avablog

I thought it would be cute to take Ava to her first movie last Friday evening.  Pixar’s latest, Ratatouille, is out, and it looked really good.

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Somewhere along the way, Ava’s become concerned with people on motorcycles and bikes who don’t wear helmets.  She absolutely delights in pointing out every time someone goes by with no headgear on. She and I were standing in the front yard during the move two weekends ago, and a woman rode past us without a […]

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I was putting Ava to bed this evening, telling her a story about Terry the worm, and she asked me out of the blue if I have nipples.  I said I did.  Then she asked, “Are you going to feed me?”  I told her she’s a big girl now, and she eats big girl food, […]

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What a weekend!  There are still some boxes sitting around here and there, and there’s certainly some stuff that needs to be put away, but we’re in now. I had a nice Father’s Day.  Ava gave me two beautiful ceramic tiles that have her hand prints on them.  Leah gave me a gorgeous framed print […]

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One of the coolest things about having a child, IMHO, is contemplating the things they’ll live to see.  Space elevators.  Cure for cancer.  Robot revolution that rises up to destroy all humans.  Stuff like that. But one of the –  if not the — coolest prospects is finding life on other planets.  There’s a story […]

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Leah and I are trying to keep an eye on Ava for signs of stress or discomfort during our relocation. She seems to be doing pretty well, but we do get the sense that she’s off just a bit. So we’re trying to do fun things and get plenty of ice cream and read lots […]

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It’s the weekend that wasn’t. At least if your idea of a weekend is taking it easy, kicking around downtown with a coffee and maybe taking a long stroll through the park. No. This wasn’t one of those.

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Aren’t they all misc. items? Anyway…. My mom’s presently wending her way up the Mississippi on a five-week bike trip from NOLA to Lake Itasca. It’s her second time riding the length of the river, only this time she’s going uphill. God love ‘er. The upshot is that Leah and I get to stay at […]

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You have to be pretty oblivious not to be bowled over now and again by the plain old biology of this whole child-rearing thing. It’s easy to get caught up with all the financial and school and medical stuff (which is really all financial stuff, actually), but sometimes I’m caught off guard by the simple […]

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UPDATE:  The bank accepted the check for deposit without any hassle.  I love my bank.  

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Life isn’t fair. It just isn’t. I recently found out that my dear friend and college roommate, M, has advanced-stage breast cancer, for which there is no cure. She was newly pregnant with her first child when she was first diagnosed last year, and she had to terminate the pregnancy to begin an aggressive round […]

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I hear that a lot these days. I’ll run into someone, usually at work, who hasn’t seen Ava in a while, or who knows I have a child but isn’t quite sure what sex it is or how old it is, who asks. And these days I say, “Two and a half.” The reply, almost […]

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Yesterday morning at work I read a story in The Wall Street Journal about a little girl named Penelope who is fighting what will likely be a fatal cancer.

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It’s like things are picking up steam, and I know it, but I’m not willing to confront it.  I have this silly idea that somehow, some way, everything is going to get done with the move and the new house on time and on budget.  Go ahead.  Laugh if you want.  On the Internet, no […]

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Ava was in bed with us this morning about 6:30 as we were getting ready to roll out of bed.  She was just kind of playing around and chatting to us and to herself about nothing in particular.  Then, out of nowhere, she rolled towards Leah and said, “You have sweet nipples.” Leah broke into […]

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I was reading a blog post yesterday by an EMT who was describing the consequences of not wearing seatbelts.  He went into some detail about the various things that happen to a body when it goes from moving, say, 40 m.p.h. to 0 m.p.h in the space of a second.  There were obvious things, like […]

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Poom Poom shipped Ava a kite a couple weeks ago, and we’ve been waiting for a warm(ish), breezy day to give it a go. Today was the day. It wasn’t just a good day to fly a kite. It was an awesome day to fly a kite. Near perfect. Ava’s kite is a little ladybug […]

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I was sitting at my desk today when the phone rang.  I’d barely said “hello” before I heard Ava’s sweet little voice say, “Hi!  I went poop in the potty!”

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Leah and I have very different taste in music.  This Friday, my brother and I are meeting Kevin up in Decorah for a Kurt Elling show. I understand that Kurt is not to everyone’s liking.  So be it.  I don’t listen to much Top 40.  I’m looking forward to the show.  Leah recently got us […]

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Mark always swears that, for one disconcerting moment, he thought the surgeon had pulled a miniature version of my father from my abdomen during Ava’s delivery on September 17, 2004. He says that Ava looked just like her “Poom Poom” (the name my father actually WANTS Ava to call him) in those first few seconds […]

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