ava's blog

Note: No, it is not tank top weather in California. In fact, the photographer was wearing a tee-shirt, a long sleeve shirt and a wind-proof jacket. Ava's just crazy.

today we took advantage of a glorious break in the winter rains, to take a trip on a row boat around stowe lake with heidi and delilah. it was the first time that ava was interested in trying to row, and also the first time i was "forced" to row, as there were no handy males to put to the task. we had a bumpy and mildly embarassing departure from the dock, but i gradually got the hang of it, and we ended with a reasonable amount of style.

forget call centers and software engineering... i've got a new job that can be performed remotely from an offshore location... babysitting! where, you ask? canada, of course! and, specifically, grandma.

after nearly a year of refusing to say anything to anyone on the phone, ava finally agreed to talk to grandma a couple of weeks ago. in true ava style, when she crosses a threshold, she does it with gusto. that first conversation lasted nearly thirty minutes, during which time i cooked dinner, ate dinner and cleaned up from dinner!

this weekend's conversation took place in our back garden, so i took the opportunity to snap some pics of ava's expressions and adventures while on the phone. when this conversation crossed the 30 minute mark, i tried to get ava to give me back the phone. "no mommy, i want to talk to her for a few more minutes!!"

more silly pics of ava on the phone.

lately ava has been enjoying a) the oodles of window stickers that grandma sent her and b) her fairy wings. the best part of the window stickers is that there are lots, and lots, and lots of them.

perhaps unexpectedly, there are also quite a few pairs of fairy wings. at generally ~$7 a pair, i opted to stock up on a small collection, to avoid any unnecessary fairy wing conflicts when ava's little friends come to visit. of course, in the absence of her friends, ava likes to dress mommy and daddy in fairy wings too. i really need to take a family portrait of that soon!

okay, yes, i know, we've been seriously slacking on the pictures around here lately. that doesn't mean we've been slacking on little adventures though ....

since january has been a rather rainy month, ava and daddy have had to branch out from their usual playground or bike adventures. they've been downtown to see to see a movie twice, and then out to dinner for a fancy meal at denny's. at denny's ava got to peruse the menu and order her pancakes - all on her own!

this sunday there was a welcome break in the rain, so ava and daddy took the train down to the ferry building, then took a ferry over to sausalito. they hung out with the rich and famous for awhile, and enjoyed the view across the bay, before hopping back on the next ferry home. unfotunately, i sent them off with a camera with a dead battery, hence all we have to commemorate their adventure is this iphone snapshot.

when ava is quiet during her "nap time", i'm finally coming to realize that one of two things is going on. either, she's asleep (rare) ... or ... she's up to something.

a few weeks ago, we tucked in for nap with a set of markers in her room . . . and ducky emerged with some interesting "make-up". last week, it was a pair of scissors. thank goodness it was only an inexpensive fairy doll that came out an hour later with a buzz cut!

this week it was a box of bandaids. apparently, ducky had a few accidents. we hope he feels better soon.

on january 9th, 2010 ava and paulo launched their future soccer careers.

now, paulo comes from solid, brazilian, soccer-playing stock, so we were all pretty optimistic about his performance on the field. ava... not so much. although there are many athletic endeavors that john and i enjoy, we both discovered our athletic sides later in lives. also, ball sports... or for that matter... team sports? yeah - we're really not very gifted. in fact, it would be fair to say that i am, in fact, notoriously ungifted. (cue ye old story about cailin sitting down in the grass and picking flowers in left field of a baseball game.)

to try and save ava from a similar fate, many advised getting her started on some sort of ball sport and an impressionable young age. soccer is a popular one in san francisco, so, here we are.

although i had very low expectations for ava's introduction to soccer, i have to say, she far exceeded my wildest dreams. knock me over with a feather ... she just ran out there and ... played soccer. i'm certainly not saying that she looked like the next . but she did it. she kicked when they said kick, kept track of which ball was her ball, stopped when they said stop, and mostly remembered the rules of the game.

i'll be damned .. . maybe she's not exactly like her mommy after all!