Eleanor loves the attention. The minute her investigators arrive at the door, she is instantly refreshed and ready to be adorable, vocal, chipper and, to be honest, pretty manic (See my books! See my shoes! See my dog! See my mom! See my yoga mat! See me do “yoga” (kicks legs and cackles)! See my books again! See my other shoes!). I swear I give her plenty of attention, too, but I suppose she requires the status of sole subject of scientific study to have her attention needs fully sated.

Yesterday, the students brought a microphone to record Eleanor’s chirps. She did not fail them and prattled on for 50 minutes. Our tireless students followed her around the house with the microphone held down at her lip level for optimal recording quality. She loved every minute of it. “Finally!”, she thinks, “someone is getting this down!”.

Eleanor is not the only *roll who is getting some recognition, lately. The Counterfactuals (Daniel and Jason) were voted the Best Band of Northfield for 2010 by the Northfield Guide and Locally Grown Northfield. It was announced on KYMN this morning and the copies of the guide should be out today.

Complete. Rockstar.

There is an entire patio below the one you can see . It is (was) Froggy Bottom’s patio and it’s now filled with massive carp. The National Guard is in town and all the bridges across the river are closed. Exciting times.

But wait there’s more. This Saturday Northfield was graced with a visit from the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile, which is, of course, an event unto itself.  Saturday was also the inauguration of Carleton’s 11th president. Now someone involved with the inauguration with a keen sense of history — perhaps our new Prez? — made the prescient decision to meld these two historic occasions by having the just inaugurated President, along with some other Carleton faculty, make a trip to the Wienermobile in their academic gowns (man, you gotta love Carleton). Lucky for me, we were walking by the Econofoods just as the faculty pulled up. When I saw the synthesis of these significant events, I ran home for the camera:

Any President that makes a point of having his photograph taken in front of the Wienermobile on inauguration day in his Harvard gown is sure to do a swell job. How could he not?

Finally, my parents are in town which means lots of sleeping in for Emily and I while Lu takes Eleanor in the mornings. We’ve taken many trips to the park across the street where all had a good time. I also managed to put together a very short art film about a man coming to grips with being in a video. It is, of course, a metaphor for death. I call it, “Well, now I’m in a video”:

Emily’s addendum:

Daniel neglected to mention that while Northfielders were filling sandbags and delivering sandwiches to relief workers, I was heroically emptying our basement of water. We have an unfinished basement so nothing was seriously damaged but I have now logged 48 Shop Vac loads of basement water. I think this feat was blog-worthy. Since Daniel was “sick” and then “picking up his parents”, he only clocked 2 loads.

Also, in case people were wondering, New New Mommy Daycare is going swimmingly. Eleanor loves playing with the two 3-year-old boys and her 1-year-old boyfriend T., who also migrated from New Mommy Daycare. She is full of smiles when I pick her up and finds that New New Mommy is a pretty awesome person. She is the only girl in the group so we’ll see what, if anything, comes of this.

In other Eleanor updates, she has discovered the word “no”. She says this when she means “yes, please”, “I want it now,” “I’m tired,” “I’m hungry” and, suprisingly enough “no.” Yesterday was the peak of her “no”-ness and today – thankfully – she seems to be coming down a bit on the unwitting negativity. She has also discovered the hard “k” sound at the end of “booK” and “ducK” and repeats these words ad nauseum when she isn’t saying “no”.

This past weekend was Defeat of Jesse James Days, a fantastic four day festival that commemorates the citizens of Northfield  chasing the James-Younger gang out of town (“Get you guns boys, they’re robbing the bank.”) The mainstay of DJJD are the bankraid re-enactments that happen several times a day. Before each re-enactment, there is a (lengthy) retelling of the story of the raid. This year, the DJJD organizers decided to add a Spanish version of the story to one of the reenactments and advertised this on the DJJD Facebook page. This was not well-received by a number of people who left offensive and ridiculous comments. Fortunately, a whole series of people weighed-in in response, including many members of the Carleton community (I left my first comment about halfway down. As you can see, I chose to take the low road. At one point, I ascend to the middle road before going back to the low road again.). For all the progressive people in Northfield, it is still a small, rural American town, with all the good and bad that that entails. People’s reactions to the Spanish telling of the story brought the point home in a stark way. That and all the Tom Emmer signs around Northfield. Shudder.

Raspberry picking at our CSA. Seriously wonderful.

Fair warning, folks: I’m going to get all “Sunrise, Sunset” in this post so if you’re not in the mood, move on.

We’ve been in Northfield for just over a year now. I remember when we were making final plans to choose Northfield over New York City, I warned Dan that I would likely cry every night for the first 3 months. I feared being friendless, lonely, isolated and further from a Trader Joe’s or Vietnamese sandwich shop than any person ought to be. Reader, I haven’t cried once.

Living in Northfield really suits us. For example, Dan’s gigs start at 5pm (as many of you know, we are often asleep by 10pm). But, more importantly, living in Northfield has also encouraged us to change the way we live. The lack of stores selling essentially prepared foods (I’m looking at you, TJ’s) has forced us to learn how to actually cook, which we enjoy immensely. Our large swath of much-less-than-perfect lawn encouraged us to plant a vegetable garden and pumpkin vines which nicely distract the eye from the scourge that is our grass. My fear of being lonely led me to be aggressive (uh, maybe “assertive” is a

CSA Haul or Why We Cook Now

better word) in making friends with other new mothers. Most of our friends in Chicago were our friends and I’ve really enjoyed having my friends. Living so close to the library has sharply reduced the amount of books I buy and having entire reference sections at my disposal has made it much easier to learn how to knit and garden. The astonishing fitness level and slender figures of our friends and neighbors has encouraged me to keep running and eat well.  The ecological conscientiousness of the town has led us (or guilted us, to be entirely honest) into being more responsible about recycling, reusing, etc. Being a nurse at the free clinic has forced me to learn how to take care of adults and discuss condom use or syphilis testing without embarrassment and not have a heart attack when I get a blood pressure of 150/90.

I do miss Chicago. I miss our friends there very much, especially at this time. I miss feeling anonymous and hearing the El. I miss my old job and my wonderful co-workers there. I miss, of all things, the lake. There are 10,000 lakes in Minnesota according to our license plate but none of them are in Northfield. But Northfield is most definitely our home now, lake or not.

Tonight my mother’s group is having a dinner to celebrate almost one year of parenthood. It’s been just under a year since we met at a “Baby and Me” class run through the school district. I remember agonizing over what to wear just before our first meeting and treating it like a first day of (baby) school. The women who I met that day and those who have joined our band over the months have turned into my most valuable resource and one of my greatest joys in Northfield. I am so excited to watch as our kids grow up together and to see whether or not Eleanor will eventially poke somebody’s eye out.

Summer Knees

We have been transitioning nicely into summer hours around here. To start, the end of all my day-to-day academic responsibilities coincided with the start of the World Cup. With the exception of the odd 30 minutes of Lawrence Welk, prior to last week Eleanor had basically never watched TV. In the past week, she has watched more TV (all of it soccer) than in her entire first year of life. And it seems like it is already having a deleterious effect. Now when she stumbles while walking she clutches her face, throws herself to the ground, rolls over three times and starts to cry with a distinct Italian accent. I’ve warned her that if she does it again, she’s getting a yellow.

Em's aunt DJ picked up the angel wings at a garage sale for $.25.

Three-generation walk

Last Sunday we headed a couple of miles south of town to visit the Valley Grove Churches. The two churches and graveyards sit atop a hill (neither in a valley nor a grove) and command beautiful views of the countryside around our town, including a small portion of restored prairie and some magnificent old Oaks. The churchyard has graves from the Civil War, WWI and WWII and is on the National Register of Historic Sites. The churches were built by Norwegian farmers in the mid 19th century. One church is stone and the other is clapboard; they are both white, spare and quite lovely. There are no longer used for regular services but do host a Christmas Eve service that I would love to go to one year.

The site is open year-round. There is no parking lot, no admission booth, no posted set of rules; and on a beautiful, warm and sunny Sunday, no people. It was just us and a pair of excited bluebirds.

This has got all the elements of a great story: a crime committed under the cover of darkness, defacement, anti-government agitation, random capitalization.

Behold the wall of Northfield City Hall from our front door this morning:

What happened? Well, according to local resident-cum-arsonist Mark Allen Cole, when life becomes “overwhelming,” you gather “a jug of gasoline, some paint thinner and pieces of bed sheets” and set your house on fire. Then, for added kicks, you drive to City Hall and light your car on fire to make a vague political point. When you flee the scene however, Northfield’s finest gets you. Luckily, no one was injured as a result of Mark Allen Cole’s life becoming overwhelming.

We were pretty excited. And so was Northield: here is a news clip featuring the event. They interview two local attorneys who took off time from work just to drive to the burned house to check it out. The blond, curly-haired one is our Kim. You can also note that the pan shot to City Hall starts with our house. Fame!

The arson drama was really just an introduction, however, to the main event: my discovery of Northfield News. Northfield News is our local paper which comes out 2 times a week. It’s sold in newsboxes around the neighborhood and usually features headlines about local high school sport triumphs and city council decisions. Clearly, however, it was the place to go for up-to-date information on the fire-setting. Since I have 3 papers due next week, it was also a fertile field for my procrastination.

And so I am very honored to present to you THE MOST BORING NEWS STORY EVER WRITTEN: “One of the world’s oldest barbers died here in ’40.” Yes, folks, one of the world’s oldest barbers died here in Northfield in 1940. As our friend T. pointed out, there must have been quite the backlog of articles to hold back this winner until 2010.

I am also pleased to present THE MOST BORING DRUG BUST EVER: “School search comes up empty” with the lede “Drug-sniffing dogs searching Northfield High School today found nothing illegal.”

There so, so much more. I’ll try to continue to share the very best of Northfield News with you all.

Also, for those of you who haven’t yet seen the proof, Eleanor is crawling:

She crawls! from Daniel Groll on Vimeo.

But we have managed to enjoy this month: we’ve skated, gone cross country skiing, Dan is playing hockey and Eleanor is no longer screaming when we put her in her little red sled. She even cracked a smile in the sled yesterday when Dan was making donuts with her while skating on the ice rink (and afterwards, she fell asleep in his arms while he was skating around and harassing me to learn cross overs). We make a lot of soup and hot chocolate.

February is an exciting month for us: we are going to Chicago and leaving the baby with Lu and Aubrey for 3 days. I have my first papers due and a “Nurse’s Day of Action” in St. Paul. P & V are visiting at the end of the month. I also start working at a local free clinic for the uninsured. We also have this giant 8-month-old who we get to cuddle and carry around and marvel at as she discovers her toys and the world around her and fine tunes her hatred of bearded men.