avablog

Ava and I were in the side garden last evening after work, clearing some dead leaves and branches from the bed to make way for all the new greenery poking up everywhere. To our surprise, a clump of wet brown twigs were covering this beauty:

A teensy crocus straining to get some sun. I don’t recall ever planting any of these, so it must’ve come from one of the transplants my friend Laura gave me.  From the looks of things, the tulips and daffodils are not going to be far behind.

One of the coolest things about living with a toddler is that you get to see all their firsts.  Well, most of them.  Sometimes, of course, they’re off at daycare or with grandparents or in the other room, and you miss the actual moment.  But it’s still fun to share the thrill with them when you get the chance.

When we were in Decorah last weekend, Ava fell down the stairs for the first time.  This was a first that was almost certainly going to happen somewhere other than our home, since we’re pretty much all on one floor.  Ava had been doing a great job of going up and down the stairs by herself, and one of us always tried to stay close while she was practicing.  But we were all in different rooms — each of us figuring the other was watching her — when we heard that distinctive THUMP… THUMP…BUMP *pause* “WAIL!”

Turned out it wasn’t much of a tumble, but it was enough to give Ava a healthy respect for stairs, which will come in handy at the new house.

I’m ordinarily pretty good at handling stress, but these last couple weeks have started getting to me.  The impending move and all of its details are mostly to blame, but there have been other things going on that have contributed to my befrazzlement.

One milestone that I was glad to get out of the way was getting the purchase agreements signed.  We’re closing on May 24th and taking possession on the 28th…if all goes according to plan (and what could possibly go wrong?).  There are more details to get ironed out along the way, of course, but I think we have a pretty good handle on most of the stuff at this point.  Painters, plumbers, and electricians, oh my!

The main thorn in my side has been my totally unreliable Internet connection, provided by Mediacom.  The minute I went and signed up for their “VIP” package (Video, Internet, Phone), the I piece went to crap almost immediately, followed closely by the P.  And the V ain’t looking so good lately, either.  I’ve had three techs over in the last week to see what they could see, to no avail.  As I’ve suspected all along, the problems aren’t isolated to my residence; a neighbor up the block is dealing with the same issues.  I guess I’m more willing to put up with a dodgy ‘Net connection than I am a flaky phone connection, mostly because Leah gets irritated when she can’t use the phone, and an irritated Leah means an irritated Mark.

I dream about the day some main-line Mediacom tech leaves a phone message at my house saying he found a spot in the line where a squirrel had chewed through some cable.  Perhaps tomorrow….

So my mom asks me last night if I can help her this morning with a load of junk she’s hauling out to the local landfill. “Sure,” I say. I needed a ride to work anyway, since Friday is Leah’s day off.

My mom rolls up to our place at 7:1o. I hop into the truck, and we hightail it out to the landfill. Drive in, get weighed, and then head over to one of the dumpsters that awaits our deposit. It only takes a minute or so to unload everything. As we’re getting back into the truck, my mom comments on how quickly the unloading went. We drive back to the terminal to get weighed again, and the lady there says, “I’m impressed with your speed!” She then tells us what we owe: $7.32. I happen to look at the clock in the truck at that very moment: 7:32. Really. What’re the odds?

So, I went shooting off my mouth about working up a new theme for avablog now that it’s hosted at a new site. It seems like I should update the look around here. It’s been a while. But I’ll be jiggered if there’s not a downright dearth of simple, clean WordPress themes out there. So, I’ll see if I can find some time this weekend to work up something different, even if it’s only a new color scheme and fonts for the existing layout here.

We’re off to Decorah tomorrow afternoon for a couple days. Sounds like they still have some snow on the ground there (heck, it’s almost Minnesota, after all), so maybe we can build a snowman with Ava if it’s melty enough.

avablog now has a new home, thanks to my friend Greg, who graciously offered me a virtual domain on his site5 account.  It’s good to have friends in high places.

What this means is that the blog will have a much better uptime; it won’t come down when I, say, move my server to a new house (for example).  Everything else here should function pretty much as it has been, though I’m toying with the idea of a theme redesign.

Thanks for visiting, and I apologize for the recent inactivity.  I have a backlog of pictures of Ava now, so hold your hats for some major cuteness, coming soon!

I had an interview today for a new position at my office. It was an excuse to get dolled up a bit in my fancy duds, which typically only leave the closet when there’s a wedding or a funeral to attend. Here’s what I looked like:

That’s my JC Penney pose.  You can tell little Ava’s looking at her daddy like she doesn’t know who he is. Poor kid. Fortunately she doesn’t get a shock like this very often.

I’m a believer in buying locally, but I don’t think that local businesses should take advantage of my predisposition by not competing at all in the market.  For example:

Leah and I like the sink we now have at our house.  We’re talking about getting one just like it to put in at our new house.  The plumbers that came and gave us bids for the sink and other plumbing work said they wouldn’t be able to guarantee their work if we didn’t get the sink at a local dealer called Plumber Supply.  Plumber Supply is selling the sink we want for $340.

Leah and I were at Lowe’s a couple days ago looking at window treatments, and I stopped through the kitchen department to see what they had for sinks.  They’re selling our model for $184.  Now, why on God’s green Earth would I ever spend 50% more?  I could MAYBE see $200, and I might even go ahead and spring for the difference, but when you have plumbers going around making threats to homeowners about the quality of their work should you decide to try to save some money, that’s just low down, dirty pool.

In case anyone was wondering where Ava gets it:

As near as we can tell, this picture was taken when Leah was about Ava’s age.

The last week has seen Ava entering a new stage (phase, whatever) of development characterized by an unwillingness to go to sleep at night.

Over the past couple months, she’s been really good about going to bed in her big girl bed, reading a couple books, and then drifting off to sleep while we (mostly Leah) lie with her.  Takes some time, sure, but it’s great to be with her as much as possible in the evening after not seeing her all day.

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Here’s a rare public moment of cuteness for all you unregistered avablog visitors:

Ava was eager to get out and shovel the snow after the storm we had last Saturday, but alas, all we got was a bunch of ice and slush. No matter. She picked up her little shovel and got to work clearing the front sidewalk. She also enjoyed lying on the ground and drinking out of the downspout “like a doggy would.”

We’re talking about closing on our house deal toward the end of May.  That means Leah and I will probably move all our stuff out of the house over the May 19th weekend.  Whew.  That’s awfully close.  Because we’ll have some work done on the new place before we move in, we’ll live at my mom’s house for a couple weeks while she’s off biking from New Orleans to Lake Itasca (for you geography buffs out there, that’s the length of the Mississippi River — her second such ride).  She’ll be back around June 17th, so we’re hoping we can get everything done by then.  If this all works out, it’ll be something of a miracle.  Cross your fingers for us.

Ava has entered a stage in which she’s very interested in the differences between boys and girls. She’ll often make it a point to tell us a particular individual has either a vagina or a penis.

We were picking Ava up at daycare yesterday, and as we were getting her coat and mittens on, the father of one of her friends walked by. “That’s Olivia’s daddy. He has a penis!” We laughed quietly as we stuffed Ava’s arms into her coat, then bustled her out of the building ASAP.

Lately, Ava’s been doing a good job of verbalizing the things she sees. I was sitting with her at dinner the other night, and she looked into my eyes and said, “you have pretty eyeballs.” “Thanks,” I said, unsure. Another welcome milestone occured while Ava was sitting on the counter with me last night as I cooked her supper. I was standing in front of her, trying to ask what kind of vegetable she wanted, and she said, “I’m frustrated!” I asked her what was frustrating her, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. I’m sure it was me.

It’s very amazing to be around Ava. She picks up everything, and she has a memory like a steel trap. It’s particularly cool now to hear her talk about things that happened before she could talk, or talk so well. I’d always wondered if kids had any way to store memories as anything but images before they had the ability to give words to those memories, but I guess what happens is that the words come later, like explaining a dream.

It’s not because they cost me money every time they walk through the door, though that’s certainly an endearing quality.  No, the best thing about contractors is that they have an authority I don’t.  So when they tell Leah something that I’ve told her before and been dismissed for, she listens to them.  Thank God they don’t charge for doling out advice.

We were out this morning to meet with a pest inspector, a plumber, and a general contractor who might do our floors and put in a new kitchen countertop.  We’ve received one bid so far, for the floors, and it was pricey.  We’ll just have to see how all this shakes out.

It’s kind of sad to be glad that a weekend has passed, but I’m not going to miss this past weekend one little bit. Oh, it had its moments. We had a nice time with Leah’s parents, and there was some birthday celebrating going on. But there was a lot of hassle, too, and I hate hassle.

One positive thing I do have to say about ice storms, though, is that they make for some fun photographin’. Everything looks cooler and weirder with a good clear coat on it, especially everyday things like old wooden clothespins.

About 6 last evening Leah made the decision that we weren’t going to wait at home for the electricity to come back on. So we loaded up and slogged across town to the hotel. As you can see, it didn’t take Ava long to get settled.

That’s her monkey Butterfly sprawled out on the bed. Ava didn’t get to go swimming, which she was disappointed by, but she still had a great time “roughing it” with her grandparents.

I took some pictures of the ice yesterday before we left for the hotel. Enjoy.

Today is Leah’s birthday. It turned out to be a bit of a disappointment for her. I won’t say how old she is, but I will post this nice picture I took of her cake:

Anyway, we were supposed to go to Chicago to meet up with Kevin and Rachel (unbeknownst to Leah and Kevin) tomorrow, but the storm that’s moving into the area tonight will be here through Sunday, it appears, making travel less than ideal. Bah. I scrambled at noon and bought Leah a nice bracelet she’s been wanting for a while. It doesn’t make up for not getting a 75-minute massage at Bliss, but it’s something.

On a side note, you may have noticed that this blog has been down for a day or so. I’ll just say this: Always make sure that your router’s MTU setting matches your server’s Ethernet port’s MTU. That’s all.

Leah has some painters coming by today to give estimates on painting the new (to us) house.  I always forget how big a deal it is to pick out interior paint colors.  I’m a big believer in color’s ability to influence mood.  I’ve been happy with the colors we used in the house we occupy now, and the ones we’ve been toying with for the new place aren’t that much of a departure.

One exciting possibility is to go with something in the apricot range for the kitchen.  I spend a fair amount of time in the kitchen, and this space in the new house has some west windows that’ll really catch some beautiful evening sunlight; that’d be great for an apricot color, I’d think.

I’ll scan some of our color swatches this evening so y’all can have a look at we we’re doing.  Input is welcome, though not necessarily heeded.  🙂

Leah has designs to change many of the interior colors, but as you can see, the house is already pretty darn nice (I don’t mind the existing colors, but what mama wants, mama gets!).

Clicking on the mosaic will take you to the flickr set for the house pictures, which contains a couple shots not included here.

Our neighbor stopped by yesterday to tell us that she’s comfortable with the price we proposed to her for her house, so it looks like we’re going to move in May.  Only three months away.

There’s lots to do.  Leah wants to have some painting done and to get the wood floors upstairs refinished, too.  I’d like to have a gas line run for a new stove in the kitchen, as the current one is all electric.  There are lots of little odds and ends, including getting our place in shape for sale, which includes cleaning out the attic.  Ugh.  Best to do that before it gets hot outside anyway.