - and after FIFTEEN seconds of playing with it, she goes. "Ughh...Mommy, I'm BOORRRED with these beads. I've been playing with them for hours" (we bought them 30 minutes prior. No exaggeration). Ughhhh! Chillld! It was all I could do to keep making my bracelet. :)
She drives me up the wall at least a couple times a day but I adore this little girl. She makes me giggle all day and while I don't know what exactly my "Title" is, I love being with her. Sure, I ask a lot of questions but, when it comes down to it, I AM a stay-at-home-mommy, at least for these few years and we can all make of that title, what we want.
Addendum: I always come back to the grounding-belief that the parents I most respect also don't ascribe to these false pressures to be super-moms/dads. I can't say I know a single mother or father (stay-at-home or not) who fills their kids' days with ridiculous Pinterest activities. The parents I most look up to, and wish to spend my time with, are those who invest time in going to parks, playing in the dirt, letting their kids explore outdoors and who admit their kids watch cartoons.

Annual Trip to the Dublin Zoo

 There's not much to this post but we had a particularly lovely day out to the Dublin Zoo (last weekend) and I wanted to share some photos. We haven't been to the Zoo for over a year so we knew it was time to take Norah back (plus we had free tickets, expiring this month). :)

We live in Dun Laoghaire, literally at the bus stop that is the starting point for the route, and the Dublin Zoo is the very last stop. So, out our doorstep and after one hour, fifteen minutes on the bus, we walked into the Dublin Zoo. Couldn't get any better (unless the zoo was NOT one hour, fifteen minutes away). :)

We didn't take the buggy so we could sit on the top level of the bus. This is Norah's favorite.

I won't bore you with captions as zoos are pretty much zoos, unless say, you're at the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma which is amazing. ;) Actually I've never been there but, rumor has it.

I loved the hippos' feet. I could just picture her, so exhausted she collapsed, legs still under her. Hurrrrumfffhhh..

She'd open her eyes everytime she exhaled, which was only every minute or so.

We watched this family of gorillas for over half an hour (and I would've stayed much longer but Norah moved on).

LOOK at his muscles!! And to think they're vegetarians. Amazing creatures.

Yes, those are his... yes. He's not sitting on a bean-bag chair. (so maybe it's the levels of testosterone that make them so freakishly ripped?!)

Norah's Musings and Visiting Wayne at UCD

After returning home from a run tonight and tidying up after Wayne and Norah playing, I came across this:

(don't worry, I'll explain what it says farther down)



Now, because I know Norah, I know how this went down. These are things Norah had Wayne write down (and by "had", I mean, dictated in a form that would make Mao himself, heed her demands). When you play with 2 1/2 year old Norah, you are.... at. her. disposal.  If I had to guess, this was them playing the waitor/restaurant game where she has you take down her order.

(and who is going to say 'no' to this face?)



So, the close-up reveals what she was dictating to Daddy:

"Spaghetti, Pasta for me & Daddy, Chicken for myself, Apple Juice, Coffee for Jamalabala, Spaghetti meat salad, Swimming octopus for myself, Spikey on musketti (?), Cake for myself & my daughter recess girl, - and finally - Kitty cat girl cookie.



Now, if that doesn't warm your heart, I don't know what will. When I picked up this paper I nearly cried, definitely giggled out loud and wanted to squeeze Norah (but she was in bed already). Anyway, I thought that was worth sharing. As are these:

Norah's a brutal personal trainer and makes Daddy do 100 of these quad-lifts, every night.

Norah's rendition of Coldplay's, "Yellow" 

And, in other stay-at-home mom news.....last week we finally made it to this play group in Blackrock called the BuzzBeez Playhive.. (I know... I hate when people use Z's in words in place of S's. Yuck.) Anyway, despite that, it's really cool and well-put together. It's run by a mother and father who have a two-year old as well and is held in the clubhouse of a rugby club nearby. It's nothing more than a massive room filled with lots of toys and lots of toddlers (and a bar in the corner serving homemade baked goods!). Unlike the other one that I've been to, similar to this, this one did not give me the germophobe heebie-jeebies that I'm accustomed to when in large spaces with 30-40 children under the age of four. So, I give it four stars from the hand-sanitizer-bearing mommy.

Notice Norah at the end of this blue & yellow balance-beam-thing - she's just dragged an emperor penguin taller than herself, from a 1/4 mile across the room. I was watching from afar and couldn't help but love her immensely - just picturing her thought process - "excuse me, pardon me toddlers, I'm actually working on something here."

So there she is at the end of the balancing-platform-toy-thing attempting to hoist the penguin up onto it. (What she planned to do at that point nobody knows)

 Clearly she decided to go-it-alone as penguin has been tossed aside and is laying there, lifeless, on his side.

 Triumphant, she reaches the end, and prepares for her dismount.

 Wait, there's a motorcycle??

 Get a load o' this guy.... (reading the Irish Sunday Times)

Ready to visit Daddy at school for the first time in over a year. He's so busy there that we've never made it back up to UCD to visit him (since Dec. 2011, which seems a little shameful now that I realize how long its been).

Wayne showed us the classroom where he teaches one of his classes at the University. Pretty cool to see, I must say.

 He lectures to a class of 38 students for 2 hours once a week, in this room. (and has another class of 30 students for a 3 hour lecture on a another day) It was great for Norah to see this, and of course, she pretended to teach Daddy and then asked to reverse roles and she was the student for awhile.

 Who knows, maybe someday this little one will follow her Daddy and become a professor herself (or, as we suspect, a dictator) and this will be the first photo of her teaching - age 2, University College Dublin.

So, we're doing well this week. Wayne has entrusted me with the task of editing the first 91 pages of his dissertation and that has kept me quite busy. I love reading it and I think the editing keeps my brain sharp. :) My running-training continues - this last Sunday I ran just over 10 miles with a couple friends and that was a great one. Now to get back to that 13 mile mark for April 7th. My goal is to not be defeated by this route - and despite the course being quite rough, to improve on my last time for the 13-miles. I'm thankful to continue to be injury free and just count my lucky stars that I can continue each week. Wayne has not been so lucky and has a pretty bad knee injury. He's felt this for some time but it's gotten progressively worse with each run (especially after that 8 1/2-miler) so he's got to see a Physio before deciding whether he can run the half or not. I pray he can and that he feels better so that Connemara is not a solo-Dykstra mission.