avablog

How crazy are we to truck our 17-month-old out to Colorado in the family wagon?  I guess we’re going to find out.  We’re breaking up the trip into two days, which I’ve never done before.  I think if we can get Ava out of the car relatively frequently to run around a bit, we’ll all be OK.

We have a pediatrician appointment tomorrow that’ll tell us whether Ava weighs enough that we can finally turn her car seat around so she can face forward.  The “rules” state that you’re not supposed to turn the seat face-forward until your child weighs 20 lbs.  Our little lumpkin is a still a mere 19 pounds, but we’re hoping we’ve fattened her up enough recently so that she can look out the front window on the trip.  It may not make all the difference in the world, but we hope it’ll at least be a distracting change of pace.

Wish us luck.

I’ve only bought and sold a couple items on eBay over the years, but I have to say I find the place pretty fascinating.  I’m always amazed by the things people do and don’t bid on.  Items you think have no or very little value end up finding some funny niche and just confounding your expectations, while things you expect to do very well just sit there, ignored.

As of this writing I have three active auctions going, all of which are for old coins that came from my grandfather’s estate.  I was surprised that one of the coins, a 1908 Barber quarter, shot up in price to almost $48 on its first day at sale.  Meanwhile, two other sets of the same year’s coin (but different series) have gained almost no interest.

The best eBay surprise from the last couple days, though, was the auction for the old 802.11b Apple Airport card that came out of my mom’s dead iBook.  Before the end of the first day at sale, it sold for $100, its original price.

I may end up selling more coins if these current auctions all go well.  The nice thing about selling coins or other collectibles is that you don’t have to be a certified appraiser to figure out the value of your item.  Just let the market price it for you.

I’m wrapped up in a project at work that’s going to keep me away from my desk all day for the whole week.  I only checked e-mail once during the day today!  What kind of life is that?

So I was driving over to pick up our pizza last night (I had a Chicago-style, feta, roma tomato, spinach, and artichoke heart pie), and I was singing pretty loudly in the car to a song in my head (I think it was Jody Watley’s “Some Kind of Lover”).  Anyway, I wondered if I could make myself deaf by yelling at the top of my lungs.  Don’t you think there’d be some sort of internal check in a human being to prevent something like that?  Like, your yelling voice would only ever go loud enough not to make you deaf.

No, not one of those afternoons; it’s one where everything goes right.

I finally got VNC set up on my mom’s wireless iBook, which was a test run for our friend Jude’s computer when she gets her new MacBook Pro next month.  It took some doing and some help from Greg (as usual), but it’s running great now.
Ava and I got to take a nap together for an hour after she had lunch.  Well, she napped.  I sat there next to her and watched her sleep.  Then Leah got home from a shopping trip to the mall, and as she pulled into the driveway, I noticed one of our headlamps was out on the Volvo.  Great.  But it turns out the nearby hardware store carries the replacement bulbs we need, so that was a quick fix.

Then I went by Hy Vee to pick up some supplies, and I found these Russell Stover mints that my friend Marcia has been looking for.  I bought the six boxes they had on display.

Finally, I had just finished loading the groceries into the car when a man walked by and said he’d take my cart for me.  Nice!

It’s the little things.  Oscars tonight!  I’m pulling for Hoffman for BA and Williams as BSA.

I rarely do any big blowout recipes anymore.  There just isn’t time. When I do, it’s almost never a dessert recipe.  Leah and I were invited to a chocolate party last month that required us to make a dish to share.  Leah came up with this recipe for peanut butter chocolate buckeyes. The recipe itself is stupid-simple, but there’s a lot of rolling involved if you want to make a whole batch (we halved it).  This would also be a fun recipe to make with kids, though older kids than our little Ava. So, without further ado, I bring you:

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Buckeyes

• 1 (18 ounce) jar creamy peanut butter
• 1/2 cup butter or margarine (softened)
• 1 lb confectioners’ sugar (about 3.5 cups)
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 12 ounces chocolate chips (milk or semi-sweet)
• 3-4 ounces paraffin wax (I use 1/4 of a standard block)

1. Cream peanut butter and butter.
2. Add sugar and vanilla and mix well.
3. Form into 1 inch balls and refrigerate.
4. Melt chocolate chips with parafin wax in a double boiler.
5. Dip balls into chocolate with a toothpick about 3/4 of the way covered.
6. Place chocolate side down on waxed paper.
7. Let set at room temperature or refrigerate.

80 Buckeyes
45 mins prep

That’s how Ava pronounces her name.

Today’s a big day for me.  I’ve been trying to get Ava to say her name for a while now, and this evening was the first time I’ve heard her do it.

That it’s taken so long is our fault.  Leah and I have been calling her “baby” for a long time now.  Up until today, when we’re all sitting together Ava will occasionally point at Leah and say, “mama.”  Then she points at me and says, “dada.”  Then she points at herself and says, “baby.”  Technically she’s right, of course; She’s the baby.

The catch is, we want her to stay our baby.  And we want her to be Ava.  I guess what we really want is for her to be like Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing.  I’ll be Jerry Orbach’s character.  It’ll be great.

Our neighbors two doors down got a dog from the pound a couple months ago.  His name is Sampson.  Like a lot of dogs with neglect in their past, Sampson starts barking steadily if he’s left outside too long.  He’s part Rottweiler and part something else, so he has a fairly substantial bark.

Which is good, because Ava loves it when he starts barking.  Her eyes get big as soon as she hears him, and she turns to me and starts saying, “Dog!  Dog!”  Sometimes it sounds more like “Doc!,” but it’s close enough.

Leah’s upped the ante by explaining to Ava that Sampson barks because he wants to come inside and eat.  So now, when the barking starts, Ava puts her fingers to her mouth and says, “Dog!  Eat!  Dog!  Eat!”  An added benefit to what is already a very cute display is that we can often get Ava to eat something at this point by telling her the dog is eating too.  Anything to get some food into her.

Marcia sent along a review of a restaurant in NYC that has this dish on the menu.  I can immediately spot three dealbreakers for Leah, but it sounds fantastic to me.

• Salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 6 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
• 3 jalapeno peppers, seeded and cut into 1/8-inch dice
• 1/4 cup dry white wine
• 1 pound Dungeness crabmeat
• 1 pound spaghettini (recommended: DeCecco brand)

Bring 6 quarts water to boil and add 2 tablespoons salt.

Heat olive oil over medium heat in a 12 to 14-inch saute pan. Add garlic and saute until lightly browned, about 2 to 3 minutes. Add jalapenos and wine and bring to boil. Add crabmeat and remove from heat.

Boil spaghetti 1 minute less than stated on the package instructions and drain in colander over sink.

Add pasta to crab mixture and return to heat. Cook until most of the liquid is absorbed, about 45 seconds. Pour into a warm serving bowl and serve.

Ava wanted me to read a book with her this evening.  Lately I’ve been lying down on the floor in her room with her next to me as I read the book, which she seems to enjoy.

Tonight she pulled out good ol’ Pat the Bunny, which is a pretty popular children’s book that I just can’t stand.  But I read through it, front to back, like a good daddy.  When I was done, I asked Ava if she wanted to read another book.  She did.  She walked up to her overflowing bookshelf and stood there, looking.  I said, “Why don’t you get Barnyard Dance?”  She just stood there.  And she stood there some more.  Then, to my amazement, she grabbed Barnyard Dance and brought it over to me.

How did she know which book was Barnyard Dance when she was presented with only the small spines of four shelves of board books?  The color?  Is it possible she recognized the words?  Maybe she just associated the visual patterns of the letters on the spine (which are the same on the front cover) with the sound of “barnyard dance.”  I just don’t know.  But it’s really cool to see her making these connections, however it is she does it.

If you’ve taken the time to scroll this page down a bit, you may have noticed the rather prominent male sex organ pictured over in the menu on the right (the art aficionados among you may even recognize it). I’d encourage you to give the image a click (if you can bear to) and see what all the fuss is about.

Ava’s quickly figuring out that there’s very little that’s outside her reach if she’s only willing to crawl to get it.  What started out as an awkard scramble up onto the couch has evolved into a much more deliberate scaling of the dining room chairs.  Next stop, we figure, is the top of the table.  It’s only a matter of time.

I wish I could remember this period in my own life.  How unfair that time takes all memory of this miraculous time of development and exploration.  Every day, Ava learns something new about how her body and mind work.  I just hope she doesn’t learn too many things the hard way.

What a classic.  Kevin’s asked me a couple times what it is I do with the delicious free range chickens I get in bulk from a local organic farmer.  In the winter I’ll typically thaw one out and drop it in the crockpot with a little salt and pepper before I head out the door to work, and it makes a very tender main course by the time dinner rolls around.  When I have more time on the weekends, I’ll bake one in the oven and get the skin nice and brown and crisp.

Leah and I rarely scarf down even half the meat on these (usually ~4 to 5 .lb) birds, so there’s chicken leftover.  Today Leah came up with a great idea for a casserole.  I’ll jot the recipe down her for posterity (and for Kevin).  It was patched together from a couple different sources.

Chicken rice casserole

• 16 oz. diced cooked chicken
• 1 C. long grain brown rice
• 8 oz. sliced mushrooms
• 10.5 oz. condensed cream of chicken soup
• 10.5 oz. condensed cream of celery soup
• 1/3 C. plain breadcrumbs
• 2 T. grated parmesan
• 1 T. butter

Cook the rice according to the instructions.  Use chicken broth instead of water if you have it.  Get a big bowl and throw in the cooked rice, cooked chicken, soup, and mushrooms and stir it all together.

Grab a 9″x13″ casserole dish, grease it, and spread your mixed ingredients into it.  Mix the breadcrumbs and the cheese in another bowl, then melt the butter and dump it over that mixture.  Spread that topping over the ingredients in the casserole dish, and then bake the whole thing in a 400° oven for 35 to 45 minutes, until it bubbles and the topping is browned.

I wanted to add some slivered almonds, but I didn’t have any around.  That would’ve made a nice addition.

I’m pretty sure last night was the last night of Leah’s birthday celebration.  I’ll have to check with her to make sure.  If it was, it was a nice way to end the festivities.

We hired a babysitter and went out to dinner and a movie.  We hadn’t made any reservations anywhere, but we figured we wouldn’t have much trouble getting a meal.  The first two places we went were packed, so we made our way over to 126, which had a couple tables open.  As Leah and I walked through the pedestrian mall, we were amazed at the number of seriously drunk college kids everywhere (this is at 8 p.m.).  We spotted at least three huge bar crawls.

Our dinner was delicious.  I had a smoked duck breast with cherry glaze served over wasabi whipped potatoes, and Leah had a tasty little pizza (hold the garlic).  We didn’t have time for dessert, which was probably for the best.

We were then off to the glorious CEC Cinema III theaters for a late showing of Capote, which finally made it to Iowa City last week.  I’ve only seen two of the performances up for Best Actor at the Oscars this year (Hoffman’s and Ledger’s), but if I had to decide between those two, Hoffman would get the statue, hands down.  Ledger was very, very good in Brokeback Mountain, but Hoffman’s performance is on an entirely different level.  He was deserving of the Golden Globe.

Catherine Keener was also great in Capote, but I still like Michelle Williams better in Brokeback.  That’s going to be an interesting race come March.

I’ve been supplanted!  Replaced!  Thrown over!

We’ve been trying to get Ava to use her words for her Aunt Rachel and Uncle Kevin, and she’s starting to catch on.  She’s gotten pretty good at saying “Rashe” for Rachel, which is a good start.  She’s having a little more trouble saying “Uncle Kevin,” which she’s shortened to “unc.”

But what she lacks in pronunciation she more than makes up for in frequency.  As soon as Ava sees the telephone, she starts chanting, “Unc?  Unc?  Unc?  Unc?”  Over and over and over.  So Leah picks up the phone and dials Kevin, but Ava just sits there quietly on our end and smiles as Kevin tries to get her to respond to him.  Ava is clearly smitten.

I suppose she could do a lot worse.  Kevin’s a great guy.  But to gush about him so, and right in front of me!  Well, some days it’s more than I can take.  Clearly I need to spend more quality time with my daughter before she decides to pack her bags and move to Madison.

Ava got her first stomach flu yesterday, which wasn’t fun for anyone involved. She’s much better today, but I stayed with her at home this morning in order to adhere to the daycare’s policy of a 24-hour banishment for anyone who tosses chunks (little known fact: Leah and Rachel are emetophobes).

Also, the A620 came today. Wow. What a quantum leap from the A70. Expect to see lots (and lots) more pictures showing up on the gallery, starting today. I think I took 20 shots in the first five minutes I had it out of the box.

Finally, it’s my beautiful and talented wife’s birthday today. Since she’s a lady of refinement and poise, I’ll not reveal her age. Suffice to say she looks half her age and has brought me more happiness and comfort in the last three years than I could hope to have were I to live to 100.

Our season ended last night. At last. It was the first night of the tournament, during which teams play in best-of-five matches to determine who moves on. We played four games in our first match, winning the second one, but we just weren’t strong enough to finish off the other (again, all-male) team.

I decided a couple minutes into the first game that I was just going to throw until I couldn’t throw anymore. And that’s what I did. Near the middle of the fourth game I heard a “pop!” from somewhere in my left shoulder as I threw a ball, and I realized my time on the floor was drawing to a close. On the drive home my left arm just sat in my lap like a piece of meat someone had attached to my torso with a couple strips of sweaty fabric. As usual, I grabbed the icepak and a Wal-profen as soon as I walked through the door.

The team that beat us was one of the nicer teams in the league, so it wasn’t so bad losing to them. I doubt they’ll go all the way, but they have a better chance than we ever did.

Ava bit a kid at daycare today. Hard enough to break the skin, apparently. The daycare’s policy is not to name the bitee, so we couldn’t confirm the injury. I guess it’s like some sort of kiddie witness protection program.

Anyway, when we got to daycare at 5 to pick up Ava, she was sitting by herself in a corner, sobbing, since the other policy at the daycare when a biting goes down is to isolate the biter and give that kid a timeout. Leah was livid that a child as young as Ava had been given a timeout, since kids under two years don’t have any way to understand what their isolation means.

Now we’re wondering what happens if Ava turns out to be a serial biter. She bites us every now and again, and we always tell her to stop and ask her to use her “gentle touches,” at which point she usually gives us a pat and a hug. She’s still teething, which we suspect is part of the problem. It’s conceivable that she could be asked to leave the daycare if she chomps on someone every day, but I don’t think it’s going to happen; Ava’s a lover, not a biter. Hopefully the daycare workers will keep a closer eye on her when she moves in on one of her playmates now.

It’s an honest question.

There are some easy, obvious answers to this: Cost. Ease of use. Immediacy.

But there are other answers that only become clear as you move through the world. Perhaps the most important one can be illuminated by a recent experience Leah had.

When Ava was relatively newer in our lives, Leah had a professional photographer friend of hers come by the house and shoot some nice b&w portraits of our little punkin. At the time, I protested that I could probably take shots that were just as nice (or almost so) for less money and time, but Leah would hear none of it (she doubts my prodigious talent). So be it.

We kicked some money to the friend for her time and then waited to get a look at the contact sheets she produced. The pictures really were very nice, I have to admit. Well, at least the little tiny pictures on the contact sheets were nice. There was no way to view them any larger without paying someone to make prints from the negatives we had. What is this, 1982?

So we went to one of the two places in town that made prints from medium-format negatives. I won’t bore you with the cost. Suffice to say it was more than a nice lunch. We took those first prints, bought frames for them, and put them up around our house. More money and space.

But the best was yet to come. Because so many people in our town were now doing their own “developing” in front of their computers in the comfort of their own homes, one of the places that did medium-format developing closed its doors. Good riddance, I say. But it posed a problem. We now only had one shop where we could get more prints made, and that shop turned out to have really, really bad customer service.

Like, take-in-the-negatives-five-different-times-before-they-got-it-right type bad.

Along the way, Leah got plenty of “not my problem” feedback from the staff, including the owner. In the interest of fairness, I won’t come out and name the shop, just so Google doesn’t drag them through the mud.
It’s sad and frustrating, but as I was all too happy to point out, we could’ve ordered 4×6 digital prints from Walgreens from our dining room table and had them ready in less than an hour. Our new camera will be able to produce some really nice 4×6 in. prints, so it’ll just be a matter of capturing some suitable moments before we can kiss those nasty plastic negatives goodbye forever.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Canon S3 IS.

Alas, it won’t be available until May, which is a bit longer than I want to wait. Other likely candidates include the SD700 and the A700, both of which are due in March. Decisions, decisions.

EDIT: And the winner is…the A620. “What?” you ask? “Why not a new model instead of last year’s model?” Well, the A620 is a huge upgrade to our present A70, which came out in 2003 and has served us very well ever since. This year’s upgrade to the A620, the aforementioned A700, is way more camera than we need. And the price on the A620 was right. For just under $400 we’re getting the camera, a fast 1GB SD card, and free two-day shipping. Probably could’ve gotten a slightly better deal by hunting around a bit, but it’s always nice to shop with a vendor you can trust.

I was playing with one of Ava’s new toys this weekend on our trip to Decorah. It’s a magnetic drawing pad, something like an Etch-A-Sketch with a pen attached to it. After Ava took a shine to scribbling all over our hardwood floors with her Crayons, Leah figured it might be a good idea to get her something a little less destructive.

Since we’ve had the toy, I’ve begun to rediscover my inner artist. Kinda. Actually, my inner artist is probably a shriveled up little man hunched somewhere way down deep in my soul with a worn-down nib of a pencil grasped loosely in his (left) hand.

It could be that artistic ability skips from one family member to the next. My dad’s one of those people who could faithfully recreate Picasso’s Guernica from memory using only a soiled napkin and a lump of graphite. My younger brother returned from a trip to Italy and environs with beautifully detailed charcoal-on-paper renderings he’d done of the ruins in and around Rome. They both have the ability to translate what their eyes see into movements their hands make. Well, it’s more than that, really. I can draw a circle or a square or even a fairly accurate city bus, if I’m pressed. What they have that I don’t is an artistic sensibility. A style. My circles all come out looking like circles, while theirs look like something more than just a ring sitting there on the page. Even the simplest shapes rendered by them take on a depth that’s greater than the shape itself would normally convey.

For the last couple years I’ve toyed on and off with the idea of buying a drawing pad and some nice charcoal pencils to see if I can coax some latent ability out of these rusty genes. Even better than dead tech pencils and paper would be a Graphire tablet from Wacom. But $200?! “Add to Wish List.”

I believe that giving Ava the opportunity to see her parents doing creative things will engender in her an appreciation at least of creativity, if not of those particular things we do. She already seems to love watching a long, thin line trail from the tip of her Crayon as she drags it across a page. Maybe the talent in my father and brother has skipped me and found a home in her. There are worse genetic gifts.