avablog

It was a busy one. Our friend Judy was in town to receive some instruction on using her new 15″ MacBook Pro. It sure is a dandy little machine. I’m really looking forward to seeing what Apple comes up with for the iBook replacement. Judy really caught on quick. She was coming from an old […]

[Read more →]

Or at least to the 3/4-mile path between our house and daycare, which is where I’ll be towing Ava now that I got her a new bike helmet. I’m also trying to brainstorm other low-traffic routes that I can access from our house. It’s not so easy, especially with high school still in session a […]

[Read more →]

I’m not sure what ever possessed me to think to sing this as a lullaby to Ava, but, well, I did, and she seems to like it. It always puts her to sleep in a couple minutes. Anyone who’s ever seen Jaws will know the tune. Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies Farewell […]

[Read more →]

This time of year it seems like everything that can procreate is procreating. And rightly so. The water is running and tender shoots of grass are everywhere. All of my flowers and even the trees are loaded down with pollen, and fat bumblebees sometimes bounce right off our windows with dull little thumps in their […]

[Read more →]

[Read more →]

Leah mentioned a couple times over the weekend that it was one year ago that Ava had her first ear infection. Between that weekend and last October, she suffered through seven ear infections and finally ended up getting tubes put in, which stopped the infections (or at least the suffering that they cause). This year […]

[Read more →]

It’s a better way to tie a shoe! Why was I wasting so much time with the old method all these years?  Gah!

[Read more →]

My mother has generously provided for a new Burley for Ava to ride around in once she gets a helmet. Today I put it together and got it hooked up to my recumbent in preparation for the biking season ( I’ve been a bad biker and haven’t been on my Volae all winter). This is […]

[Read more →]

Or something like it. Yesterday Ava was outside in the yard with us when she started to fuss. It was weird, because she’d been playing around quietly by herself for an hour and didn’t appear to have any reason to be upset. We took her inside as her crying got worse. Then, out of the […]

[Read more →]

Thick fog lay between the houses and in the branches of the bushes and trees on our block this morning. The air is heavy with the aroma of budding leaves, and thin twigs grow slightly less-thin as sap runs under their delicate bark. The daffodils that grow in clumps at the border of the back […]

[Read more →]

We had a nice weekend in IL. The two basketball games we watched weren’t very good, and George Mason’s improbable bid for a national title has ended. Too bad. So sad. I’ve got new pictures up in the gallery, which, as it happens, has been updated to version 2.1. I’m not sure I love the […]

[Read more →]

We were driving through Denver on the interstate recently and were passed by a truck that sported this bumpersticker. I had to have it. In fact, I had to have a number of them, and thanks to my cousin Chris (that’s him on the right in the linked pic), now I do. There’ll be one […]

[Read more →]

So say the tulips and daffodils pushing up through the weathered mulch in our flower beds.  And the three male Cardinals whose songs we wake up to each morning as they try to impress the lady Cardinals in the neighborhood.  And the mosquito that landed on Ava’s lapel last weekend when we walked to the […]

[Read more →]

Get it?  “Roll?”  Like a day-old bakery item or a slow pedal down a backcountry road? OK.  Fine.  Anyway, I know I don’t brag on this woman nearly as much as I could.  Fact is, she makes me look bad!  How’d you like to be a 35-year-old man in good health whose 63-year-old mother can […]

[Read more →]

This morning I helped Ava on with her shoes and then sat on the couch for a bit and watched her toddle around the living room (though “toddle” is increasingly becoming an inadequate verb to describe what she’s doing; it’s walking, let’s face it). Fat beams of sunlight were streaming through our east windows, and […]

[Read more →]

Leah sent along a pretty fascinating article (NYT: soul-sucking registration required) today about Bedouins in Israel whose centuries-old practice of intra-family marriage is now yielding some rather horrific birth defects. My spirit really stumbled when I read about the father who, himself a victim of the mutations so common among his people, chose to marry […]

[Read more →]

We walked out of the elevator at our hotel in downtown Denver the other morning and were stopped by Ava, who was pointing up on the wall and saying, “Unc?  Eesh?”  That’s what she calls her Uncle Kevin and Aunt Rachel.  Leah and I knew they weren’t around anywhere, but we were mightily amused to […]

[Read more →]

…”I’m on my hands and knees, kissing the driveway.” As we drove into Grand Island under a steady drizzle night before last, I thought to myself, “Man, if it were a couple degrees cooler, this would be a real mess.” Guess what?  Yesterday we woke up and pulled the shades back in our tidy Holiday […]

[Read more →]

We’re having a great time up here in the mountains. There’s been lots of snow. Kevin is off snowboarding for a half day at Mary Jane right now, as a matter of fact. He and I went snowmobiling for a bit the day we got here, which was a lot of fun (except for the […]

[Read more →]

When you have a new baby in the house, it’s easy to get caught up in the wonder of it all (you probably hadn’t noticed from reading this blog). Since Ava was born — really, since I’ve been married — I haven’t found myself missing the single life.  Yes, now and then I’ll reflect on […]

[Read more →]