Best of the Best

For those of you that don't check the flickr.com website, here's a "Best of" of the most recent photos uploaded.....

Sometimes Ava just doesn't know when to stop. Here you can see her slipping into a food coma and enjoying every minute of it.

We're trying to figure out if she's going to need surgery for that crooked smile. :-)

Give a mom and her daughter pastels to wear and watch out before you explode from the sheer amount of cuteness.

Here Ava is practicing her Electric Slide. She's already mastered The Hustle and The Macarena.

Ride-em Cow-baby!

Ride-em Cow-baby!, originally uploaded by Ava's Antics.

Sunday night Ava got her first horse ride and already won't stop begging me for a pony! Can you believe it?!?! I told her that ponies only come so small. We would have to find a dwarf Shetland pony that had mated with a cat in order to find something her size! Seriously Ava, let's try rolling over first, then we can talk about a pony.

They refuse to acknowledge each other, originally uploaded by Ava's Antics.

Ava and the horse refused to acknowledge each other the whole time we rode. Ava was more fascinated by the leaves in the trees than by the 100% pure horsepower between her legs. She seemed to tolerate the jostling pretty well. For those of you that haven't ever ridden a horse, imagine riding one of those bicycles with the 6 ft front wheels over a parking lot with speed bumps every 2 feet. That's about what riding a horse is like, except that, despite the bumps, riding a horse is actually fun.

We were able to ride the horse thanks to our friends Denny and Sara, who are in our D-team. I enjoyed riding the horses, but the highlight of the night was when Sara let their dogs out of their kennel and one of them started eating horse poop! It's good to know that Sassy isn't the only one afflicted with this horrible addiction (Sassy eats her own poo instead, but if the opportunity presented itself I'm sure she wouldn't be able to pass up a fine horse-patty).

Ah-CHOO!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Things have been pretty crazy around here with Doni getting her new job. We went to Michigan to visit my family on Saturday because we had originally planned on going to Michigan for a wedding shower the weekend before, but we couldn't go then because we needed to finish setting up Doni's classroom. I think things are starting to slow down now though. You might say we've gone from a high heat to a slow simmer.

Ava has been doing several new things lately. First of all, she has started making noises like she's talking in some foreign dialect derived from Swahili. She does this pretty loudly, so I think it's a pretty good thing we had started putting her in the nursery at church from early on. We take advantage of these talkative times by putting words into her mouth. We'll say "I love you!" and she'll respond by saying "Ayeaeeiaoooiieeeeoaaooe Yaya" which, for you non-parents out there, is translated as "I love you".

Ava is continuing to sleep through the night, although she relapsed into her old routine for a few days because she got sick. She had a bit of a catch 22.... Her nose was stuffed up, so she had to breathe through her mouth. Of course she wanted her pacifier in her mouth, which, until they invent a better pacifier, blocks oral breathing. Should she breathe and be lonesome for her pacifier or get the pacifier at the expense of her life functions? She kept going back and forth on this one. Thankfully, she is feeling much better lately. She unselfishly gave me a bit of her cold so that we could have a little more father-daughter bonding. How sweet of her.....

Good News on the Fisk Home-front

There's this little bit of news that I've been holding off on telling anyone because of the uncertainty of what might happen.

As some of you know, Doni has been working in our city's school district for the past 1 1/2 years. She has not, however, had her own classroom in the "traditional" teaching setting because there is an abundance of teachers in this area and a low demand in terms of open positions.

Last week we were excited to hear that Doni was going to have an interview with the principals and the person in charge of the district's hiring. Doni went to her interview and came home that night with no immediate indication of whether or not they were going to offer her her own classroom. That evening we decided to go out to dinner and when we got back there was a message from Doni's principal saying that he needed to speak with her and that she needed to call him first thing in the morning. As you can imagine, we were getting pretty apprehensive at this point.

The next day Doni talked to her principal and was told that she was a "candidate" for the position, but that she still had to have a second interview with the superintendent. Through Doni's friends at work, she knew that this second interview was pretty much a formality and that she was basically assured of being hired! On Monday Doni went in for her second interview and signed her contract to teach a kindergarten classroom for this next school year. Since then, she's been at her school a lot trying to set up her classroom and get everything in order for when the kids come for a pre-school open house next Monday. It's exciting times here at the Fisk household!

Eight Nights of Heaven

Let me tell you about another little skill Ava has picked up.... I would have mentioned it a while ago, but I thought that maybe it was just a fluke (no, not like the worm) and she would magically lose her ability to perform this magnificent task. This heavenly blessing I speak of is Skill #4 - Sleeping through the night.

*pause to let the applause in my head die down*

Last Thursday morning I woke up to my alarm at 5:45 AM to a stunned look from Doni's face. Since I have been having to get up so early in the morning for school and Doni has been on summer vacation, she has been getting up with Ava when she wakes up during the night. Even before school started up again Doni would always have to wake up when Ava cried during the night because she would have to wake me up for the times that I would feed her! Apparently I'm a heavy sleeper. Anyways, Doni was giving me a stuporous look because this was the first time that Ava had slept completely through the night! Doni and I giddily skipped over to Ava's room (some of you may realize that this is remarkable because Doni isn't usually a "morning person".... I, however, usually skip around the house). Ava was still as snug as a bug in a rug. I pinched myself trying to wake up from this dream until I looked like I had spent a week naked in the Amazon with mosquito pheromones sprayed over my body. This was real.... oh blessed Skill #4! Technically, Ava only slept until 6 AM and we usually wake her up to feed her at 7 AM, but this was close enough for our tolerances to call it a full "sleep-through".

Saturday morning history repeated itself as Ava slept till 6:30. Forty-eight hours and a couple of well-rested nights later and Ava was sleeping all the way through until 7AM! It's A-MA-ZA-ZING!