avablog

First time in 11 years we’ve been home with no kids, and all I can do is miss them. 

[Read more →]

Emmett’s on the brink of reading on his own. This morning, Leah opened up her laptop to find the ancestry.com page loaded in a browser (Ava had been looking at it). Emmett, looking over her shoulder, said, “ancestry.” We asked how he knew what that word is, and he replied, “I just did!” And just […]

[Read more →]

Not much breathing room this year between Thanksgiving and December. Leah made the executive decision to do all the holiday decorating this past weekend, and so that’s what we did. The weather was unseasonably warm, which made picking up our tree and balsam roping hardly chores at all. Almost before I knew it, the tree […]

[Read more →]

To whichever chemical process of the brain is responsible for those sudden, unanticipated waves of realization at how lucky I am for this life and the people in it, I humbly give thanks.

[Read more →]

Hi, Emmett. It hasn’t even been a week since you turned 3, but already you seem like such a big boy. You’re mastering the potty, at least at day care, where you’re now in “the 3s” with Kendra and your friends David and Oscar. You love scrambled eggs and ham for breakfast, and you’ve taken […]

[Read more →]

Ava’s just started riding her bike to school in the last week. It seems like we’ve waited a long time for our daughter to take to her wheels, but now that she’s up, it’s difficult to get her to slow down. The new method of transportation also seems to have reestablished her friendship with her […]

[Read more →]

agp summer dance It was pretty wonderful to watch Ava dance on the pedestrian mall this past Friday night. She was all alone out there, save for the shirtless drunk guy who appeared, wandered off, then reappeared to request his favorite song.

[Read more →]

petals n droplets I figure this shot alone justifies the purchase of my 100mm macro lens, even if I never sell a print. This flower has opened since I took this, and it’s beautiful, but I don’t think it’s ever going to be as pretty as it was in this moment.

[Read more →]

magnolia w bee The 2011 flower macro season. If you ain’t down with photos of pretty flowers, you’ll want to avoid my flickr stream for the next four months or so.

[Read more →]

baby blanket rocker To accompany the hat, of course. This is what I’d set out to make for a baby gift for Rachel and Kevin. It was the simplest pattern I could find and turned out to be a great first project. I had some yarn left over, so I made the cap, too. I […]

[Read more →]

knit baby cap I made this cap for Rachel and Kevin’s baby, who is due May 23. Not a great time of year to be sporting a wool cap, but hopefully they’ll get a little use out of it.

[Read more →]

ecp croci1 Here’s a picture of Emmett from this past weekend. He was marveling at the bursts of crocuses blooming in a neighbor’s yard; it seemed like a good opportunity for a spring photo.

[Read more →]

agp jump shadow Jumping rope is one of Ava’s new hobbies. Like everything she gets involved in, she wants to be perfect at it within minutes of picking it up. This approach is good for her focus and perseverance, but bad for her patience. The best thing to do is back off and give her […]

[Read more →]

Emmett now seems to be entirely over his recent bout with pneumonia, and Ava’s been crazy about getting out into the piles and piles of snow that still linger after our recent storm.

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

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.

[Read more →]

“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 […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

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, […]

[Read more →]