avocado8

What's Going On

I have a little list of things I've been wanting to write about, but which I haven't had time to address as of yet (and yes, I'm still behind on my e-mail—if I owe you one, hopefully you'll hear from me soon). Part of the problem—which isn't really a problem at all, given that usually we're homebodies who don't do much of anything—is that we're too busy DOING THINGS and HAVING FUN for me to keep up with, well, writing about the things we're doing.

Some of the things on my list:

• This one I don't need more than a bullet point to write about: I've been considering moving my about town and about town II photoblogs to Flickr for a long time because it's getting to be too much of a pain to edit and post the photos separately. (Consequently, the photosteams on the avocado8 home page—and the blogs themselves—are hopelessly out of date.) The only thing that's been holding me back is the thought of trying to find all the originals on backup CDs so I can upload those, rather than the medium-sized versions I've posted to the blogs. Now that Flickr has geotagging, though, I've finally decided to just bite the bullet, upload the medium-sized images, and move forward. I started the process yesterday and have uploaded about 20-30 photos from about town II (Philadelphia); obviously there are a TON more to get through, and I haven't done the geotagging yet, but eventually Flickr sets will replace the two about town blogs. (And if you're wondering why my photostream suddenly has a bunch of photos from 2003 in it, now you know.)
• Running toward the street. This is something I want to write about for PhillyMoms, but I'll probably cross-post it here. It's about how I've been acutely aware lately that we are raising a kid in the city.
• College towns: favorite haunts After our trip to State College (home of Penn State) last weekend, I've had college towns on the brain. Hopefully I'll get a chance to share my thoughts (and ask you to share yours, too)!
• Labor Day Weekend Yes, I'm aware that this happened almost three weeks ago now, but it sort of epitomized the busy-ness we're experiencing around here. On Friday Al, the Beaner, and I drove down to my parents' house in Westminster, MD so they could see and play with the Beaner, and I could ride with them up to Rochester, NY, for my Aunt Anna's 90th birthday open house on Saturday. Mom, Dad, and I left at 5:30am on Saturday, and Al and the Beaner drove back to Philadelphia a few hours later. Mom and Dad dropped me off in Philly on Sunday afternoon, about an hour before Al's brother, sister-in-law, and nephew arrived. We went to the Franklin Institute on Sunday afternoon, and Al and Carl played golf on Monday morning while Tris, Henry, the Beaner, and I went to Schuylkill River playground (something else I want to write about for PhillyMoms—the playground has been renovated) and picked up lunch. All in all, a crazy, wonderful weekend.
• And finally, we freecycled the high chair last week. The Beaner will still sit in high chairs in restaurants (occasionally), but he'd long ago started stiffening when we tried to force him into the one at home. He now eats at his little table for breakfast and lunch, and he sits in a regular chair at the dining room table when we eat dinner together. We looked for a booster seat a couple months ago, but we never found one we liked, and he seems happy to just sit in the chair, so that's the routine now.
• Oh, right, one more thing: Our morning routine has changed AGAIN. For a while there the Beaner was waking up between 6am and 7am and snuggling in bed with us until Al was ready to get up (often until I returned from my morning walk), but this week he's started demanding that Al get up and take him downstairs after only a few minutes of snuggling. In other words, we've returned to the routine of a few months ago. We're also experimenting with naps (no nap at all / changing the time / waking him up after an hour) and bedtimes to try to come up with a magic formula that will get him to go down quickly and sleep past 7am. Oh, how much better our mornings are when he sleeps past 7am!