mamapants

Hi! We're back! I guess I neglected to mention that we were leaving town this week, a fact that was pointed out by someone who just assumed I was being a bitch and not answering my email. Truth is, we were partying around Asheville, where my dad was working on a family friend's house. Work on the house = staying in the house = free vacation! Wooo! This picture is from the front porch, where we spent many valuable hours staring at the trees and wondering if/when we should get up and do something. Two guesses what we decided on THAT question.

So we were out. But before we left, we had many things to do, including spending last Sunday touring our state's capital - we decided that since we're all hardcore North Carolina love these days, we should know something about the place. Like who the governor is, or perhaps what the capital might be. Now we know! Thanks, Raleigh!

So, for your viewing pleasure, have some pictures, just to prove that I'm not making all this up from the safety of my desk. Here are Rob and Norah on their way to the courthouse:



And here is Norah, embracing her genetic predisposition to badness by (gasp!) walking on the grass of the courthouse lawn. Grass that, might I add, was as thick as a mattress, probably because other people are considerate and immediately chase their kids off of it instead of laughing at the picture of said kid wrestling the "Keep Off" sign to the ground:



There were several statues of prominent North Carolinians floating around the grounds there, and we tried to get Norah interested in who they were and what they did. However, she was more interested in screaming and running away, because they were eight feet tall and had very serious, somewhat menacing expressions, a requisite for getting your own statue, I guess. She did like the cannons, though, and insisted on looking into every single one. I have to hand it to Raleigh - those cannons were clean. Well done, cannon sanitation department.



After dragging the kid around the courthouse - I mean, exposing Norah to our state's history - we went to Exploris, a kids' museum in the area. While some of the exhibits were maybe a little too old (the stock market exhibit didn't really get her going, but the little fake supermarket - ohh, plastic asparagus! how Nonos loves you!) we both enjoyed the eyeball window:



And Norah liked monkeying around with the joystick at the "Where We Get Our Water" exhibit, although she was somewhat concerned when she monkeyed it too much and it made a very angry noise:



And on the way back to the car, we encountered yet another learning opportunity:



The NC Cannabis Association was having their "legalize marijuana" rally, and while I say rock on to them for expressing their viewpoint and organizing the gathering instead of sitting on their couches eating entire bags of Cool Ranch Doritoes and waxing poetic about a crack in the wall, which is what I would be doing were I a member of their society, I am SO glad that Norah can't read. So, so so glad. I can barely handle it when she gets a splinter; I am not prepared to explain drugs and their illegality/desirability. I'm already scripting that conversation in my head for when she's 30 and needs to know.

What I don't yet have pictures of: Rob and me, touring the Biltmore Estate on Segways. OH MY GOODNESS, you must do this sometime, whether at the Biltmore or elsewhere. My parents bought the tickets for Rob for his birthday next month, and let me tell you, it's the best Rob Birthday Present I ever got. The tour guide took our picture several times, including once when I lost control and tried to kill several other members of our group, and promised to email them to me, so hang in there... the funny is on its way.

Posted in: Nonos photos, out and about, parenthood on 5/12/2007 at at 1:49 PM