a piece of advice for anyone who gets a kiddie pool and fills it with water:

if you have a cell phone in your pocket, don't get in.

i know i have some smarts, i can do complicated mental tasks relatively well, but sometimes i am capable of monumental stupidity. ava had soaked me with the hose, and so i just decided to throw caution to the wind and hop in with her, so carter had something to lean on since he did not want to put his nether regions in the cold water. i said to ava "gee, there must be a rock under the pool!" oh, nooooooo. that is no rock. that is a completely submerged piece of electronic equipment.

when the led started glowing orange, i took the battery out--it just gave the impression that it was about to explode. i guess tomorrow we go to the verizon store.

we made macaroons today--all the way to the point where you add the egg whites. no eggs. so, we switched and made coconut-chocolate-peanut butter-banana-nut thingamajigs. pretty tasty. and ugly.

if it has a lid, it is terrific. carter will spend the longest time trying to put the top on something. whether it is a pot, a jar, a tin, you name it. he is determined to get it together.

he likes it even more than putting things in containers.

ava and i are watching season one of the muppet show. the tv has left the house, and now we only watch the dvd player. i cannot tell you how great it is that the giant screen is no longer here. i still appreciate the screen opportunity of the dvd player, but it is sooooo nice to just be able to say "no, we cannot watch tv" "but WHY?" " turn around, and look. do you see a tv?" "no"

I was accepted into the Master's program in epidemiology at the London School of Hygeine and Tropical Medicine, University of London. The "statistics" part of the title here has become valid!

It is a distance degree, though I have the option of going to London for exams (or NYC).

Now, all I have to do is figure out how to take this and apply it. Would be nice to eliminate a bit of the injustice rampant in the world today with a bit of statistical prowess. Reading this book about Thimerosal is a galvanizing endeavor.

the other day, ava stood in the kitchen and said "mommy, can you get me the ready?"

i said, 'pardon me?'

she said "can you get me the ready?"

i said "ready for what?"

"no! the ready!"

"ava, ready for what?"

"NO Mommy! THE RED E!!!"

and with that she pointed to the magnetic 'e' on the fridge that was, in fact, red.

carter broke out in hives tonight. only around his mouth, but they were unmistakable. problem is, his dinner consisted of about 14 different items. however, my suspicion is that it was the swiss cheese.

we went through the toys, and broke out some that were put away earlier because carter was too small, and both kids were very occupied all day. carter thought the remote control cars were fantastic, so that was fun. (and also provides evidence that i do actually have plastic-moving-whirring-shiny-noisy toys and am not the wooden toy snob that my birthday present buying habits have suggested).

it rained all day again today.

i am reading 'evidence of harm,' a book about the thimerosal (mercury based preservative) that was in vaccines until a few years ago. it is incredibly engaging and very disturbing. my head is spinning, since the book (which is undoubtedly anti-thimerosal) presents the science on both sides, as well as a detailed history of the legal issues surrounding it. it is not a cheery book. as someone that has worked in drug safety, i find it very frustrating that the safety of this product flew so low under the radar of everyone that is charged with evaluating these products. of course, the book suggests that it was deliberately ignored, but that is another story. irrespective of whether or not it causes autism, the amount of mercury kids received was outrageous. that is not in question. and kids outside of this country are still getting loaded up with it.

oh. i see i have my soapbox out. i will stop now, especially since i am only halfway through.

ava refers to my cell phone as my 'celophone.'

Carter is changing SO FAST. All of a sudden, he seems to have put together the processes of everyday life. That sounds abstract, and it is hard to explain, but as I noted before, it has a lot to do with communication. But it is more than that. For example, the other day he woke up, got out of bed, opened his door and crawled out into the living room where Ava and I were hanging out like it was the most straightforward thing in the world. I was quite surprised. And then he did it again. Essentially, it is clear that he understands the routines of the house, as well as where everything is, even if he cannot see it. And then of course there is all of the interaction. Giving us stuff, feeding us (though he is so into his food, he is starting to be reluctant to give it to someone else...).

We went out to lunch yesterday. I sat there and looked at Peter and said "we are eating in a restaurant." It was astonishing to me. And it was a nice restaurant. Carter and Ava ate their pizza, and I relaxed with my iced tea, and Peter had his sandwich. INCREDIBLE. There is hope that we will actually rejoin the world of normal activities. No, I do not expect to have a life like that pre-children, I am not that naive, but going to a restaurant is a reasonable expectation I think. Perhaps a glass of wine on the dock by myself with a book while the kids sleep? I am really looking forward to that...

Ava is a little girl now. So amazing. And she has developed little kid humor. Yesterday she announced from her car seat that she had poopy on her shoe. I reacted along the lines of WHAT??? and then she got hysterical. And then she said "no! it is on my SHOULDER!" More laughing. If I said "EEEEEWWWWW" she got even more hysterical. She went through a list of places where poopy would be disgusting, and got hysterical at each one.

She is also getting good at playing with Carter. He is still her science experiment, but not to the extent as before. Now they 'wrestle' and play with toys together, and the all time favorite: the screaming game. This involves Ava screaming at the top of her lungs, and then Carter responds in kind. AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh! AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH! aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! They get hysterical.

Peter commented about how cute they were, and wouldn't it be fun to have more. I nearly gagged on my dinner, which got him hysterical--the comment clearly was intended to get a reaction instead of being serious. But just in case my opinion was not clear, I paused to gather my thoughts, and looked at him and said "There are sooooo many ways to say no to that idea."

Don't worry everyone, he was just kidding.

Today it is pouring, so I think we will go to the library. Ava wants to go to Donnelley's -- the local summertime soft serve ice cream stand, so we probably will do that, even though the weather is not conducive. We did that last Monday, when it was 84 degrees, and Ava had pistachio for the first time. The deal there is that there is one flavor per day which is swirled with vanilla. At first she asked me to eat the green part, but I encouraged her to try it. She ate her whole cone. With a little help from Mom in the clean-up department. Carter loved it as well.

Our other activity is toy organization. We have some clearing out to do. There is one puzzle that we have that makes animal noises when the pieces are put in place--ie the horse piece makes a horse sound when put in the horse spot. This has been something that Carter and Ava have enjoyed, but it has recently gone insane, and makes its sounds from the depths of the toybox without any input from a human. This is very disconcerting, and so I think we will retire that one. And mom has to find all o f the Candyland pieces floating around the house. Ava played that for real the other day, and loved it. She was content to play all by herself too. She looked up at me while we were playing and said "TWO RED SQUARES" and then marched her little piece along the path to the next two red squares, stopped, put her card in the discard pile and said "I am REALLY good at this Mommy!" So funny.

carter is learning to talk. it is so cute. he shakes his head 'no' and says naaaaa, and then he sort of writhes his upper body to nod yes and makes an indiscriminate eeeehhhhh sound when he does that. he waves, does 'so big,' claps, and says "NEH" to everything. it is his catch-all word. and i think nini means nurse. not sure though. of course we have DA! and mama and va va for the three of us, but that has been a longstanding accomplishment. oh, and he is fabulous at BLAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH. he sticks his tongue out and wipes it with his hand as he says it.

today the front brakes died on the tahoe. it was a pretty nervewraking moment, but we emerged from it unscathed. mostly because the rear brakes were functioning. ava's response when we came to a stop was "mommy, why did you say sh*t sh*t sh*t?" i sort of ignored that question.

so, we are stuck at home. and it is raining. i saved all of my errands for today, since i knew it was going to rain, and here we are. blah. though we expect two interesting things: a load of wood, and the flat bed truck. that should capture ava's interest for a little bit.