avablog

I found the dress in a secondhand store. It was brown, with sprigs of cheery flowers, in a size 2T, so I bought it on impulse and hung it in your closet, where it sat waiting for you. That’s how sure I was that you were going to be a girl. I could have confirmed [...]

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Ava’s kindergarten teacher, Ms. Michelle, warned us at the beginning of the year that we’d be surprised by how quickly Ava’s reading and writing took off after a short period of hesitation (a period we took, naturally, as a sure sign of some failure on our part to instill in our daughter a love of [...]

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Has hotel room service ever lived up to expectations?

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Do you clean the windows in your home (inside and out)? If so, how many times a year/decade? And if you lived in an old house (with old, difficult-to-clean windows) where the windows hadn’t been cleaned (inside or out) in at least eight years, and they were totally dull and grimy, would you spend a [...]

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Does it ever go away? That passing feeling that the incredible little person standing in front of you couldn’t possibly have arisen out of your life? I get it a lot with Ava, and it’s not even so much upon hearing some particularly bright or funny thing she’s said. Mostly it’s just seeing her. The [...]

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It’s like her artistic urges had been percolating all winter and only then were being released. Nothing like putting down some serious chalk to get you feeling back to normal.

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From a walk Ava and I took downtown and back this morning. I’m home with her today for the start of her spring break. It was just awesome to hold her hand and stroll down the street, talking about birds and flowers and what an amazing day it is. I could get used to this.

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Sometime today, Ava has a recital with her music teacher at school. The kids can choose to do pretty much anything they want, it sounds like, so long as it involves music. Ava, bless her sweet little heart, has decided to do an interpretive dance to Missing Persons’ “Walking In L.A.” Really. And judging by [...]

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Gramary took Ava out to a farm yesterday to see some goat kids. While there, Ava collected a bunch of eggs, one of which she asked me to scramble for her — with ham — last night when she got home. She was as thrilled as could be with her booty. This morning, Ava asked [...]

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There has been a request to post this video here so it’s viewable by a wider audience. Let it never be said I’m not responsive to my public.

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Leah calls this “ridiculous hair.”

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Really more like a cuteness explosion, to my mind, but far bet it from me to try to sway my readers.

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Let’s face it: The kid owes me something for my having stayed home with him all this week while he gets over his feverish coughing sickness.

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You’ll love him when you meet him.

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I remember plaid skirts and playing “Smurfs” at recess. I remember erasers and school lunches . . . the smell of Lysol and sweaty gyms. I remember feeling scared, shy, and homesick. Kindergarten and the early years of elementary school weren’t easy for me. I felt shy and socially awkward, embarrassed and overwhelmed. Welcome to [...]

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