awww

here is Ava at 2 1/2 months. Asleep, one hand frozen in mid-air and dreaming of milk. Gone are those days!

Our thanks and apologies to anybody who kindly visited us in this old house and graciously slept on a thin mattress on a grimy floor in barely liveable conditions.

This is our kitchen, back in '05.







Here is the dining room and library, before we tore down the paneling to find holey walls and tore out many layers of carpet, vinyl, and newspapers to find some pretty humble subfloors. 

Now our house looks like this. It has carpet, as of yesterday (!), so now it feels like a home instead of a stable or something of that sort.

This is our bedroom. Ryan fixed our cracked walls and painted it last week. We removed some grimy old blinds and put in Roman shades. Here is our new headboard, too. bedding and wall decor are to be continued.

Here are the stairs! Ava is now allowed to climb on them! 

You know it's cold when there is frost on the inside of your window.

Also- in the background, the house across the street that was partially destroyed by a fire this summer is finally demolished and is being taken away. Poor cold bulldozer drivers.

Also, our carpet installer called in sick today. poo poo. I will post pictures (we hope!) tomorrow night of finished carpet!  

now you know our dirty little secret: behind our shower curtain lies a pink bathtub with brown camo tape


This is Ava after I took a shower today. She basks in a toddler's job well-done. She sacrificed her warm, dry PJs in order to make sure all shampoo bottles, toys, and the tape measure got a shower in, too. As if it wasn't hard enough work getting all of that stuff into the tub while the shower was running overhead and I was in the way, she also had to keep turning the water cold to keep the toys comfortable. She was soaked from head to midriff, and then from the bottom of her footie pajamas on up.


Her hair stayed in this cool dagger shape when I took out the rubber band.

This is Ava, socks thrown off and legs crossed, vegging out to a "melmo" video.

Also- click here for a video of Ava with her best friend, Riley. 

How could I forget the hit of christmas vacation? This mini-skeeball-choking-hazard game was the most popular guest at the Dart home. Pictured: Bridgett challanges reigning champ Ava.