Patrick is gone to Vancouver

Patrick left for Vancouver this morning for an anthropology conference in Vancouver BC. Nora took to him being gone amazingly well this morning. She said Daddy a few times and would then say, "uppp, upppp, uppp...down, down, down..." --as to tell the story that he is on an airplane. No major tears over his departure like last time he was out of town. Phew.

I had the best day with the kids ever today. We had a leisurely morning, then drove out to Linda Butrey's for Nora's weekly appointment with Linda. Her appointment went fabulous and the rest of the afternoon was spent eating lunch, singing songs, changing Nora's baby doll's diapers over and over and over and over again. It looks like a diaper factory exploded in our house. Karen can vouch for that-she braved the mess to enjoy dinner with us!
I love the fact that Nora is so into changing her baby dolls diapers, putting her doll to bed, whispering "shhhh...", walking away then turning around and saying "wa,wa,wa,wa". She retrieves the baby doll, checks for a dirty diaper, exclaims, "Uh-oh" and starts the whole cycle again. She did that probably 50 times today!!

Nora's babbling is improving by leaps and bounds. I am starting to see the beginnings of a language explosion. Tonight when she was in her crib, she said, "beeeee" and at first I thought she was saying "b" as in bear because her sheets have Pooh Bear on them. When I looked closely at the sheets, there are bees on the sheet as well. She was pointing to the bees saying "bee". It made me so happy to hear her spontaneously tell me that there are bees on her sheets!!

Tonight I finished watching the movie "The Illusionist." Such a great movie. I fell asleep or got distracted with quilting the last time I tried to watch it-more than a year ago. Patrick, MJ and I all watched it in our living room but I wanted to do quilting and never finished it. After hearing rave reviews about it from everyone, I rented it and boy is it good! Such a cool ending. My only regret is that Patrick is here to have a post-movie-wrap-up discussion about it....

Zoya

Photo is of Stuey and Cecilia on Easter Day.