it's us!

avery loves playing with our camera. usually the pictures are of the floor. or her shirt. or the
strap of the camera.
but today she got it right! she turned it on, aimed and clicked!

since one of us is usually holding someone or feeding someone or rocking someone, it's rare that we get a picture of the two of us.
thank you, avery, for showing us we exist, and that we like being together. :)

(big ps,
we had another horrendous rainstorm and spent last night calling plumbers to come bail us out of our 4-5 inch water covered basement. zane opted out of attempting the many closed roads and detours to get to work today. instead, we cleaned. played with the girls. listened carefully to make sure the pump was working. moved mema's stuff here where it (and she!) will remain until she heads back to kc sometime this summer. craziness! and good times :))

we are family

oh, so so so much to say. it's 8:11 and hopefully we just heard the last frantic scream from avery in her crib. nola is definitely transitioning down to 1 nap and it's not pretty. there's rain outside right now and it doesn't look like it's going to stop until wednesday. there's 3 loads of clean laundry sitting on our bedroom floor that was done last week.

but! in spite of all that dreariness and exhaustion, we had wonderful company for a long weekend and now the house feels empty and quiet (minus avery's screaming) without jackie, mike and mema here.

with 2 little ones, it was hard to get out all together, but hopefully the downtime was restful! avery warmed up quicker than ever and had a lot of "firsts" to go along with her first house guests. first time building a tower of blocks to the ceiling. first time playing hide and go seek. first time going 2 days without a bath (that's probably not true, but it's been a while since we've skipped that many ;)). first chance to show off her knowledge of the turtles, penguins and sting rays at the aquarium. first time making and eating monkey bread with mema.



and, of course, nola got to show everyone how she recently discovered how to go high speed when crawling. and how she can sit in her big girl eating chair now. and how she likes to make this new face. all the time.


so, in a nutshell, we had a great time having them here though and can't wait to make the trek out to arizona so they can show us their turf! avery asked about "jack and mike" a few times today and i can tell she misses them! we do too, thanks for coming out!!

(ps, i wish i had more pictures of our guests, but mike is a photographer and we left the camera work up to him :))

peek-a-BOO!

nola's latest trick. the girls have an absolute blast doing this back and forth during dinner. hearing their little giggles is wonderful!!

we have family coming into town momentarily, so i'm not even going to pretend like i'll be posting anytime soon. if i do get to though, it'll be a nice little treat :)

9 months and a week :)

late with nola's 9 month post! oh well!

we thought avery was an easy baby. and she was. but nola? she brings "easy" and "happy" to new levels. she's been so content to sit and watch everyone. to squeal at the most random times. to eat just about anything you put in front of her and open wide so that she doesn't get too messy. to sleep without a pacifier or stuffed animal or blankie. she's still a happy, happy soul, but she's realizing that there are things out in the world and she wants them.

it's a REALLY good thing she just figured out how to crawl forward on saturday! for a while she's been scooting on her bottom, or inching backwards on her belly, or circling around to get whatever was in arms reach. but she was starting to get frustrated at the things just beyond...and now she's on the go!

*favorite foods: turkey, toast, pancakes, gerber 3rd foods, homemade baby peas, cheerios...she's finally really getting the hang of chewing things, so we'll be adding much more to her menu :)

*favorite distraction: avery. avery running. avery screaming. avery eating. avery. :)

*favorite (and only) sign: "more"

*favorite party trick: "SO big!!"

*favorite pastime: dancing. wiggling. grooving to music.

*favorite sleeping position: on her back with her left hand tucked under her back



for the 9 months of nola's pregnancy, it was a time to come to terms with the fact that we were actually having another baby. for the first 9 months of nola's life, it's been a time to fall head over heels in love and not be able to imagine her not being part of our family. (though it took us FAR less time than 9 months ;))

happy 9 months, little bear! we adore you. even avery when she yells "nolya! not! no!!" when she realizes you can crawl after her toys now ;)

'oh what a beautiful morning!'

a few years ago, we were in new orleans. it was a perfectly sunny and warm start to the day. we walked out of our hotel and a little black lady on a bike passed by us singing in the highest pitched voice "oh, what a beautiful morning! oh, what a beautiful day! good morning!" it was such a sweet (and humorous-i wasn't kidding when i said the highest pitched) moment. and i've relived it numerous times over the last 2 days.

after a whopper of a rainstorm, we have been blessed with sunny skies and warm temperatures! and, as it usually happens after daylight savings, i was reminded of what it feels like to be happy and carefree again! we've treated ourselves to lunches on the deck, afternoons in the front yard pushing nola in the stroller, a walk around a pond and a sandwich dinner on a bench. sunshine, cool breeze, rosy cheeks, fresh air! it's so easy (for me, it seems) to get lost in the blah-ness of winter, in the feeling of needing to hunker down and pile on the layers, in the comfort of the living room. but now we've broken free and it's beautiful!!

for the last 2 summers we've had high expectations about all the exciting things that were coming. and the last 2 summers have let us down a bit, due to finances, or recoveries, or stress with moving or bringing a newborn home. but this summer? this is ours. to go to the beach with a toddler and a...toddler (?!). to go to the zoo and have both girls excited and engaged. to go to the park and have both girls able to play and enjoy! to just stay at home and enjoy the backyard with sandboxes and sprinklers and cookouts. to go to the free concerts in town and let avery run and let nola crawl/walk/run/whatever she needs to do. to work on the front yard and get it in good shape. to know that we're settled in our routines and family life enough to branch out and let things go.

like a diamond in our sky :)

case of the mondays...

when your husband takes a day off works because...

a) there's so much rain he had trouble driving to work and turned around before it got too bad
and
b)the toddler was up until 11pm acting foolish and no one got much sleep, including the one who had to wake up 5 hours later and the one who tried to sleep on the toddler's floor (have i mentioned we have hardwood floors throughout the house? my hips are mad at me.)

to monday!

he speaks!

So, I don’t post many blog entries (thanks, Love, for keeping such a complete and honest account of our family life updated on the world wide web for all to see) but there have been several topics on my mind recently. Tonight I will touch upon ONE of them in depth and list all of the other ideas that I have wanted to share but have not made the time to write about.

In no particular order….

*Jackie and Mike are coming!

*Humans learn at a mind-bending rate (Avery [who has been at it for a while] and even now Nola is launching her mental space shuttle into outer space). Ally and I just watched the newest Star Trek movie last night and they do a pretty good job of giving the audience a ‘scale’ through which to (only begin to) contemplate the incomprehensible vastness of ‘space’ and I liken the expansion of the human child brain to one of those ‘Warp Speed’ moments, or, one of those ‘Planetary Implosion’ moments where the physics of time, space, matter, mass, atoms, anti-matter, chemistry and all other quantifiable components are, well… completely, um… (I think Mel Brooks said it best in Spaceballs) Ludacris. Anyway, that is a very long item to be included on a list, its just that I’m a pretty smart dude and I am absolutely b.l.o.w.n. a.w.a.y. (Ally taught me that typing trick for adding emphasis to a point) at the capacity possessed by the human brain (and of course Avery and Nola have fine specimens) to grow, learn, think, emote, develop, control, comprehend, modify, decide (you get the idea), and generally-speaking, contemplate and make sense of the world in which it exists.

*The KC school system

*Education reform (a bit more later in the post)

*Health care reform and how the passing of Ted Kennedy (a champion of the cause) led to the election of SB – a traitor to humanity (and no I am not using loaded language to push a political agenda, but I am using loaded language to oversimplify a point)

*Missing family, my youth (and those mental polaroids of how everyone else was when we were all younger) and how growing-up is such a trip

*The excitement to work on spruce-ing-up (but not with much spruce, hopefully more flowering-up or flowering-ornamental-tree-ing-up or bulb-ing-up) the front lawn at 85 Hammond

*Our gratitude to so many of you for so many different reasons (including but not limited to: the warm vibes that hit me like a sunbeam {surely sent in some moment when one of you reads an update and thinks something like ‘those girls sure are cute’, or ‘how can such a prickly guy like that be so lucky to be married to her (or have such wonderful babies or some variation on those themes)}, your efforts to keep in touch and remember us on important days, your wisdom, your love, your patience, your trust, your support, your willingness to go out of your way to spend time with us (like Jackie and Mike, YEAH {and many other friends and family, too}

*…and lots of other things that I have forgotten because I had too much fun thinking of how to have dorky fun while I work on my rare post.

So, now (yeah, there’s more, maybe you can save the rest for tomorrow) on to the ‘ONE topic I will elaborate on in this post, its centered around education reform but pokes out into different directions. Id be quite interested to get any feedback – especially the kind that says things like “even though…, you did not consider…” as opposed to “are you stupid?!?! Do you think before you write!?!?!” im all for getting feedback about different angles of a idea but don’t want anyone to get upset and think that I am some sort of immoveable object – the article and some comments about ‘education overhaul’ and ‘no child left behind’ just kinda moved me to write a little…

here is a data point to consider. parents (i've got 2 kids at home) want to go out for 2 hours, maybe 3 (catch a movie or just dinner and a book store). hire a sitter (30$ MINIMUM, then dinner for the kids and the sitter and a tip if the house is not a mess when you get home). @ 2 kids for 2 hours you are looking at paying the sitter 30$ so you can average (and everyone out there knows that this estimate is too conservative even for Scalia) 7.50 a kid per hour. dont even factor in dinner, the cost to rent a movie or use the electricity for lights etc, etc... (some of you already know where im going with this). and, lets compare the salary break-down for a teacher who gets a 50,000 salary. 50,000 salary paid over 180 school days a year, = 278 dollars a day. 278 dollars a day and at least 6 hours a day working directly with kids = 46 and a third dollars an hour (every teacher knows that their contract requires more like 7-8 hours on the job but we are talking time with kids to lets go with another highly conservative number here, something that would make Roberts, Bush, Cheny or any of those Rush Limbaugh types proud). so, 47 dollars an hour divided by a class with 20 kids = 2.35 dollars an hour to not only watch you kid for 6 hours but also try to teach him something when parents dont get their kids enough sleep, dont feed them a good breakfast and in some of the worse cases teach kids how to cheat, fight and talk back more effectively than they teach them to share, respect and work hard. sorry, you are right, most schools 'try' to keep class sizes in the teens, so lets recalculate a bit. 47 dollars an hour divided by 15 kids in a class = 3.13 and hour. oh, you are right, lots of classes with smaller kids (think kindergarten here) or with kids who have special needs (disabilities and IEPs) think the magic number of kids is 8. ok, so one more calculation. 47 dollars an hour for 8 kids = 5.88. five dollars. eighty-eight cents. to teach a kid who may have been neglected, abused or taught an unfair lesson in life. and our society thinks we are putting our resources in the right place when it comes to education. give. me. a. break. take those numbers to your education reform and think differently next time you get upset about how much taxes cost and how much money is getting spent on education. the reality is that noone in their right mind would take a babysitting job for 5 bucks an hour but our society thinks college educated people should enter into a lose-lose contract regarding what is expected of them and the financial compensation they will recieve. yougottabekiddinme. while we are at it, pay your taxes so we can spend money to fix the roads, provide safe and nutritious food for everyone, preserve our natural heritage, protect bio-diversity and fix our capatalist health-care and employment services. and, if there are any good samaritans left after that please, please someone fix our discriminatory and racially imbalanced judicial/court/legal system - there are too many incarserations based on SES which keeps too many 'minorities' (soo to be Whites) in a state of second-class citizenship residing in 'our jails' as opposed to our communities.

ok, well now you have all heard from the guy who loves Brothers Pizza, wishes the Chiefs would win half their games in a season sometime before 2020, likes to play basketball with the Mormons early on Saturday morning and who is seen round these parts about as often as Boo Radly (great book btw). So, don’t kill this mockingbird (or harm him either) lest he never be seen again for fear of retribution (for sharing too many personal views with too many people). Here is to hoping that Hawaii is treating my nephew well and that everyone sleeps well tonight and every night until they sleep eternally. Love you all and plan on writing more this summer (when I don’t have to go to work because TEACHING ROCKS!).



oh yeah, look for us at the N.O. Jazzfest! It’s the greatest! Laissez les bons temps rouler!

piggies of a different kind!

i thought maybe the vicodin was messing with my head when i heard "mama, pigtails please?!"


i sat her down on the couch and worked as quickly as i possibly could to get these pigtails in before she realized what she asked for and stopped me or ripped them out of her head.


i had to make sure i had photo evidence of my little girl with REQUESTED pigtails.


so i took picture after picture while she made different faces and poses.

i think pig tails suit her perfectly :)

she's currently running around to each animal, showing off her pigtails, because apparently they're suddenly "avee's favorite!"

my favorite was "marley, look! see my pigtails?! i got 2 of thems!"

oh the joys

so i've got dry socket #2. confirmed by the oral surgeon this morning.

it makes me feel a little less guilty about doing absolutely NOTHING around the house this week. no laundry. enough dishes to get by. toys everywhere. dishes and cups piled by my side of the bed (because at the 2am wake up call for more vicodin, going downstairs to get food or drink to coat my stomach is not high on my list).

luckily, i have a good enough handle on it with advil and didn't want the dr. to pack it the nasty medicine. he was fine with that and let me know that when i have my last 2 wisdom teeth out, i'll likely get this again as i seem to be prone. yippee!

i'm going to crawl under the piles of dirty clothes now and sigh.

may i?

waiting patiently for food.


after a bite of food and signing "MORE!"


yay, all of our sporadic signing has started to pay off ;)

the times they are a-changing...

i'm starving. and waiting for my medicine to kick in. and the girls are sleeping so i need a distraction. so here i am.

rumor has it that i went to one nap a day when i was 10 months old. avery switched when she was almost 11 months. and now we have nola who is 8 1/2 months and i think she's itching to beat us all. her schedule is definitely changing, though no one knows yet exactly how to put it all together.

there were more days than not last week where she didn't take a morning nap, or took a late morning nap and no afternoon nap. late afternoon wasn't pretty, but she would end up going to sleep a bit earlier and sleeping great all night. today, we tried to schedule things a bit more. she woke up around 7 and kept her awake until 10. she went down with a bottle without a sound and slept until after 11:30 (when i kinda woke her up). she was up, ate lunch, played (outside!!!) for a while and went back down for a 2nd nap around 2. it's almost 3:30 and she's still sleeping :)

she's definitely not quite ready to just have one long nap-there are the long chunks of time in between sleeping that are just too long for her-but she's past the "up for 2 hours and then needs to go down asap" rule of thumb. it's kind of exciting and kind of unbelievable to me that she's growing up so fast! she's a solid sleeper at night (usually 12 hours), so maybe she just doesn't need as much sleep as she's been getting. if that means that we have more time in the morning to play and run errands and go for walks, so be it!

as for avery...we have NO idea what's up with her sleeping. she still takes a nap during the day, usually lasting 2 or 3 hours. and she had been sleeping from 7-7, pretty regularly. now we put her to bed at night and it can sometimes be 9pm when we still hear her talking and singing to herself. we're thinking we might have to start cutting her naps a bit shorter? i'm not complaining about the good sleepers, but it's catching me off guard to have to change our routine that we've had for so long now :)

k, enough with boring sleep talk.

nola when she scoots herself and gets stuck under the couch ;)


helping zane make potato soup so i can have something good to eat :)

wow.

so, 10 years of fear were put to rest today.

i had teeth extracted with iv sedation and it was WONDERFUL.

i really can't say enough positive things about this experience, the oral surgeon, the nurses, my recovery (so far, i know it's only been 12 hours), everything.

i still need 2 of my wisdom teeth out and have not one ounce of fear or anxiety about getting them done. if i didn't have to let my mouth heal and if i wasn't going away in april, i'd get the rest done asap and not think twice.

and now i'm going to let the pain medicine do its thing and let me sleep soundly.

let's hope the girls do the same ;)

and yet another march fourth.

they just keep getting better and better :)

teeth! everywhere, teeth!

i just stuck my fingers in avery's mouth tonight after we finished brushing her teeth and she's getting TWO new 2 year molars at the same time! (she's always been a bit of a late bloomer with her teeth ;)) this explains a LOT of her behaviors/insanity lately!! (ps, this picture was the last in a series of "look at mama and smile!" shots. i asked her if she could do a smile with some teeth and this is what i got ;))


this little one had her 2nd tooth pop through on monday!

(picture not included)
i'm getting teeth out next week. ugh! i'm ready for this to be OVER.

the poor man's fridge

last spring when i was more than ready to pop with baby pickles, zane had this idea to search craigslist for a freezer/fridge for our basement. i thought he was crazy, and when he found one for free somewhat near us and assured me it was a great plan, i still thought he was crazy. we went to pick it up and barely got it in the van. we brought it home and with lots of swearing, demolition of the basement stairs, and sweat, zane, his mom and phil were somehow able to get in to our basement.

now, after about 10 months of having this monster in our basement, i'd like to say that zane is brilliant. :)

thanks to this fridge, we are able to stock up on frozen meats and any other bulk item that needs to be kept frozen/refrigerated. which helps us to keep our grocery bill to $48 a week. (very strange, our hope was to keep it to $50 and just about every week i manage to come out to just under. except the week that zane came with me and we spent $98. (i could have been miffed about the $10 bottle of olive oil he had to have, but that oil is the secret to his best tasting chicken ever, so i can't really complain).)

anyway. we have been doing a great job planning meals for the month with things we have stocked up on and it saves a TON in the long run so we're not left scrounging one night only to give up and order take out. (it also makes those times when we do get to eat out or take-in really appreciated and special!)

however. this frugal and "smart" shopping/planning leaves us lacking a lot of the extras.

and clearly by "extras" i mean things that aren't liquid ;)

i'm looking forward to the summer when fresh fruits and vegetables aren't so expensive and when we don't have the heat bill to pay. but then we'll also have to plan for buying more of the foods that we all like. grapes-we could go through a bag in a day if we aren't careful. turkey-i got a pound on friday that we've already eaten (the first real food that all four of us have eaten!). bananas, bananas, bananas.

i guess the most important thing is that the girls get healthy, well balanced meals. and as long as we can provide that for them, we'll go without our fancy bacon, out of season fruits and occasional soda. someday we'll feast again ;)