An Early Taste of Summer

So, yesterday was Norah's first day back at Mother's Day Out for two weeks because our church follows the Fort Worth ISD's schedule...and Fort Worth decided to go all trailblazer on us and be the first and largest school district in the country to cancel all classes for swine flu. While this cost Norah some fun times with her school friends, it also cost her Daddy several tee times, much to his chagrin (cut me some slack! She only has 5 more days at school until the long, hot summer). But all was well yesterday. Norah saw everyone she missed and I broke 100, so we were both happy.



And it was good to see that frequent trips to parks and friends' houses made the days go by just as quickly. Norah still sprints to the camera once she sees you pull it out, so it's nearly impossible to get any good pictures, let alone good sequences of pictures, but there are a few good ones worth sharing.




Norah took advantage of her time off of school to visit her friend Jackson (who, as an aside, became a big brother today. Congratulations Williams family!). She very much enjoyed playing outside with Jackson, and their games included golf, tossing bean bags, basket ball and sliding down Jackson's (AWESOME) new playset.









We also went to a couple of great parks last week, betting with the odds that she would not catch swine flu. She did not. Mosquito bites, yes. Swine flu, no. It turns out that Norah's short attention span when it comes to playing with her toys at home has carried over to parks. She will happily slide for 5 minutes, climb for 5 minutes, swing for 5 minutes, and chase birds and squirrels for 5 minutes. The cycle then repeats. This has resulted in many good naps recently. Unfortunately, she has developed what we call the "teradactyl" scream, which involves her making a scary noise with her throat that is simultaneously high-pitched and deep. At parks, she directs the teradactyl scream to any nearby strange toddlers (Jackson and Josh were spared her wrath last week) that come within about 5 feet of her and whatever she is doing. I must say, it does a good job of stopping kids in their tracks. Hopefully this will pass soon.


Overall, however, I'd say we spent about 50% of our free time the past two weeks trying to get Norah acclimated to having her hair in pigtails. Our success was mixed. On the one hand, she looked absolutely adorable in pigtails. On the other hand, she very much enjoys taking her hair out of pigtails quickly and decisively.

Karen was out of town seeing a friend this weekend, so Norah only got to see her for a little bit on Mother's Day, but she did buy Karen a nice tweety bird card for the occasion. Norah insisted on buying a Spanish card because she has learned so much of the language from her animated friend Diego the Animal Rescuer (to be fair, she actually did say "arbol" today, which means tree. I think). Nice, yes?



See you soon everybody! And just think, pictures of fun times at the beach and pool are only weeks away.