ava's blog

to cool off from all that sweeping, hana, lindsay and ava jumped into our backyard pool. first, they enjoyed a few rounds of "squirt the mommies". then there was some internal disagreement about the amount of splashing that was appropriate, so eventually we wound up with hana in the pool splashing her little heart out, while lindsay and ava played the part of the giggling and clapping audience.

full gallery of pics here

many of the families from ava's preschool live in or around forest hill and like to hang out at j.p. murphy playground. this playground is newly remodeled and has always been a spic and span retreat from the more crowded playgrounds in golden gate park. unfortunately, as the state of california and city of san francisco budgets implode, the care and maintenance of our local playgrounds is definitely going downhill. at j.p. murphy the only real issue is that the sand from the two sand pits had been gradually redistributed to every available square inch of the playground.

earlier this week, isa's mom pointed out that this was pretty easy to fix and organized a playground clean-up. the kids did their part and a few awesome random strangers pitched in too, and an hour and a half, and one nasty blister on my thumb later, the playground looked great again. of course, it wasn't all work, there was a plenty of time for fun and games too.

today was ava's preschool's first annual "tour de parc race and flag day picnic". the racer's spanned a wide range of sizes and talents - from two-wheelers sans-training-wheels through trikes and skuuts. ava won the division in which she was the only real contestant. that would the the "most inappropriately dressed for a bike race" division.

ava rounded the course with ian, both of whom were totally oblivious to the whole concept of "race". ava was only interested in the fact that she would get a jelly bean at the half-way point, and ian was pretty much oblivious to his dad's joking taunts that he was getting "beaten by a girl".

both ava and delilah managed to overcome their pig-headed stubborn objections irrational fear of bouncy houses at ethan's birthday party today. once inside, they had just a little bit of fun.

i was starting to wonder how on earth i was ever going to get ava out of the bouncy house when nature intervened. the generator powering the bouncy house ran out of gas, and it deflated and collapsed on the kids. bouncy houses are like gigantic tents - so this was in no way a dangerous situation - just funny. unfortunately, i'd actually filled the memory card on my camera already, so i failed to get a picture!

grandpa was an integral part of ava's first ice cream experience, so i thought he might like to come along for another great first . . . mcdonald's!

okay, so, if you grew up in say . . . thunder bay . . . then mcdonalds sounds like a weird thing to get excited about and a weird thing to not do until you are two years and ten months old. but (again, kinda like the ice cream shop) we don't really have very many of them around here. to my knowledge there are no mcdonalds in san francisco, other than a couple of really sleazy ones downtown. (strangely, our neighborhood does have a miniature burger king . . . but that's a whole different story.)

since it was ava's first mcdonalds experience, i wanted to make sure it was a fun one. we took her to a mcdonalds with a gigantic plastic playground inside. ava was quite pleased with the whole experience. she declared "this is a wonderful table. it has dots like my dice". and, she ate her french fries and chicken nuggets (couldn't convince her to try the dipping sauce though). and, surprisingly, she really enjoyed the playground. the playground was a bit more than i was anticipating - consisting mostly of a fast maze of plastic tunnels that the children climb up inside and then slide down. the catch is - you can't see the kids anywhere inside this maze - and adults aren't allowed to go in. after a good ten minutes of watching the other kids disappear inside the tunnel, ava actually decided to give it a whirl too. (and of course, didn't want to stop after that!)

the stars of the show at grandma's house this visit were ava's new kitties : poppy and tuck. sadly, my beloved nineteen-year-old cat skimble passed away this past december. ava and skimble were great buddies, and to dull ava's sadness at skimble's departure, grandma promised ava she would get a new kitty in the spring.

around february, grandma started scouring the city for the perfect litter of kitties, and in april she found them. grandma opted to adopt two sibling kittens. poppy is the female kitty, and appears to be skimble reincarnated - both physically and in her gentle disposition. tuck is the male, and is actually just as sweet with grandma and myself, but is somewhat less tolerant of being abused loved by ava.

ava spent hours chasing and capturing the kitties, and then dragging them around - ever so "gently". i kept wondering how long it would take her to think about dressing them up in dolls clothes, and on day #19 of her visit she finally did. true to their personalities, poppy put up with it without a struggle. tuck - not so much.

more kitty pics.

on may 19th, ava headed up to canada for a three week visit with "gramma!". when grandma arrived to pick ava up in san francisco, john and i became instantly uncool. for the two days before ava's depareture we mostly heard "go away mommy/daddy!" and had lots of doors slammed in our faces. thankfully, we're not very sensitive.

ava and grandma had a lovely visit. ava spent many happy hours fishing in the creek (with a real bamboo fishing pole), visiting local farms, festivals and making "chocolate horse cake".

according to grandma, ava spent the first week wearing whatever clothes grandma picked out before reverting to her ongoing obsession with dresses and "tights with feet at the bottom".

more grandma and ava pics.

recipe for chocolate horse cake: start with one large plastic green tub. add one brown plastic horse, two miniature fuzzy chickens, and assorted mcdonalds happy meal toys from 1982. stir lots and bake in the sun.