ch-ch-ch-check it out

folks, it's official! there is a new blog post up, created with my iphone this morning, at our new host site.

go see it! as eve would say.

http://pupsandpups.wordpress.com

on the way the paper bag was on my knee

eve and i flew up to buffalo to see 'nanambampa' over the weekend -- loveliest time. lots of pics are up on FB, but not these. this pups loved loved loved the airplane, especially the lavatory. after insisting on gulping her entire cup of apple juice, we made several beelines to the bathroom. after washing her hands, she would check out her reflection and then proceed to pull faces -- see above.

our poor seatmate -- eve kept pointing to the girl sitting next to us and asking me, 'what's that?' then she would tell me that she wanted to sit on her lap.

we're soon migrating the blog and will post a link as soon as it's complete. the new site will have lots of bells and whistles, what with the twittering and the iphones and the web albums. it should be fun.

Apple Scruffs, Apple Scruffs -- How I love you, how I love you

a beautiful autumn day here in chicago, the sort of day where 'astral weeks' runs through your mind as a constant background and you can tell, particularly from the corners of your eyes, that the sunlight has changed, and that the earth has tilted towards earlier and quieter evenings.

we've been in chicago for just over a year and the cycle has us now enjoying all kinds of lovely anniversaries. today we sojourned to an orchard for the second time and had the most beautiful day. thanks to em and ab for visiting this weekend, and we surely enjoyed indoor art and outdoor apple picking.

actually, thanks to everyone. we're not too terribly far from evesie's second birthday, and ever since her arrival this season seeps me with anticipation and happiness.

pime after pime

evesie has a charming disconnection between certain letters and how she pronounces them, though her rules are not consistent across all occurences of those letters. for example, many t's at the beginnings of words are pronounced as f's. you can imagine our horror--before we figured this out--when eve would call out 'truck!' as she spotted them chugging down the interstate.

the double consonant 'cl' gets pronounced as a 'p,' as does the 't' at the beginning of 'time.' so, instead of clean, climb and time, evesie says pean, pime and, well, pime. obviously you have to rely on context to figure out if she's talking about scaling a wall or commenting on that elusive concept of temporality.

as i think of it now, 'p' substitutes for several consonants. last night for a snack she pipped her fingers in pummus and ate it (dipped/hummus). she also got two new pairs of leg warmers, which we pronounced to be awpum (awesome).

these awpum leg warmers bring me around to the title of this post, which you can now decode to read 'time after time.' that should immediately bring to mind this lovely new wave rocker:

cindy lauper rocked the leg and arm warmers in the 80s, so why can't evesie bring that back in the late stages of 2009? friends, i think she's done it:

even through the valleys, too.

we've returned from a wonderful short trip with this pups, traipsing all over the mid-west. naturally we were inconsistent with the camera, so the pictures here are from the minnesota state fair and the last in a series of hotel rooms. missing (but hopefully soon remedied) are photos from a fabulous time at the lake with kari, mike and spencer. also missing are pics from a wonderful brunch in st. paul with peter and lorene. also missing are climbing the benches and trying on hats at the mall of america. also missing are photos from downtown madison shopping and the scarfing of nepali food.

e-$ and i have always loved traveling together, and i always thought that such trips couldn't get any better. i was wrong. eve never ceased to amaze. she trooped and marched all day. she stayed up way past her bedtime. she made us both proud by eating her way across the midwest, noshing brats and cheese in wisconsin, footlongs and cheese curds and fresh milk and lemonade at the state fair, and nepalese soup in madison. she talked non-stop and one morning even offered to go get us all donuts.

we'll try to corral these other pics and get those up here, too. mini-vacations are always fun, but even more so with two beautiful traveling companions.

while my daughter gently sleeps

today, eve decided that napping in the late morning to early afternoon was supremely overrated. after twenty minutes, she was raring to go. at a loss, we went with it, hung out around the apartment, had a nice relaxing day. ted even found a few moments to start sprinkling guitars around our place like sprinkles on ice cream, or powdered sugar on waffles, or whatever confectionary analogy you find apt.

so thrilled to see guitars again, eve tested out all of them and even got to try a violin and a flute. phenomenal. all this potential music making in the apartment must have made her antsy, ready to head out and start her own post-punk band, because she found her backpack, demanded that i put her baby in it and help her into it, and (without pants, a jacket, socks, or shoes) told us that she was going shopping to buy apples, avocados, bananas, milk, and one cookie.

i thought we might try going to the playground instead. here's eve, checking for airplanes along the way. note that she's still wearing the backpack, but is also more appropriately clothed for the out of doors:
getting to the park takes some time when you're legs are short, you're wearing pants that snap for the first time in about 18 months, and you're trying to keep your pigtails looking sharp:
sometimes you have to check out giant light posts:
and other times you just need to set out across a baseball diamond, headed for that sandbox in the beyond, like a little hobbit on a great adventure, though without nasty rings or dragons or golem:
once we arrived at the park, and mind you it's pretty chilly today, eve decided the baby wanted to play in the water. poor, wet, cold baby:
luckily, the baby got to dry out, eve got to pee under a tree, and everyone got to play in the exalted sandbox. once we were home, ted set up evesie on the couch to watch a little 'wall-e,' and this is what almost immediately happened:
i guess naps aren't entirely overrated after all.

baby all grows up

i really love vince vaughn. he's not intimidated by obama's six-pack, or anyone else's for that matter, and he pulls his slightly pudgy weight around a film scene like he's an excessively verbal, sprite who has the on-screen mass of a mid-career marlon brando, but without imminent bloating, the dark moods, or the tendency to mumble. this is a man who seems unable to stop himself from talking. i live with a man like that. and also a daughter like that.

which brings me to eve. the evester has settled into 'evesie's new home' splendidly. she's become a green space and playground addict, so much so that we're often the last people to head inside for the evening. she also relishes the acoustics of our new digs, with its high ceilings and hardwood floors, perfect for rowdy renditions of 'night night baby,' 'itsy bitsy spider,' and other songs to which i can't yet make out the words. she's finally gotten to claim full use of her very own speakers, a wonderful shower gift from my mom. we've figured out that she can use the volume knob, that she likes her tunes loud, that she can recognize 'the beatles' by ear, and that she seems to understand how to use my ipod. sort of. to the ipod selecting process, to eating her corn on the cob, or to putting on her panties, she is constantly saying, 'i do it, mama. it's mine.'

which brings me to the connection between eve and vince vaughn. all right, you see the body type connection, and the way both of them physically command a room through humor. but there's one more link i'd like to draw on as the proud mama that i am. the only scene i remember from 'swingers,' a vaughn vehicle we rented during our salad days, when we were glutting ourselves on all things vince (we still do this. we saw 'fred claus' for goodness' sake.), is the one when the guys are sitting in the coffee shop, and the n'ere-do-well slouchy character finally scores a girl's phone number. vince vaughn's character, in all his exuberance and pride, stands on the table in the seedy cafe/diner and announces to his fellow late-night diners, 'our little baby's all grows up.' yes, that's exactly how he says it. he repeats it several times in his own kind of incantatory way, and you really start to believe that not only is he some kind of strange surrogate father-figure to his friend, but that this is indeed the defining watershed experience that makes him 'all grows up.'

my friends, i feel like we've been having many such watershed moments lately--whether it's eating corn on the cob, saying 'i,' helping mama with the laundry, or approaching the gigantic fountain in millennium square all by herself. and just when i get all choked up while shouting 'our little baby's all grows up' in my head, evester goes and does a babyish thing, like walking around in her bear towel, or lying on the kitchen floor with her dogs as though there was nothing better to do in this whole apartment, not an entire room of toys and books waiting to entertain her. it's so nice of her to let me remember that she's my baby, even if she can 'do it myself.'