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.