thunder bay : part one

the last week of april, my heart filled slowly with dread as one by one each of the kids at ava's daycare fell ill with a brief but very mess stomach flu. ava powered through it until, 2:30 pm on wednesday, april 30th - 14 hours before we were supposed to leave for the airport. at that moment, the call i'd been dreading came : "ava's throwing up, please come pick her up."

lovely, i thought, and modified our carry-on list for the plane to include 4 changes of clothes for ava, 2 for me, 3 dishtowels, and several garbage bags in which to stash soiled clothing. unpredictable as always though - ava never threw up again, and was perfectly charming for the entire journey to thunder bay.

once we got there though she was uncharacteristically cranky - and spent way too much time looking like this. clearly all the baby systems were not functioning properly - and i'm sure it didn't help that it was (literally) freezing with periods of snow and all expeditions outside required that we put on the dreaded pink marshmallow snowpants. in may. wonderful.

the few days that i spent in thunder bay were far from all bad though - ava's melancholy was a very on again, off again affair. she found a renewed loving obsession for skimble the cat whom she has magically learned to treat with the gentleness and respect required by skimble's advanced age. and, of course, she enjoyed exploring all the nooks and cranny's of grandma's magic house.