avablog

Dear, earnest Leah ignited a firestorm on her Facebook page the last couple days when, after posting a picture of Emmett and professing her undying love for the child, she received a comment on said picture from a friend who opined that the love a parent has for a child is a unique kind of [...]

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This is not a fancy, thoughtful post. It is just a quick list of things I want to write down for our children to read someday. I guess I’m just trying to do a brief snapshot of this moment in time in their lives.

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“The world is, the world is, Love and life are deep, Maybe as his eyes are wide.” I don’t tell my husband nearly often enough that he is a good father and a good husband–and that I love him to bits. This has been on my mind for awhile, but what really got me thinking [...]

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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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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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One room in his house was full of dusty clocks. There were tall grandfather clocks and round wooden ones. Mantel clocks and small alarm clocks. There was even a cuckoo clock with a tiny brown-and-white bird. And they all were set to go off at the same time, in a cacophony of chimes, dings, bongs, [...]

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That is all. Posted via email from nicheplayer’s posterous

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Question: Is it okay for one spouse to make a major, personal purchase (for an item worth more than $500) without consulting with the other spouse? (Keeping in mind that the spouses have separate checking/savings accounts and split the household bills fairly evenly between the two.) What do all of you blog readers think? Acceptable [...]

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You’re starting to figure out how to coordinate them in your endless quest for trouble, little brother. Though you’ve been creeping and stomach crawling for a couple of months now, this afternoon we hit a milestone: You crawled all the way across the rug on your hands and knees! Huzzah! What a grand way to [...]

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Dear Ava, Your dad always accuses me of never writing anything on this blog, so I thought I’d better log on quickly, at the end of this lovely Christmas Day, to document a few small, sweet moments from our recent celebrations. The first is a remark you made yesterday, after attending an afternoon children’s service [...]

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My dearest little one: Life isn’t fair, is it? Here we’ve spent hours and days writing odes of love to your sister, and all we’ve given you are some lousy “moment of cuteness” photo posts! I think this brief Emmett update is long overdue.

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Ava’s room is full of stars. At night, she turns on her special ladybug nightlight, and it covers the ceiling with either blue, green, or red constellations. She usually chooses the blue. Last night, after feeding Emmett, I went to check on her beneath her starry blue sky. She was huddled under her blankets, clutching [...]

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My dearest Big Girl: A few days ago, you came downstairs in jeans and a fancy shirt, carrying a small bag of your “play-pretend” make-up. You said, “I want to look like you, Mommy. I’m a grown-up.” My breath caught in my chest at the sight of my baby turned into a little girl, wanting [...]

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Neither Mark nor I has had time to post on this blog much lately. This summer, I suddenly realized that we both were spending more hours online than with our children or each other. I decided that moments spent in real time were better than moments spent documenting them–or trying to keep up on social [...]

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Leah just sent this along. I know it’s an issue close to her heart. Maybe a NOSSA membership would make a good anniversary present? Short People Debunk New Study on Height Short Men and Women Say They Are Butt of Jokes and Ridiculed Well Beyond Childhood But a new University of Michigan study published this [...]

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Whew. This morning was a doozy. Ava was insistent that she didn’t want to go to school, and Emmett’s fussiness from last night carried over into the daylight. At one point, both kids (weird…”both kids”) were crying away downstairs, Emmett on my lap and Ava to her mom on the sofa in the TV room. [...]

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Her balled-up little hand pressed against my black shirt in the dark of her bedroom. She whispered urgently, “Mama, you are my dark sky, and I am your bright, white moon.” My heart cracked open and flooded my body with all the light in the universe. I said, “Yes, you are, little one. Yes, you [...]

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Leah has an ingrown toenail. Rachel recommended a good soak in warm, soapy water to help with the infection and swelling. You’ll never guess who absolutely loved the idea of soaking her feet in warm, soapy water:

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I caught Ava in a relative moment of repose the other day and asked her a couple questions about the unborn baby. She was as forthcoming as she ever is, which is to say, moderately.

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“There are two tragedies in life: one is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.” –George Bernard Shaw I think it must have been the sight of the newly assembled co-sleeper in our bedroom, bathed in soft light. I can’t say for sure what triggered the feeling, but late last [...]

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