daddy

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.

earlier this week, i was discussing techniques for keeping sleepy little babies awake for their last feeding with a friend who has a two month old. i passed on the various tricks that john used to play on dozy ava. this led me to contemplate just how long john has been tormenting that poor child, which in turn reminded me of this video.

this video was shot in february, 2007. ava was six months old. the best part is that when the video starts, she already has milk on her forehead. this implies that this cycle had been going on for awhile before john got out the video camera.

note - no, i was not home at the time. which does not necessarily mean that i would not have condoned this, just that i'm not guilty!

a couple of months ago john "accidentally" bought a flip video camera. while this may seem implausible, i'll vouch that he seemed honestly surprised when showed up in the mail from amazon.

since then, he's been shooting little videos on and off. the problem is, when ava is home we barely have time to watch the videos, let alone process and upload them. so, while ava's away in thunder bay, this seems like the perfect opportunity to launch a video retrospective.

our first entry in the series is this little gem, originally shot on june 7th, 2009. let it not be said that john cannot multi-task, for here he is, biking, filming a video and practicing his ABCs. too bad he forgets the words at the end.

ava gets most of her triking experience either a) riding around inside at school or b) triking too and from the local bakery on weekend mornings with daddy. she doesn't actually make it all the way to the park with her trike all that often because it's a pain to park on weekends, and it's just a little too far for her to trike.

today daddy suddenly came up with the perfect solution to this conundrum, and dragged out his bike trailer and used it to tow ava's skuut to the park.

we finished off the heat wave with a private family gathering with "big daddy bubbles" and "outside story". the next day we pulled out our fleece jackets and biking gloves.

when mommy's away, daddy makes ava whip cream clouds topped with strawberries and "fairy sugar".

john took ava to see the chinese new year parade this afternoon. when i called him to see how it was going he said "there's a lot of fear". "of dragons?" "yes". but, clearly ava cheered up eventually, and when she came home the first thing she said was "dragons not scary - dragond good"

today we took a trip to central park in san mateo, for ayan's annual photoshoot. i think ava really enjoyed not being the center of photographic attention, and i enjoyed not being the baby wrangler. we both puttered around and watched the madness, and i took a few shots and videos of "life behind the scenes". here's my favourite pic from the shoot, see the full gallery here

click read more (below) for live video footage of the photographer in action.

today is daddy's birthday, and mommy . . . errr . . . forgot. completely. it's not like mommy made nice plans and then forgot at the last moment. it's more like mommy hadn't thought about daddy having a birthday since, well, his last birthday. whoops.

that still leaves mommy one up on ava, who seems to forget what daddy looks like exactly. she has a habit of picking out random black and white pictures of old men, and gesturing frantically at them saying "daddy . . . daddy". the illustration here is a bad iphone picture of one of the first of such examples, a book jacket photo of the author of a children's book ava picked up at the library. ava has also picked out pictures of abraham lincoln and jude law.

in case you're wondering how john felt about having his birthday forgotten, according to john, he was relieved. as the more typically forgetful one in the family, he figured this gave him a future voucher to forgiveness for forgetting mommy's birthday, or when exactly ava was born, etc.

in typically ironic fashion, ava chose daddy's birthday to finally say "mommy".

listen to ava not say mommy on valentines day, a mere ten days ago