ava's blog

this is quatchi. quatchi is a stuffed animal that ava received from grandpa on her recent trip to thunder bay. (quatchi is also the mascot of the 2010 winter olympics.)

quatchi was a well liked addition to ava's collection of stuffed animals until one day, john suggested that quatchi was looking at lemon (the baby duck) a bit suspiciously. perhaps quatchi was going to eat lemon the duck?

well, from that day forth ava kept poor quachi and lemon well separated. generally speaking quatchi was imprisoned on a high shelf in the playroom, while lemon had the run of the rest of the house. every once in awhile, we'd get quatchi down and chase lemon around the house - just to here ava squeal.

don't worry, it gets worse.

last weekend, ava was riding her bike to the sushi restaurant and she fell. her first real fall on her bike, and although it was truly no big deal (a bruised knee) she took it rather poorly. ava does not exactly have nerves of steel - and thereafter decided she was too scared to ride her bike.

after several patient outings in which we tried to gently cajole her back on to her bike, we sort of lost patience. and then came the story.

the story goes something like this... it's important that ava learn to ride her bike, because that means that we need to drive the car less. (so far, so good.) we need to drive the car less because the car is powered by coal, and that coal comes from coal mines in venezuela. so, if she doesn't learn how to ride her bike, we're going to send away her little animal friends, one by one, to work in the coal mines in venezuela to dig coal to power the car.

and so...one more lame biking episode later, this is quatchi.... waiting to catch the bus to venezuela.

ava wasn't really very sad to see him go (because of lemon), but she is looking forward to his postcards.

flavia and i took ava and paulo on a field trip to gilroy gardens. the best part of this trip was the fact that gilroy gardens has a wide variety of rides that children over 38" of height can ride all on their own. it was pretty cute watching ava and paulo troop off all on their own to be spun round and round in circles while smiling madly.

i also realized its pretty hard to take pictures of kids spinning round and round in circles. all was not photographically lost though - on the few rides that i did need to accompany the kids, i wound up with some pretty amusing series of close-ups. click here for the full gallery.

it's been a crap spring/summer for pool parties. the weather hasn't been overall terrible - but we haven't had a truly hot day since sometime last fall. we dragged out the pool in honor of a borderline pool compatible day (e.g. at least the thermometer cracked into the 70s!)

i realized as i snapped a few pictures that this is probably the last pool season in which a baby pool, some warm water and a popsicle are still going to be this amusing.

ava's may/june trip to thunder bay really could not have been any nicer. thunder bay had a very warm and dry spring, and when ava arrived the weather turned to plane old hot. sun, sun and more sun - and temperatures in the 80s.

ava and grandma took full advantage of the sunshine. they ate all their meals outside, planted the garden, went fishing in nearby rivers, and hiked all the way from grandma's to the cascades. when they got bored of backyard attractions, they went on two lake superior camping trips.

no wonder ava asks every day "how many days until i go back to grandma's house"?

lots more pics

easter weekend in the bay area was awful. cold, rainy, yuck. since ava had spent most of the previous week having pre-easter egg hunts around the house with grandma, we decided to just skip the real deal completely.

thankfully, ava's preschool scheduled an easter egg hunt for the following weekend... when she was in new york. yet again our never ending winter intervened, dumping probably the worst storm of the winter right onto the morning of the egg hunt.

so, easter was rescheduled once again, to a picture perfect spring morning on april 27th. ava and all little friends had a blast. and ava displayed a remarkable improvement in her egg hunting skills. maybe it was all the practice with grandma. this time - she ran and gathered as many eggs as she could, without stopping to open up each new discovery.

once the eggs had all been found (and mostly opened and eaten), ava started making little egg flower vases and distributing them to her friends.

ava's favorite game on the ipad is the cookie baking game. in some strange, reverse-cyclic fashion, the ipad cookie game motivated john and ava to bake real cookies.

here's a plate full of ipad cookies...

and a tray of the real deal...

which looks yummier to you?

it's been almost an entire year since not-quite-three-year-old ava started ballet lessons at star dance studio. which means that it's time for that long awaited moment... the recital!

the studio where ava takes lesson's puts on an annual fancy show at a local auditorium. thankfully, they recognize that this venue might not work so well for it's tiniest students (the "star twinkles" class). instead, for the five-and-under crowd they have a in studio recital instead. the format is a little different too - instead of doing a single performance, they do more of a "demonstration class". with fifteen little ballerinas in the class, that still made for an audience of about fifty parents, family and friends.

all in all, i would imagine that star dance thought this was an amazing recital for the "twinkles" class. nobody cried, and nobody peed on the floor. a few of them turned into mostly frozen statues - but they were smiling frozen statues, not weepy ones.

for my part, i was absolutely amazed how much ava enjoyed the experience. i expected her to do just fine, but i was unprepared for how much she clearly reveled in the spotlight!

without further ado... we present the video highlights, and the the still shots.