We haven’t posted many pics in a while, so here’s one of Ella playing with markers that she got for her birthday. She wanted to wear her fire hat (clearly a necessary accessory), and she agreed that an apron might help keep her clothes clean. So practical!
And here’s a photo of her hands afterward…
Loyal readers to our blog know that we joined a CSA (community-sponsored agriculture) program through Food Matters restaurant in Alexandria last year and split our share with Andrew’s parents.
We’ve renewed, so today marks the first of 38 weeks in which the Clarkes will get a bag of vittles. We’re alternating weeks with Andrew’s parents, so we don’t have to try to meet up to split the goods each weekend.
We hear that this week’s loot included turnips, shallots, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, and dried red beans.
We’ll get our first bag next week, so we’ll let you know what we get and what we do with it!
It’s just a few days until we’re likely to get our next bit of snow, so it seemed appropriate to write this tonight. It’s been ages since we’ve posted, but we’ve had some serious digging out to do!
We got 25+ inches on Feb. 5-6 and then several more inches on Feb. 9-10. We fared OK, but our little red car stayed snowed in until only recently. The street out of our neighborhood was super bumpy, which Ella loved, but we weren’t enjoying so much.
Ella liked the snow but seemed to wonder why there was so much of it. We’d say, “Ella, look at the snow!” and she’d reply: “Too much!” Perhaps she knew that Virginia isn’t that well equipped to handle it all… that said, she enjoyed walking around in it and going sledding.
Being a pedestrian around here hasn’t been fun lately since nothing had been shoveled for a while, so we’re happy to see that things are finally melting, thanks to a few warm days and some rain. Fingers crossed that the “snow blizzard” conditions that I’ve read about don’t come to fruition here!
As Sara mentioned, this past Sunday was Ella’s 2nd birthday party (or, as some people put it, a 25-month party), and we all had a blast. Including, most importantly, the birthday girl, who spent the later half of the party dancing and jumping all around. Of course, that might have had something to do with the sugar from her cupcake, cookies and multiple juice boxes, but she was enjoying herself nonetheless.
We had a LOT of people share the day with us – 43 was the final guest count – and it made for a full house. Thankfully, with the huge assistance of my parents and Alex B., it came off wonderfully. Ella had a little better understanding that this was a party for her, and happily wore (or carried) her birthday hat around for much of the afternoon, and commented that it was “Ella, birthday!” several times. We were overwhelmed by the huge pile of gifts Ella had waiting for her after the end of the party, and are thinking we’ll have to stagger introducing them all to her or else she’ll be on sensory overload.
The party was so much fun for us that we realized in retrospect we didn’t take too many pictures, but our friend Russell did take the following video of everyone singing. Thanks for sharing, Russell!
It’s been a long while since we’ve posted anything (sorry!), largely because we haven’t been around. Now that we’re all home–at least for a little while–I can detail our comings and goings for January this far:
–Jan. 2-3: We’re in Philadelphia
–Jan. 6-8: Sara in Seattle
–Jan. 8-10: Sara in Pittsburgh
–Jan. 15-20: Andrew in Korea
–Jan. 20-24: Andrew in China
–Jan. 24: We are all home!
The most interesting (and longest) travels were clearly had by Andrew, courtesy of NYU. That said, I enjoyed my travels, but could’ve lived without the adventure of trying to get back from the West Coast in less-than-ideal weather.
Now that we’re back, look for some photos soon of said adventures, and we can resume a more usual blogging sked!
Jeff, conveniently, is working on a school assignment that required him to visit Philly this weekend – and more specifically, a building in Fairmont Park that was first designed for the Centennial Exposition in 1876. Today, it hosts the Please Touch Museum. Coming from DC, where nearly every museum is free, the admission price seemed steep (especially on top of the parking fee!), but three hours later, the four of us were complete converts. If you’re ever in Philadelphia with a child who can walk, we have only one thing to say: GO!!
We knew we were in for a special time when the first room we walked into had a mini SEPTA bus that Ella could drive, and after checking out the backhoes, changing some spark plugs, flying some gliders in the fizzy-lifting room, rowing a boat, doing her own shopping in a grocery store (complete with checkout scanners that beeped!), playing with bricks in a construction site, wandering around a maze, going down slides under the watchful eye of the Queen of Hearts, riding a goat on a carousel and having a good snack while watching the carousel…we may have found a new favorite place to go. We didn’t even get to check out the whole wing that was devoted to water play (with rubber smocks for the kids to wear to keep dry, of course) since it was getting to be nap time, but we definitely will be finding an excuse to go back before long.
The fact that Ella got to hang out with Uncle Jeff all morning was perhaps even more exciting than the museum itself – big thanks to Jeff for finding out about it and taking time out from studying to see us!!
This is a slight departure from chronological order (Ella’s birthday kinda took priority), but we definitely wanted to mention how much fun we all had last Saturday at Zoolights with our good friends Richard, Georganne and Piper.
Ella didn’t dig the lights as much as we thought she might (given her reaction to seeing Christmas lights from her car seat while driving around), but the animals were, as always, a huge hit. We’d never had such an easy time seeing Tai Shan munching on his bamboo, and the sleeping gorillas fascinated Ella (“Monkey! Sleeping!”). Her favorites though, as always, were the cows, goats and horses. All the animals were in their barn stalls, but Ella took to Daddy’s shoulders and managed to still get a good view. Given how much she and Piper seemed to enjoy themselves (not to mention how much the adults enjoyed getting together), we’ll definitely be ready for Zoolights and Boo at the Zoo next year!
What a busy, fun day yesterday was! We joined Ella at daycare for her party, and had fun both sharing cake with Ella and her classmates as well as playing with them:
After coming home, Ella helped us put together her Pretend Soup appetizer (from Molly Katzen’s book of the same name) by washing the strawberries, blueberries and mixing together all the ingredients, and washing the broccoli that she ate along with her Dr. Praeger’s fishies. In between cooking, she was surprised by Grandma and Papa who had spent the WHOLE afternoon (quite literally, unfortunately) in the basement putting together her new kitchen. Hopefully, all that work was worth the huge smile on her face and the fact that she was totally engrossed in playing with the kitchen once she came downstairs and saw it.
After dinner, Ella got a surprise birthday call from her cousins Dinah and Dale. We’re not sure how much they could hear of Ella’s side of the conversation, but she was totally excited to talk on the phone.
We sang her Happy Birthday again and gave her her birthday dessert (a blueberry scone that she helped decorate before it went into the oven), and while she didn’t quite have the lungs to blow out the candles, she had memorized almost all of the lyrics to Happy Birthday by bedtime. All in all, a great 2nd birthday, with plenty more pictures here.
Move over, Melissa d’Arabian! (although, yes, both Sara and I were pulling for you in this year’s competition…)
Ella absolutely loved her new kitchen, a present from Grandma and Papa, and spent a good chunk of yesterday evening playing with her new pots, pans, plates and spoons. Granted, the plates in the washing machine might have some unintended consequences, but she was really getting into it. We were debating over how long it would take the birthday girl to realize she had burners to put pots on…and it was all of about 10 minutes.
Combined with the new play food she got for Christmas and her birthday, Sara and I are getting ready for the day Ella presents us with a three-course dinner!
Ella’s beginning to understand what birthdays are all about, and seemed to think that having Mommy and Dadd sing her Happy Birthday in her crib was a good way to start the day. She hasn’t yet caught on that today is HER birthday, not someone else’s… That will change before the day’s over, for sure. She helped pick out her birthday outfit (and was very insistent that she get to wear the tights!), but wasn’t interested in standing still too long – she was off and dancing and running around the kitchen:
She has a full day ahead of her today – playing at daycare this morning, then Mommy and Daddy come back for a party this afternoon, and then even MORE partying with Grandma and Papa in the early evening.
Everyone at daycare sang her Happy Birthday as we came in this morning, and the door was decorated just for her:
Can it really be 2 years…24 months…104 weeks…and 731 days already? Our little girl is so grown up!!!
Ella decided she wanted to sit in a laundry basket this morning (not altogether unusual). And further, she decided she wanted to read a book (also a very common occurrence). The combination of the laundry basket and her desire to read her entire Dr. Seuss’ ABC book (thanks, Jerry & Barb!) and narrate parts of it was a new one for us.
We took several videos of the hilarious (at least to us) time – we thought this one won out for the musical accompaniment at the end!
As things are winding down now, we wanted to take a quick look back at the last two days – hope everyone had good Christmases and didn’t get too much coal in the stockings!
Ella spent most of Christmas Eve with Grandma, Papa, Uncle Jeff (and the dog, turtle and frog), with Sara and I joining after finally sloughed off the last bit of pre-holiday weekend work. Ella successfully made it through her first church service without needing to leave, which was remarkable given that we sat down in a pew 45 minutes before the service started. Her only comments were “All done, music!”, said at the end of every hymn (and the homily, for good measure).
We had a laid back Christmas itself – we actually slept in until 7:30! Ella was thrilled with unwrapping her stocking (and then our stockings as well), but decided she’d had enough after that, and didn’t open another gift until late in the afternoon. And boy were there a lot of gifts! Ella has no shortage of new toys to play with from here until next Christmas. We still haven’t opened them all at this point; perhaps we’ll make Christmas stretch for 12 days…or just provide some impromptu gifts come March or April.
My parents, Jeff and their dog came over in the afternoon for Christmas dinner and more presents. Ella eventually got into the idea of opening presents and being interested to see what’s inside instead of just playing with the wrapping paper. She was digging everything she unwrapped, but the big winner of Ella’s interest today was a Fisher-Price airplane – vintage, with the old-school little people. The plane eventually had to go to bed; otherwise Ella would still be up now playing with it, we’re guessing.
All in all, a wonderful Christmas with good food, good family and good fun. More pictures are posted here for anyone interested. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
We got some serious snow on Saturday, somewhere in the 20″ range.
While Andrew was in NY at NYU (and then struggling to get home), Ella, Sasha and I enjoyed watching the snow from the windows. On Sunday, the wind died down and it finally stopped snowing, so it was time to go sledding!
We borrowed a ’50s-era sled from Andrew’s parents, and off we went to the little hill behind our house. The path from some previous sledders wasn’t the best but Andrew and Ella made it down a few times.
Here’s our little snow bunny (with Daddy)…
Yesterday afternoon, I finished off the last exam of the fall semester (3/4 of the way through my MBA now!), and headed for Penn Station as I’ve done now approximately 25 times in the last two years. This, however, coincided with a certain winter storm that was making its way up from Virginia toward New York. Despite momentary thoughts about just getting a hotel room for the night in New York and heading back today, I really wanted to get home, and so was thrilled to see that the train was only about 10 minutes late leaving.
The snow flakes started by the time the train made it into Newark, NJ, and by the time we Metropark it was really coming down. We made it to Newark, DE only behind schedule by a half hour or so, and I realized, looking out the window that the snow on the northbound tracks had almost reached same height as the platform. To Amtrak’s credit, we kept pushing ahead, and aside from waiting 20-30 minutes at BWI Airport, there were no other weather-related stops. The originally scheduled 9:30pm arrival became 11pm, but I had made it back to DC.
Unfortunately, yesterday evening, DC was still infinitely far from Alexandria. No cabs were running, aside from a few minivans and SUVs without any licensing and requesting flat fees well into three digits. Metro had stopped all service at above-ground stations, meaning there was no way to reach south Arlington, Alexandria or Franconia. Thinking of the couches, big-screen TV and Peet’s coffee machine at my old company, I headed over there, hoping to make it into the employee lounge for the night. It was quite a shock to see how quiet downtown was at 11:30pm on a Saturday night, and while the roads were a complete mess, the sidewalks weren’t bad at all. I was able to make it into the building, but was denied access at the elevator, and headed for the back-up option: my current office. I made it over there (three metro stops and four blocks) in about 40 minutes, and made it into the elevator where I swiped my ID card and hit floor 7. Nothing happened. Twenty more attempts, and I was still on the ground floor. In desperation I started swiping my card and hitting other random floor numbers when number 6 lit up and the elevator started moving.
My company has offices on both the 6th and 7th floors, and while I knew I couldn’t get up to my floor, the fact that I could make it into any office was a huge relief. I ended up settling in on the floor of the server room, and was asleep within a couple minutes. This morning, I finished off the last of the three Chick-fil-A sandwiches I had brought with me, then took stock of the situation. The Metro was still open only for underground stations. The roads were still unplowed. And I was working on six hours of lousy sleep on my rolled up sweater as a pillow.
Amtrak, however, was still saying their 10:55am train to Charlotte, NC was scheduled to leave on time. The first stop of the train was Alexandria-King St. station, a short 15 blocks from my parents’ house. And, what felt most important, I’d be on the correct side of the Potomac River. I made my way back to Union Station (taking an hour, this time), and sat to wait. A short time before 10:55, people were informed that that train would arrivate at 11:10. Around 11:25, the announcement was made that the train was scheduled to arrive at 12:10. Frustrated, I headed out to check on whether any cabs were yet moving – they weren’t. Thankfully, shortly after that my Dad called and suggested that he could just pick me up at Union Station, since the roads had finally been plowed in Alexandria.
About 1:30, I said bye to my dad, and unlocked the door – 19 hours and 234 miles later!
Last Sunday was the day of my annual holiday cookie exchange. There were all sorts of yummy treats, from fudge to spiced nuts to cookies galore. (Recipes will follow!)
Thanks to everyone who came, and to Andrew, who helped cook up a storm of tasty vittles to accompany all the sugar.
My personal favorites were the brown sugar cookies and watching Ella eat half of a red velvet cupcake.
Thanks, ladies, for a fun afternoon…. I’m already looking forward to next year!
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