We skied, snowshoed, read and played Angry Birds. It was fantastic.

Apparently, Eleanor occasionally uttered a plaintive “Mama” or “Dada” when she saw our picture on the fridge or on my mother’s computer. And that was about the only evidence she missed us. Both she and my Mom did great.

Next year in Fargo!

]]> http://thefamilyroll.com/2011/01/the-cold-option/feed/ 0 http://thefamilyroll.com/2010/09/historic-events/ http://thefamilyroll.com/2010/09/historic-events/#comments Sun, 26 Sep 2010 18:30:14 +0000 dmjg http://thefamilyroll.com/?p=979 It is an historic time in Northfield. After some 36 hours of straight, very heavy rain the Cannon River has set a new flood record and broken its banks. Fortunately, there is mostly empty space (walkways, parks etc.) bordering the river, so the damage isn’t too severe. One unfortunate exception is Froggy Bottoms Pub, which you can just make out across the river:

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”.

Speaking of good friends, we had a 24 hour visit with the Zemensteins. Rebecca was in the Cities for the Uptown Art Fair, so they stopped in Northfield for a night on their way back home. It’s always slightly sad hanging out with Ryan & Rebecca because it makes me think about what might have been: we were only really starting to get to know them when we left Chicago and we get along with them so well, it’s a shame we didn’t cross paths sooner in Chicago.

Perhaps the highlight of the visit was watching Rebecca’s mad toddler-entertaining skills in action. I thought I was pretty good at playing with kids. But wow. This is how you play with a toddler. It never occurred to us to let Eleanor play in her toy box. Genius!

Ezra & Elle check out Sandy's new iPhone

Sandy, Sarah and Ezra (of baby-zombie fame) are in town. We’re having a wonderful time catching up, watching Eleanor & Ezra together (although they are largely ignoring each other. Eleanor pays attention long enough to take whatever Ezra happens to have in his hand), and generally just chilling out.

On Friday, we spent some time in Carleton’s library digging up information on Sandy’s grandfather and great uncle, both of whom attended Carleton back in the 1940s. We first made our way to the old year books, where Sandy found a picture of his grandfather as a freshman and his uncle as a senior, hanging out with Cab Calloway when the latter visited Carleton, in the 1941 yearbook. We then headed to the archives, where Sandy got a copy of his grandfather’s transcript. Pretty neat.

Sandy pointing out his grandfather in the 1941 Carleton year book.

Sandy's great uncle with Cab Calloway

What were the children doing while this research was going on? Having a total blast in the stacks of course. Who would have guessed that a library would prove to be so much fun for two one-year-olds? Fortunately, the books are packed too tightly for a one-year-old to pull out, so we really let them run free.

In a wonderful Carleton moment, Emily, Sarah, Ezra and Eleanor were sitting outside the archives office on what is supposed to be the super-quiet floor of the library. Not so quiet with Eleanor and Ezra tooling around. A woman came out of her office and said to Emily, “You know, we don’t usually…” Now Emily thought the sentence would end with something like, “…allow children down here.” But what the archivist actually said was, “You know, we don’t usually have so much cuteness down here.”

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