avablog

In case any of you were getting sick of all the cute shots of Ava:

Shot courtesy Apple’s Photo Booth software.

I hate to dispense advice on this blog.  There’s too much of that going around these days.  But I read something today that rang true with me, and it seemed like such an important thing, that I thought I’d better at least write it down here, even if I didn’t make it look or sound like advice.

For those of you who don’t have kids and are planning to, make sure that you savor those moments when you come home and are treated like a rock star by your child.  Leah was home with Ava today, and when I got home from work, Ava was standing in the window waiting for me.  After I put my bike in the garage and came back out where she could see me, she waved madly and knocked on the window and smiled so widely I almost thought she was crying until I got up to the window and saw she was bouncing on her toes in anticipation.

It’s one of the best things in life.  And I know it won’t last.  Which makes it even sweeter.

I live with someone who loves shoes.  On second thought, I don’t know if it’s the shoes so much as shopping for the shoes that’s the drug.

I don’t like shopping for anything.  If I must shop for something, I’ll try to do as much recon on the front end as I can to minimize the time I have to spend in a store.  Research the item online, and if I can’t buy it online, find out who sells it locally and make sure they have what I need in stock.  Finally, make a quick, surgical strike on the B&M location and procure what I need.

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Leah’s sick today.  I believe I’ve mentioned before that she and her sister are emetophobes, which makes being sick even more of a challenge.   So, she was in bed early.  I put Ava to bed and then spent a couple hours shoe shopping online (which I do once every couple years).

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Everyday life is full of pitfalls.

I was wrapping a present for Ava two nights ago, and emblazoned across one corner of the huge box were the words “Easy Clean.”  In quotes.  Like it wasn’t really easy to clean.  Why the quotes?  I suspect there’s a lawyer behind them somewhere.  It would be nice if the items in this gift were easy to clean.  It’s a box full of play food to accompany the big kitchen set Leah picked out for Ava.

Why, I can just see myself initiating legal action after realizing that it’s much more difficult to clean oatmeal off a plastic strawberry than I thought it was going to be.  Time is money, people.

It’s a real (damn) shame that what I’m passing off as hyperbole above is totally within the realm of acceptable recourse for some parents out there.  And those parents will likely raise their own little litigious courtroom monkeys.  If there are still lawyers in the future.

The only time I ever get in Old Navy is when I’m with Leah.  Something about that store makes me uneasy.

As I was standing near a table full of zip-front fleece jackets today at noon, I happened to look at the care tag on one of them.  Made in Nepal.  Nepal?  I pictured warehouses full of Sherpas sitting at sewing machines.

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In case you wondered where I get my flawless fashion sense:

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Here’s a peek at our Christmas tree this year. As we were piling on the ornaments, Leah and I concluded that either we’ll need a bigger house for a bigger tree (in process), or we’ll need to cull our ornament collection. Maybe we’ll do both.

This weekend is shaping up to be Christmas Prep Weekend 2006, so long as Ava seems in good health tomorrow morning.  Plans include Christmas tree search and acquisition, breakfast and ornament shopping in the Amanas, and various acts of senseless decoration around the house.

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It’s a day of updates.

We were at the hospital this morning to have Ava’s ear ventilation tubes checked.  They were inserted last October 28th in an effort to alleviate the months and months of ear infections our little bunny endured.  After the surgery?  Not one infection in 12 months.  In fact, we knew one of the tubes had come loose when Ava got an ear infection recently.

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I don’t know if you’re the kind of person who handles unexpected change well. I’m 36, and I still can’t decide into which camp I fall.

There’s been what news folks call “a development” in our house renovation plan. To recap, we recently retained the services of an architect and a builder to help us figure out what it was going to cost us to add another ~700 sq. ft. to our home. The dollar amount was a bit daunting.

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I don’t know if you can be a parent and not lament at least a little bit for the world in which your kids will grow up. Maybe it’s simply because of the aura around our own youth made it seem like there were no troubles, or at least that there was always someone around to handle those troubles for us. Maybe it’s because, as adults, we see so much more potential for all the nasty things going on in the world to affect our lives. Maybe those are the same thing.

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Ava’s Grandma Georgie was in town last weekend for a visit and to make cookies with Ava.  She also brought along a new Jan Brett book for Ava.

I think we’ve read this book 20 times since G.G. left.  Ava gets a huge kick out of the two trolls featured in the story, Mig and Tig.  Mig and Tig employ the talents of a hedgehog to steal all the Christmas accouterments of a little girl named Treva and her brother Sami.  Treva catches up to the trolls and teaches them about the spirit of Christmas.  All well and good.

But Mig and Tig are starting to get to me.

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In Ava’s forest of cuteness, one of the tallest trees is her hair. Leah likes to keep it nice and tidy, pigtailed, braided or otherwise pulled back, smoothed, and constrained.

I like it messy. In fact, I think Ava is often at her best, aesthetically and emotionally, when she first wakes up in the morning. Her hair is tousled and crumpled and hanging down in her face and all over the place. I guess I can’t really say exactly why I think Ava is so cute this way, but I suspect it might be a reaction to my own youth spent as a primped toddler. [Read more →]

My mother and mother-in-law are presently experiencing the consequences of a huge influx of (mostly Russian-sent) spam e-mail. According to a recent story at CNN, nine out of 10 e-mails are now spam. Just amazing. Say “Hello” to the botnet.
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No one’s ever asked me why I take so many pictures of Ava (and of everything else). I guess it’s pretty self-explanatory why I’d want to keep a fairly complete photographic record of my daughter. But if someone ever does ask me, I’ll tell them I’m trying to get a shot as good as this:

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These FedEx guys rock! China to Bumf*#k, U.S.A. in two days? El mundo es un panuelo, si?

We were driving to drop off Ava the other morning, and a couple blocks from the daycare, I saw a man walking hand-in-hand with his daughter. She looked to be about 9 or so, I guess.

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Ava has never been anywhere near being a chubby baby. She was a healthy 7 pounds, 9 ounces at birth, but that’s as high as she’s ever been on the weight percentile charts. Leah and I were…I guess “worried” isn’t too strong a word, for a while, that our little girl would have trouble putting on weight. But she stayed fairly healthy, and while she hasn’t gotten fat, she does seem to be growing steadily along the y axis.

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