lines of flight

hello mr ohler

Rick and I just wrapped up our new record under the band name ohler.  The record is called 'hello mr ohler' (I know, I know creativity counts, but it is an inside joke.)

This is the result of more than two years work and it feels good to be done.  The record is a free download (a physical version with a lot of goodies and extras will be sold soon) and can be had here.   The music is very dreamy and etherial.  If you like the Cocteau Twins or My Bloody Valentine or Boards of Canada you should try a listen.  You should try a listen anyway -- It's free!

two...Two...TWO!!!!

Here were are "safely" on the other side. Agatha has passed the two year mark! A real post to come asap. In the meantime---check out some recent photos in "2005. Agatha's 2nd Birthday" folder to the right.

deep thoughts

yesterday, Ags was petting the cat, pointing out her various parts, "kitty's eyes....kitty's nose"...."kitty's tail." She then stopped, looked at me, reached behind and grabbed her own little butt, and said,"Mommy, where's Aggie's tail?" Hmmm. How to answer? I said, "Well, Aggie doesn't have a tail." Hmmm....she thought about it, then raised her hands in the air and said, "what happened?"

cousins

new pix added mostly of Ags, Viv, and JH together. Sorry the folders are harder to find...there are so many now.
But scroll down and the folder is "June 2005 more pix"

"Aggie go Ocean?"

Yes spring has come and mostly gone. The heat and humidity have finally arrived and Agatha's suddenly got curly hair. In the past month, she's been to MOMA, Pennsylvania, Martha's Vineyard, Rhode Island and back. Her mom finally graduated from CU and may just pay off her loans before Ags goes to college.

At almost 22 months, Agatha has pretty much turned her back on babyhood. Her chubby legs have outgrown all of her pants. Her sweet little rolls are gone. And she's talking up a storm. Current favorite phrases: "Hi, sweetie!" "Aggie go home now," "Where'd Sadie go? Oh no...Bye Sadie," "Something to eat? Snack? Please?" "Aggie watching Nemo now," "What happened?" "Hmmmm...let's see...chickens?" "Aggie digging Treasure!"

Lately, she's been thinking about this whole sense-of-humor thing. At random, often uninteresting, moments, she'll start giggling and say, "Funny," just to see if it makes us laugh--it does. She's even started amusing herself. She'll sing her ABCs in a goofy voice then howl with laughter.

She now knows who her posse is, particularly, well us, and cousin Vivian and John Henry, Grandma, Grumps, Grams, Papa Sav, Granny Cheryl, Wendy, Sadie, and Daniel. And it's not just that she can pick them out in a lineup, she thinks of them, asks where they are, "calls" them on the phone: "Hello? Yeah, Hi Grams. Yeah. Bye," or "Hello? Yeah, Hi Vivi. Yeah Bye." Whenever she sees someone blowing bubbles, she looks at me and says, "Grumps," in a way that if she knew the words would be, "remember the time Grumps blew bubbles for me?" Or, she'll say, "Oh no. Pop Sab Hat," reminding me every few days that Papa Sav left his hat here last time he came.

We took our first real vacation as a family to Martha's Vineyard and had the best week ever. Agatha is now forever in love with the ocean. We took her on a long bike ride where she sang a wonderful version of Queen's "Bicycle." She dug for treasure with a large, dried out crab leg she found on the beach (yes we washed her hands after). On the last day, when it finally warmed up, she walked right into the ocean and didn't come out until we dragged her kicking and screaming.

We've been home for a week and every day we play with the rocks and shells we collected off the beach. She constantly asks to see the pictures from our trip, pointing to the computer and saying, "Aggie Bacation?" The other day I took her to the playground. It was hot, so I put her in her bathing suit and water shoes. She looked at me, beaming and said, "Aggie go Ocean?" No. No ocean. I felt bad that she had to settle for pavement and playground sprinklers....But luckily there was a rainbow and that pleased her almost as much...almost.

Check out the folder to the right called "Agatha.a.vacation" for evidence of it all.

ice cream truck

Ags has cruised passed the nineteen month mark. She's 32-1/2 inches and 22-1/2 lbs, but acts like she's the biggest one in the room. She's learning to throw temper tantrums--joy, but also learning how to really talk---actual joy. She asks for "ice cream truck" a hundred times a day. what is it? anything frozen--apple sauce, yogurt, plain old ice. Other favorite phrases are: "thank you much. i welcome," which she says anytime you hand her anything, and "it's dinnatine!" which she says just before any meal. Then there's, "I help you?" Which actually means help her. She's also started to call the cat by her name, which she pronounces, "Shhammmy!" Now all we need is for her to break into song with jazz hands and add, "how I love ya, how I love ya..."

She's fallen in love with Finding Nemo. She begs us to watch it saying, "wake up Nemo, peeze (please)?" She's even starting to quote it. While in her stroller she'll just start chanting, "keep swimming, keep swimming...," which is never bad advise really.

She's getting more and more fun every day (tantrums and all), and she's already figured out how to get Rob to do what she wants. She just smiles at him, says, "love you," then holds her hand out towards the fridge and adds, "chocolate Ice cream truck?"

thank you much....and bow

agatha has taken to bowing after saying thank you. i hand her an apple. she says "thank you much" and takes a bow. I uncap a marker for her, "thank you much"...and bow. it's all so very polite and professional of her.

ags updates:
don't know how big she is (we find out in a couple of weeks) but she seems to be out-growing her clothes at an alarming rate, and she's certainly gained a healthy bit of weight--my lower back seems permanently broken (oh well).

we finally finished nursing...yes we went a good seventeen solid months, thank you much...and bow. all this time she'd been refusing cows milk, but now, having gone two weeks without nursing, she gulps down full cups of milk like it's a special treat.

she's got a lot to say these days. Her favorite game is name the animals and their sounds. she also sings a real jazzy version of twinkle twinkle and likes to improv a song or two in the late evenings while standing on the seat of her big wheel and rocking back and forth. yes...she's still a big climber...she's reaching higher and growing more fearless. even her falls don't seem to deter her....ugh.

her current favorites: her ernie doll, her kitty, blueberries, cheese, maisy, noodles (as always), drawing in the bath, drawing on the couch (literally), fish, turtles, and most of all her blocks.

she's pretty happy these days...busy, curious, cuddly, and surprising...and all we can say is "thank you much"...and (you know the rest)

Ta....Daaaa!

Agatha's a performer...of the circus kind...a climber really. We tell her "no...no...no" as we race to stop her, and she smiles and repeats back to us "no...no...no," as she continues to climb. And whether its just a book, a remote control, her drawing table, toy chest, rocking chair, the bed, the bathtub, her bureau....ugh....she always finishes off a climb the same way; She throws her arms up and shouts "Ta...Daaaa!"

She's also taken to shouting not "No" when she doesn't like what's going on, but "Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!" This of course gets a lot more attention from strangers in the grocery store, which she loves...I don't.

She's pretty much mastered the use of single words. She can repeat just about any word you say to her (within reason). She says a couple of two word phrases, like "oh no." "Daddy work," "thank you," and "get it." If a word has an "s" in it, however, the letter will be replaced by another...i.e. Maimy for Maisy...Badi for Sadi, Fnow for snow...you get the picture. She also has figured out how to raise the tone of her voice to turn any word into a question. This she loves most.

She's changing so fast now. At just about 17 months, she's quickly losing all signs of babyhood and mastering the toddler attitude. Some days we miss that little baby--her chubby body and lack of mobility...ahhh...no crayons on the wall, no spaghetti on the cat....But then Ags starts singing to herself, climbs on top of her little people doll house, and shouts "ta...daaa!" and we can't wait to see what she'll come out with next.

Ho..Ho...Hurl!

We should have known...when a lost credit card and an expired license threatened to cancel our holiday plans, we should have seen it as the warning it was.

When Wednesday night, after a happy feast of noodles and then some blueberries, a fun bath-time and comfy pajamas, Agatha threw up all over the place, we should have known. Three pairs of pajamas, two sets of sheets and several hours later, I held her exhausted little body all night.

Though she seemed fine the next morning, alert, a little hungry, we should have waited. But no. We set out for our Christmas in Pennsylvania. And then she threw up in the car at about the half way point. We should have turned around and gone home, but we didn't. And we brought to Agatha's grandparents house...the little stomach bug that could.

While Ags still had another rough day to go, the bug took down Rob, twelve hours later, I went down hard. This morning, Christmas morning, it was Grandma, and currenlty as we all lie in bed completely dehydrated and exhausted, it's taking down the last one standing, Grumps.

I'm sure we'll laugh about it someday...about being the only family in Pennsylvania to lose weight over the holidays. But right now, Rob and I, with our sunken bellies and weary eyes, can only feel sorry that we were too naive to know the dangers of traveling with a potentially still sick, contagious child.

Now we know.

the birth of a consumer

Agatha opened her first present last night. Just one. We gave it to her for fun, to see what she'd do. Twenty minutes later she had stood on the present a good forty times (it just so happened the present had buttons on it and called out "A" when she did). She danced in circles around it singing "A...A..A..." She tore one corner, then the other, but no more. She jumped on it. pointed to it over and over crying "up! down!" Finally, once we were losing interest, Rob tore a little more of the wrapper and that did it. Agatha tore into it like she might find a whole new universe inside. Alas, it was just a sweet little electric bus. But that to Agatha was amazing. Now here we are the next morning and I've spent an hour trying to distract her from the many wrapped presents that just yesterday were of no interest. She keeps looking at me like I'm evil as she points to the presents that are out of reach crying "up...down...up...down."

Ags update: in 2 days she'll be 16 months old. She's about 32", just over 21 lbs, and can now climb on every chair, couch, bed, and box in the house. She's even figured out how to turn her own little chairs into mini slides, by knocking them forward and sliding down the back of them. her vocabulary has grown...with "mommy" and "daddy" finally being used in reference to the correct people. She's also added: cookie, cracker, Elmo, Big Bird, Grover, Vivi, ouch, crayon, green, water, bath, bat, hair, cheese, people, and girl, to her daily chatter and enjoys singing songs to herself.

She gets increasingly curious, increasingly dangerous, and increasingly irresistible by the day.