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The last six months have been exciting for Digg's engineering team. We're working on a soup-to-nuts rewrite. Not only are we rewriting all our application code, but we're also rolling out a new client and server architecture. And if that doesn't sound like a big enough challenge, we're replacing most of our infrastructure components and moving away from LAMP.

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!

"nap time" is not optional for ava on the weekends, but actually sleeping in. when she was little, of course, we made sure she slept - otherwise she was just a disaster in the evening. then we went through a phase where we preferred that she did not sleep - otherwise she was too hard to get to bed. these days, we don't really care either way. ava's bedtime performances don't seem particularly correlated with how much sleep she's actually had or needs.

so, we just put her in her room and close the door. surprisingly, about 33% of the time, she actually decides of her own little accord that she'll crawl into bed and have a little snooze. today was one of those days, and when we went in to wake her up, we found her sleeping arrangement quite amusing.

ava spent another lovely white christmas with grandma, in thunder bay. ava and grandma headed up to the great white north early, on december 8th, and john and i joined them on christmas eve.

john is sometimes given to flights of culinary fancy . . . and sometimes to flights of british fancy. both of these tend to have lovely results, but when the two combine, the journey can be... well... a journey.

john's latest "british cooking project" obsession was a traditional british christmas cake. in case you, dear reader, are not british, think fruit-cake covered in marzipan, covered in white icing. optionally, decorated with little handmade marzipan christmas-y things.

the ingredients for a christmas cake are long and strange, and include things like candied lemon peel, candied cherries and black treacle. in the beginning, john refused to believe me that such oddities might be found at the local (gourmet) supermarket, and so he special ordered each and every single one of them from amazon.com for $30. then he got impatient, checked out the supermarket, which lo-and-behold the supplied all of the these ingredients, plus additional necessities such as three different kinds of raisins, plus brandy, drambuie and cointreau. i'm guessing all that added up to about $100.

the first stage of the actual cooking process was to combine all these ingredients and bake the cake. john and ava started this project on thanksgiving weekend.

after that were a couple of weeks of periodically "feeding" the cake more doses of alcohol.

and, finally, yesterday the cake was declared ready for decorating. so, off john went to the supermarket for marzipan. it took four tubes of marzipan to cover the cake, for a total price of $28.

after the marzipan-ing, the cake was iced and then decorated with marzipan trees and snowman (by yours truly). then it got a lovely sprinkling of sparking snow sugar ($5), and finally the $163 christmas cake was complete.

anybody care to buy a $5 slice?

it's very rare that anybody (other than spammers) leaves a comment on ava's blog. however, using the little contact link on the upper right there, a surprising number of readers send ava fan mail. over the years, we've gotten a steady trickle of cute letters once every couple of months. lately, it's picked up to a couple per month.

the letters all describe the same scenario: i found your blog looking on google for xyz, found your blog instead, and gosh, isn't your daughter cute. the most common scenario is "i found your blog searching on google images for 'ladybug' and found [the above] picture"

until recently, this picture was on the first page of results for both google images and bing images. lately it's slid to page two (disappointing!). our latest fan mail really made me laugh though. it was from a very sweet father in germany, who had found ava-the-ladybug while playing the google giggles with his eighteen month daughter. apparently his daughter like the picture of ava so much that they had to go back and revisit it once a day for two weeks!

grandma came down to san francisco for a short visit and to pick up ava and take her home to the great white north! before they left, they made some beautiful stain glass cookie ornaments for our christmas tree.

shortly after christmas 2008, i bought some post-holiday sale gingerbread house cookie cutters. i had this grand vision of home baking gingerbread building blocks, and then hosting a gingerbread house making party. well . . . as it turns out, i never quite found the time for all that baking. i procrastinated and procrastinated and finally decided to pick up some gingerbread house kits from target and throw together a last minute after-school gingerbread fest.

it all started out pretty peacefully. all the houses were erected in no time, and the decorating began. all the kids sat nicely on their chairs, and spilled a minimum of candy on the floor. but . . . our ratio of 4 adults : 6 children meant that there were plenty of unsupervised moments during which little hands started shoving candy and icing into little mouths.

gingerbread decorating was supposed to be followed by pizza-eating. instead, it was followed by christmas tree inspecting, then mad couch bouncing, and then everybody wound up in wearing wearing weird outfits and tearing around the house like banshees.

the best part was that i realized how much we'd all grown as parents . . . for the most parts the parents stayed parked at the table, ate the pizza ourselves, finished our cocktails and listened for happy squeals turning sour. the kids responded by playing about as nicely together as i'd ever seen (albeit at a very high volume), and aside from a near disaster with ava's poster paints, didn't really cause any permanent damage to either themselves or the house!

in september, ava started a new phase of swimming lessons - swimming without mommy in the pool! due to some scheduling issues, ava got slotted into sort of a strange class : two five year olds, one four year old, and one just-barely-three ava. her swimming class also starts at 7pm, a whole 30 minutes before her usual bed time! i was a little afraid that all these elements might not add up to the best swimming experience, but as it turns out, it's been great. instead of being intimidated by the more advanced swimming and social skills of her classmates, ava just rose to the occasion and follows along very enthusiastically as best she can. when the instructor asks "who wants to go first", ava's little hand springs up, and she generally jumps into the water, whether or not the instructor has actually chosen her to go first. ava's (surprising) favorite part of swimming is diving down to the bottom of the pool to retrieve things.

as it turns out, swimming has also been a great place to observe ava's evolution from an extremely over sensitive two-year-old to a mischievous three-year-old. when she was two, ava was somewhat prone to bursting into tears if one of her little friends so much as breathed on her the "wrong" way. she took even the gentlest of teasing very, very personally.

and so, i sat in a bit of amazement during one october swimming lesson as i watched ava and one of her classmates happily bash each other with pumpkin shaped beach balls. all giggles - no wails!

since then, ava has definitely evolved into the official imp of her class. when awaiting her turn she can generally be found dumping water on someone, or bashing somebody with a very soft object of some sort.

since ava was leaving for canada on december 8th, we jumped on the traditional, american, "christmas starts the day after thanksgiving" bandwagon, and got our christmas tree in november. this also meant that we got our tree during a november warm streak, instead of usual december freezing cold streak. we wore t-shirts. crazy.

ava was must happier about the whole christmas tree scene than in previous years. i can't say that she was a whole lot more cooperative for the camera though!

back at home, i worked on the big tree, and ava had a blast decorating the $10 mini tree that we picked up just for her.

thanksgiving 2009 turned out to be a bit of a banner weekend for developmental milestones around here. just before thanksgiving dinner on thursday, ava was coloring up a storm with the 5 and 7 year-old nephew and niece of our host. i was watching the seven-year old annotate her rainbow drawing with comments, when i glanced at ava's paper and found - to my enormous surprise - a person! (and, above and to the left of that - a jellyfish.)

ava went through a birthday-cake drawing phase around february 2009. that lasted a month or two, and since then, excepting one or two fishies, she's pretty much sworn off representational art. it's not that she tries to draw people or houses and they just aren't recognizable, she mostly just prefers to make pretty colors or designs on the page. and, of course, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's nice to know that she can crank out a stick figure on demand. as john and i independently commented: "well, stick figures are about as good as i can do now, so good for ava!". (unless she's fallen really far from the genetic tree, we're not really expecting much in the way of free-form drawing out of our daughter.)

to my even greater surprise, ava's tricks for the day didn't end there. on her next piece of paper, she started with a lovely letter A. (this from the child who insistently turns her nose up at anything resembling the standard preschool "trace this letter" worksheet.) the next night at dinner, we even got her to write her whole name! (albeit on three, separate cat-shaped sticky note sheets.)

thanks to daddy's expert weekly coaching sessions, ava's biking has come a long way. at this point, she gets top marks for

• generally sensible behavior
• braking nicely down the hills
• quick reaction time - stops quickly when little buddies stop in front of her
• (surprisingly) speed - we have to "trot" now to keep up with her!

and we're still working on

• always looking where we're going
• losing the training wheels (long term project)

more biking round the hood.

editor's note: while daddy is, yes, a yogi, it's not like yoga is a topic of much discussion with ava in our home. we're assuming she's referring to savasana, but we're quite frankly baffled how she knows this.

throughout the fall, ava has continued to enjoy her weekly "star twinkles" ballet class. according to her teacher, ava is doing very well. her only "issue" is her tendency to stop dancing, and start adjusting and re-adjusting her little ballet skirt. more pretty in pink .

There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.

and then she went to bed very early. amen to that.

auntie arantxa has always had a special gift when it comes to ava gifts. the latest addition to the collection was a set of two traditional children's compartment plates.

seeings as how these are dinnerware, they weren't quite the same instant hit with ava as were, say, the ducky crackers. however, they've really turned out to be sort of a life changing event.

see, ava has decided that she likes her little compartments and that they should each contain a different item. combining this with a new trick i discovered - (if you tell ava that virtually any meat product is "hot dog" - she'll eat it) and we've suddenly crept dangerously close to hitting all four food groups in a single seating.

yes, yes, i know "pretzels" isn't really a food group. it's hard to think of four items sometimes, and trust me, this child drinks more than enough milk!

ava's preschool did a little trick-or-treating on friday, october 30th, so ava started out halloween day with an already tempting bag-o-treats. of course, she insisted on dipping in first thing in the morning. therefore - M&M's for breakfast.

later, i realized that i really should have served them with milk and a spoon!

halloween this year was a busy affair. we kicked off the day with a costume adorned ballet class. ava's ballet class is a pretty drop-dead cute affair on a normal day, but with every single little girl in their fairy and/or princess outfit, it was kind of out of control. (unfortunately, no pics, as the studio has strict rules about how often you're allowed to observe distrupt class, and i'm saving my pass for next week).

after that we were off to a fun party at her buddy ian's house, where we had ou (annual?) fairy-princess portraits taken.

then we did a brief trick-or-treat around our neighbourhood. ava's part of that was definitely meeting her fairy princess twin. then we dashed home so that we could receive our own batch of trick-or-treaters.

our decorations went over well - we heard a few "best house we've seen today", but the kids were especially pleased with our glow-necklace and glow-stick treats. i think this was ava's favorite part of the day. she got very excited about doling out the glowing treasures. so excited, that she didn't even seem to notice that we gave them all away, not even leaving one for her!

more pics

a few weeks ago, i got a ticket for "running a stop sign" on my bicycle. this occurred a) on one of the established san francisco bike routes ("the wiggle") and b) on a @#^%$^% spare the air day. while i did not have ava with me, i was riding the bike with her bike seat on it.

according to the insanely annoying motorcycle cop who was pulling over every single cyclist that rounded the corner of pierce and waller that morning, an "old lady had nearly been hit by a cyclist and complained". yeah, sure buddy, there's been a rash of elderly pedestrians mowed down by young mothers on their bicycles lately. got it.

grandma came to visit for a pre-halloween visit, and we all had good fun getting our house all ready for halloween. first, ava put on a lovely pair of polka-dot PANTS. getting her into pants, of course required a pre-halloween treat, which she graciously shared with her pumpkin. then ava turned three innocent pumpkins into a witch, a dog and a bat.

once those were complete, we started on the big guy. ava and grandma scooped out the guts, ava and daddy colored in the template, and then daddy carved it into a beautiful glowing cat.

more halloween prep pics.

while john ran around on the roof, securing supports for our halloween decorations, ava danced around the front steps in one of her favorite pink dresses and i took a few hundred pictures. ava's pink and polka dot dress was a third birthday gift from my aunt peggy, and i've been trying to get a picture ever since. ava adores the dress, wears it at least once a week, but always turns into a total sourpuss the minute i get out the camera. thankfully, my luck finally changed! more pretty in pink pics.