Are All the Good Things Fading?

For the better part of the weekend Christian and I (and pretty much everyone we know in the city) walked around feeling depressed about the family that lived in the marigny/bywater neighborhood and was the subject of a cold, brutal, vicious, and disgusting attack last week. We, like many other people, found ourselves second guessing our decision to stick around. The reasons why we want to be in New Orleans and why we want our daughter to grow up in this place somehow seem less significant. Maybe being a mother has made me a ninny, maybe there is just too much more at stake these days. For now we are here and it is taking every ounce of courage inside of me to pretend like it is the right decision.

Almost as if the city has a keen awareness of the sentiments of its residents, things sort of fell into place and reminded us about the good things. During my brief lunch break on Friday I crossed through Lafayette Square to meet Soheil for coffee and there was a bikini clad girl sunbathing in the middle of the Square. Then Soheil (who I haven't seen in over a year) was talking about how he thinks he might move back to New Orleans next year with his girlfriend. Lately I hear much more about people leaving the city so this was inspiring. On Saturday night we went to a Twelfth Night pary to commemorate the start of the Mardi Gras season at our friends' house. They live right around the block and are the reason we are living in this house now. It was a great party and we spent time with friends and other families from the neighborhood. I appreciated the reassurance and the reminder that it is possible to have fun and enjoy being a New Orleanian.

This morning after La Luz, Loki, and I trekked to Audubon Park in the early morning rain, Christian and I decided to take La Luz to the zoo. She really hasn't stop talking about the time she spent there last week and we needed a bit of a distraction. We are starting to worry that she might be becoming a bit addicted to her Dora dvds. We made it through an entire weekend without watching any tv but she asked for the Dora dvds quite a bit. Here's a picture of me with La Luz in front of the gorillas. The silver-back is really frightening as far as I am concerned but La Luz loved it:


As for other news, La Luz has decided that she loves the Virginia t-shirt pop picked up for her during his last trip to UVA. She didn't want to take it off on Saturday morning when it was time to get ready for the birthday party:


La Luz went into a space walk at her friend Bruce's birthday party. She loved it. I was a bit worried about it but she did fine and some of the older girls helped her down the slide (spacewalks have changed a ton since my day). After the birthday party visited with Aunt Molly who is back in town for a while:


La Luz's weekend ended perfectly as far as Christian was concerned. She ate some of the sausage he grilled and then lounged around on his lap while they watched the football game. Like father, like daughter - or something like that.