John dreams

Nora: John Krasinski and Emily Blunt are dating.
Gabe: Oh, yeah?
Nora: Yeah.
Gabe: Ok. (Gabe thinks the conversation is over, but he should know better.)
Nora: Which means I am out of the running.
Gabe: I didn't know you were in the running.
Nora: What you don't know can't hurt you.

expanding vocabulary

Today Liam said five new words. I can't remember one of them but the other four are, drumroll please:

1. Elmo
2. fart
3. poop
4. whale

What can I say? He has a (mostly) diverse mind and mouth.

The Twenty-sixth Year

Today is a very special day.

Today is the day we celebrate the birth of my husband.



Gabriel Adams Wolf was born on this day twenty-six years ago in Dallas, Texas. He's now been in my life for nearly six years and for that I am very, very thankful.

Happy Birthday, Gabe. Liam and I love you very much.

xoxo, Nora

p.s. I think your new haircut is CUTE!

Sunday Snowstorm

Yesterday we got quite a bit of snow, keeping us indoors for all but five minutes. We would have played in the snow longer but the wind was a little rough for a toddler. (And us as well; I won't lie.)

So today Gabe had the day off and we were up and about earlier than usual to catch up on our errands and fill our fridge and cabinets. We were still delayed, though, by having to rescue my car from the clutches of the previous day's snow.





It's a good thing I got those tall boots because the snow nearly came to their tops. I'm also glad the snow was really light and dry. I shoveled one side of the car and Gabe and Liam cleared the other.



You can't see it in the photo but Liam's tool of choice for pushing snow around was the stem of a leaf he found in the driveway where it had been plowed.

Something else of note: Liam's newest word is clock, although we're still unsure why. We have no wall clocks in the apartment- we tell time by our phones, the microwave or the cable box. While doing our shopping today he pointed at a wall clock and said its name. He was pretty proud of himself.

I guess watching more TV than necessary because of the weather isn't all bad; it's the only place I can think of him learning about clocks.

catching up with Liam McCourtney-Wolf

I'm behind on pictures because the new memory card holds about a kajillion pictures compared to the old one, so I empty it far less. I finally uploaded some though, so FEAST YOUR EYES.


This is Liam on Christmas Eve, eating a bean burrito.



Christmas morning with his new Magna-Doodle! He's quite an artist already.



Christmas evening with his new vacuum, helping Daddy clean up. Vacuuming in diapers? Cutest thing ever.



Christmas evening, eating his snack at his new table and chairs set from Grandmere and Grandpop.



A few days later, the three of us went to Portland with my brothers to use some gift cards. At DSW, Liam wanted to help Uncle Isaac choose just the right pair.



Then he got bored and booked it. Cutely.



Isn't he getting so big? Crazy.

poor pickle

Strange thing happened. That night I wrote of how sick I felt I was sure I was in for it. But I guess I was feeling sympathy symptoms because Liam is the afflicted one. I woke up fine but my poor sweet pickle is full of boogers.

He's back and forth between not acting sick at all and then having screeching fits over nothing. Can you imagine what it's like, being nineteen months old and not understanding your body, and having such a strong cold? I'd have mood swings too.

Oh wait, I already do.

He cries and whines when I wipe his nose, and screams and writhes away from me when I use the rubber bulb to suck boogers out of his nose. He's inconsolable. Then, as soon as it's done, he hugs me and cuddles with me on the couch. It's like, he knows it has to be done because otherwise he'd just keep smearing his boogies all over his face with his hand and arm, confused by it completely, and even though he hates the little rubber nozzle in his nose, he realizes it's a temporary solution. I still can't help but feel like I am scarring him though, the way he screams.

It was a long night of coughing and cursing Moesha that ended when he fell back asleep at 7:20. We slept until 12:45. I'm still tired.

Weekend, take me away and make Liam better.

ack

I'm getting sick for real now and I can't sleep.

Boooooooo.


:( Oh sadness.

I want to congratulate my dear Texas friend Amy on the arrival of her baby girl. She came on Saturday, January 10 and by all reports is healthy and beautiful.

Amy, I miss you. I am thinking of you and wishing for your health and strength so that your daughter will feel it and follow suit, for a happy and comfortable introduction into her life outside of your warm womb- into yours and Matt's warm arms instead, and always in your warm hearts.

Congratulations! I can't wait to see you again and meet your family. I love you.

xoxo, Nora

Ground Control to Major Nora

I've been a little congested lately- not quite sick with a cold, but bothered by the cold outside and dry heat indoors. While I sleep, my mouth is therefore open and I wake up with a dry mouth and a sore throat.

This morning I woke up briefly and tried to moisten my mouth, and it was so dry it felt like my tongue was cracking. In a fog I pictured an actual crack in my tongue like a crack in a dry lip, and hoped my tongue wouldn't suffer an injury like this. I worried about how I might eat Goldfish crackers now with a sore cracked tongue. I suck the salt off then split the fish at the seams with my front teeth.

I made a quick trip to the bathroom, peed, and stuck my tongue out in the mirror. I saw where the muscle had dried up and caused the cracking sensation. I cupped some water in my hands, sucked it and swished it, and went back to bed.

While I was sleeping again I dreamed I was at the mirror, inspecting my tongue. The crack had become infected, turning my tongue black. I moved it around, in awe at how deep the black color was and wondered if my spit would be inky black as a result.

I'm pleased to let you know I do not in fact have an actual crack in my tongue, and it's not black either.

You want to make out with me now, don't you.

The Ungood

You know how sometimes, there's this movie you keep seeing previews for on TV, and it doesn't look very good but you're kind of curious? And it's totally outside of the kind of movie you're generally interested in, but you agree to pay admission because if anything else, at least you're out of the house, right?

My sister asked me to see The Unborn with her. The best part of the evening was when she bought me a cherry Icee and shared her Sour Patch Kids with me. The second best part was the end of the movie. Not because it was a great ending (you actually see it coming a mile away) but because it was over.

Dudes, it was awful. The plot had gaping holes and the acting was about as good as the acting on reality shows. It wasn't interesting. It wasn't scary. Ok, I totally jumped and covered my eyes a few times. But I'm not going to have bad dreams and I am not going to ask Gabe to come to the bathroom with me.

Not that I've ever asked that of him or anything, cough cough avoids eye contact.

Don't even rent it in a few months, unless you're looking for a good hearty chuckle. Because we ended up laughing a lot. And like Twilight, I am fairly certain that was not the intent of the people who worked on the movie.

Regardless, we might go see The Uninvited when it comes out later this month. Because if nothing else, a relaxing night out with my sister, watching funny movies sounds good to me.

i said shit

As I have mentioned, I never make resolutions. The way I see it, if you need to make changes to your life, just do it. Don't wait for the New Year. Don't set yourself up for disappointment. Just make your changes quietly and be on your way.

I do think it's a little funny that I have had a change of heart about this whole resolution thing. I guess I am just tired of feeling the way I feel, and it happens to be the New Year, and it'd be nice to tuck some major life changes into a single year rather than the more broad, "Sometime before I'm thirty..."

Which, by the way is in just under three years.

Three years is a long time to wait still, so someday I hope I'll look back and think of 2009 as the year I kicked the shit out of my shitty disposition.

I haven't done anything so far but cut me some slack, it's been a week. I had to breathe after all 2008 threw my way. I'll be in fighting form soon enough.

In the short term, I am excited about my new Valentine card designs, seeing a potentially awful horror movie tomorrow with my sister and maybe going to see The Wizard of Oz production at my old high school on Saturday.

But. But. I GAVE BIRTH to you.

Liam keeps calling me Daddy, which I guess is his universal word for AWESOME PERSON I GET TO SEE EVERY! DAY! and wipes my bum and reads me books and kisses my boo-boos. Which I guess I don't have a problem with.

for the love of

My exact response to seeing a Walmart commercial featuring the song "We Will Rock You" by Queen:
"WALMART, YOU WHORE!"

My exact response this morning when I was up before 4 again, and saw on the TV guide that Dawson's Creek* had been replaced by four episodes in a row of Moesha:
"GAH!"

My exact thoughts on being up this early again despite sleeping in this weekend:
"...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"


*I'll defend my watching Dawson's Creek in a later post.

killer buffalo

A couple nights ago I dreamed I was in a car with my best friend Laurel and I think her dad was driving. It was close quarters, the kind of space in dreams you don't question until you're awake. We were all squished in the front seat. We were traveling at a rather high speed on River Road, and her dad was driving on the wrong side of the road so I was afraid another car would suddenly appear from around a curve or hill. Then we saw the dead animals- squirrels at first, and Laurel shrieked so we wouldn't hit them. They were scattered everywhere. Just as I was thinking of what an unlucky bunch of squirrels that is, we approached a field full of dead animals, mostly neatly stacked in pyramids. I saw the pyramid of dead gophers, and dead cows. This is when the car disappeared and we were standing in the road. And we saw it: the giant, angry buffalo or something that had been murdering and organizing all the animals. He was looking at us, steam coming from his angry nose, and he was stomping the ground under his feet, waiting to pounce on us. We started running, and I was suddenly really pissed that we weren't in the car anymore. We were running to the nearest house, which had been built on a cliff and was stacked on rocks. We climbed up the front and felt a little triumphant because obviously the buffalo would not be able to scale the rocks as we had. But as we made our way to the back of the house we saw that it was built right on the river and the buffalo just had to charge up the hill on the side and could easily find us. The house had no doors.

I woke up with my heart pounding and therefore had trouble going back to sleep again. This past week Liam's been struggling with some new teeth coming in and he woke up at 4 a.m. two times and wouldn't go back to sleep until after 9. In return, Gabe let me sleep in both days this weekend, and I slept longer than I expected or even thought I could anymore. No more dreams of killer buffalo. Just having killer headaches and all-around yuckiness.