You Can Walk If You Wannu

Guess who's walking?!  How do these crazy little people figure this stuff out?  Even though many have gone before them, it's amazingly unexpected every time, no?  Next thing you know, we'll be watching Baby on Wire.  Apologies that my shots of her aren't the best, but have you ever tried to make a babe stay still?  It's more fun just to watch, and eventually get better with shutter speeds I reckon.   

 

Pass the Tissues Please

It's been a while, I'm aware.  That whole business about being "over" whatever sniffles were going around in 2008. . . yeah, well, psyche.  The jokes on us, very nice.  Supposedly, the cedar is really bad here in January. I'm not totally sure what that means.  In fact, allergies are a mystery to me in general.  Just this month, if I had a nickel for every time someone told me "oh, I don't get allergies", I would quit Jesse's job for him.  How the bells do we know?  What percentage of the U.S. population goes into a medical facility and gets tested?  (If you happen to know, do tell!)  I guess I thought I wasn't allergic to anything, but maybe I'm allergic to cedar, to Austin, to Texas, to waking up at night 10x to nurse, to bad jokes. . . who can really know for sure?!  My point is, days have been filled with bulbing my poor toddler (OH yes, more on that) to death, spraying her down with saline solution, dancing for entertainment so she'll forget that no oxygen is actually flowing up her nostrils, and other such nonsense that may appear on YouTube.  We are still mending, and now the big guy has been hit too.  So really?  Allergies?  I bet at least one person from an entirely different state will tell me that they are experiencing something quite similar. There goes my head spinning about again.  At least we enjoyed a Hot Toddy this evening to keep ourselves grounded, and breathing.  

The photo above was taken on top of Whole Foods.  The building in the background is our apartment building.  Ahem, excuse me.  I meant to say our "high-rise residence" or something with more pizzazz.  You know, the people working here won't even call our home an apartment.  It now and forever shall be a "unit."  Who are we kidding?  I suppose the poor lads and lasses that are probably paying quite a bit more than us to live here. . .  Is one allowed to go on tangents via blog?  It seems wrong since I'm thinking this through, and have a delete key standing by waiting to take orders.  It's just more fun to keep going.  This is about as wild as my week is gonna get!  So, Whole Foods brilliantly constructed their rooftop space into a playground.  That's right, genius.  We frequent there, and Ada loves it.  I can't wait for the day when she loves the slide as much as she loves eating the wood chips on the ground.  (sigh) 

The use of roof space is absolutely brilliant, and I'm surprised we don't try to make this a reality more often in our own lives.  I would love to try my hand at hydroponic gardening atop our next abode given the opportunity.  Somehow I doubt that will happen, but I know it's happening somewhere, and that warms my heart.  Just think if office spaces used their rooftops, or schools, grocery stores (in the sense that they could sell produce in an open-air market), etc.  These things might already be a reality, but they are unknown to me.  If you have a good example, please pass it on.

    

for auld lang syne

Welcome to 2009!  We hope it has been a smooth ride thus far for you all.  If "bumpy" is more fitting for what you remember over the past 5 days, hopefully it's more of an off-road, adventurous bumpy.  If not, well. . . ask for wisdom to endure it.  There is beauty in it.  So far, it's been a good year for the Lovelaces.  A fine year indeed;  the runny noses have stopped running, the suitcases are empty (well, practically. . .), traveling has ceased for a while (bittersweet subject), and we're ready to keep on keepin on in this town.  There is SO much to do here though.  In fact, part of the reason I think I fail to get out more is because there is too much to choose from.  There is beauty in simplicity, you know.  While we are on the subject of "doing", what do you know about the music festival South by Southwest, coming up in March?  Have any friends performing?  Ever been before?  I'm interested in going for sure, but prices I've seen are outrageous!  Let me pick your brain on this please.

As of December 23rd, Ada is 1 year of age!  Between slinging spaghetti noodles to and fro, and burrowing her chubby hands through birthday cake, I think she had a great first.  Honestly, if there had been no gifts, she wouldn't have been any less stoked.  (She doesn't get the idea of unwrapping gifts yet anyway; she kept getting sidetracked by the Christmas tree.  Home girl loves some ornaments.)  You should've seen the look on her face when the family sang "Happy Birthday" to her.  She couldn't believe we were all singing to her.  She was truly astonished, and so excited that she clapped along with us when the song ended.  I'm so honored to be this little lady's mama.  I can't wait to walk through every year of her life with her, God-willing.

2009 looks promising.  Ada and I are starting to connect with other moms and munchkins, and we went for our first play-date today at a new friend's house.  We're planning to read books together, talk philosophy/life, etc.   This may not sound like much, but it's big news for this madre!  I've also heard of a super neat movie and dinner spot, The Alamo, that plays Tuesday matinees for mamas and babes - woot!  

We have a community that loves Christ that we now call our own, and we meet here in downtown as well.  These people want to do truly good things to see this city thrive in a healthy way.  I'm excited to see what the year has in store for everyone here, and I want to see God's people love the city the way he intended.  So far, so good. . . Let's stop here for the day.  We love you guys and think of you often.  Cheers from the Lonestar State.   

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May mentioned that she tried recently to post a comment and it failed. Please email me if you find that you have the same problem. Cheers.

Belated chuckles

Ok, so I know Halloween is history. Even the Pilgrims and our native friends are moving to the back burner in our minds. Nonetheless, please let me share with you what ridiculous cuteness we beheld this year on Halloween: (i'm not sure why this text is blue and underlined....)

(The serious stares are due to the fact that she had not yet learned how to crawl, or move for that matter, in her new suit. It took 5 minutes tops, and she was a Gerber on the move, in more ways than one.)


We are doing well. Hustling and bustling around for the holidays; to think last year I couldn't even leave town because I was super-preggo blows my mind. How time flies. And now "tiny creature" is one little chunk named Ada Lovelace. Even better, we can dress our tiny creature into funny costumes, laugh, and she just chuckles right along with us.

I hope the next entry will include some shots of local light shows downtown! Let's see if I can go get my babes up from their Saturday nap...

Happy Holidays

SO, el dia de las gracias ended much too soon, did it not? Ada misses Nana and Papa already, but it's good to be home! It's a whole new experience to be in and out of airports for us. Thanks be to God that Ada took it all like a champ; no one even scolded us for feeding her copious amounts of ice cream on the flights. Even the sticky seats went unnoticed by the flight attendants! heh.

One thing all of the travels did bring to 2/3 of my family was sickness. Since Jesse and Ada have been in recovery mode, and I've been coaching them through that, we have been MIA. So sorry to those of you that have been wondering where we went to. (For those of you we don't speak to often enough, we do still think of you and speak fondly of you often. I was just daydreaming this morning about standing bundled up by the turkey fryer on Saturday with Jon Scott and others, having a cold one... sigh. Someone have an extra helping of Bliss' green bean casserole for me. And anything else that looks good for that matter.) My two loves are on the mends though, and by the end of the weekend, our house should be one big dance party again. I know that's what you imagine sometimes...

We are planning out our travel schedule for Christmas as we speak, read (get back to work!), and write. We hope to stop into Raleigh sometime around the 22nd or 23rd (Ada's bday!), so let us know what people have coming up. We would love to get some friends together and sip on some egg nog or the like. Nothing fancy. Keep up posted. We will do the same. We may or may not have a car, and we will definitely need a place to crash if we stay overnight. Who will be the lucky winner? You know, the holiday season is flying by so fast, I think I will just keep my suitcase packed until then. No, we still haven't unpacked. That's the Lovelace way.

Austin is cold right now, believe it or not. Too bad all of my heavy winter clothes are in my in-laws' barn right now. Ada is still loving life either way though; thus Mamá and Dáda are happy, cold ears or not. I think she enjoys her warm bathtime even more now, if that is at all possible. It's like a child's personal pool, for goodness' sake.

Here is a baby's-eye-view of our kitchen. This is where I'm usually sitting to eat most meals anyway as I chase her around with my eyes and arms. I've grown to enjoy the view.

These are some shots from our balcony. Ada is embracing her new home nicely as you can see. The view of the city is much better at sunset when you can enjoy the warm colors swirled everywhere. At night, we can always count on hearing some live music from below at "The Tiniest Bar in Texas," and loads of lights fill the cityscape. Our balcony is large enough to set out a full-size dinner table, as well as add some chairs for lounging with a cold one. We hope to have many a meal and chill time out there once the oh-so-brief winter weather comes to an end. And I guess we might need a table and chairs as well. Having any sort of outside to play with Ada and watch the trains, right in our backyard, may be my favorite thing about our new place.

Austin Factoid: It seems every Austinite with a bike owns a Bianchi.