laundry

eleanor played with the empty laundry basket this afternoon while i was folding her clothes. here's what happened...



in the current banner photo, E is modeling the sweater i knit for brandy and mike's new baby benjamin. this was my second go-round with this pattern (cabin fever's "tasia's cardigan"--the first was the multi-colored malabrigo version i made for eleanor a few months back) and i used cascade yarns--lana d'oro wool for the body and cotton luna for the collar, cuffs and waistband.

regalia

sunday was all about graduation. it might be because i'm fairly new at all of this, but i really like being able to wear academic regalia, and commencement ceremonies are one of the only times you get to do that. this is coming from the woman who didn't even wear a cap and gown to her own undergraduate commencement. i said it was because i was going to grad school and i'd put on all of that stuff when i'd finally earned my PhD (which i did). alternate explanations: i probably also thought that i was in some way being anti-establishment, as if not giving josten's my $35 rental fee was somehow really "sticking it to the man"; also, my hair never looks good in any kind of hat. anyway, it was really fun to process in with my friends and colleagues and celebrate our scholarly accomplishments by wearing big puffy sleeves and floppy hats. above are my friends matt and adam, who earned their degrees from universities in the UK where the costuming is totally different. who knew the brits could be so flashy?
this was my view during the ceremony. the event was held at a local sports/concert arena. i was secretly wishing that when the last graduate's name was called, the loud air horn buzzer would go off. EEERRRRRRRRRR!
i skipped commencement last year. my excuse? too pregnant. this year, i was excited to be able to congratulate and say a last goodbye to some students i had worked closely with over the past two years. one of them was danielle, whose mortar board is pictured above. she didn't even make sure that we saw this message--i only spotted it after i had given her a hug and told her to keep in touch. sometimes little things like that make you really happy that you're doing what you're doing.
here's me with ashley and danielle. they're two cool young women who will doubtless go on to do wonderful things with their smarts and talents.
while i was being all hogwarts-y in my robe and hood, rob and E waited patiently and hung out with some faculty friends' spouses. it was a long day. they are troopers. there may be some pics of what they were up to in a future post. stay tuned...

Tornado

Tornado LINK
This is a link to a story about last weekend's tornado that destroyed the town of Parkersburg N of us. There is a photo gallery and video at the top.

2 sweet vids

Here are 2 good videos we took of Eleanor today. We think you'll enjoy them. Please take time to notice her sweet Memorial Day outfit!

yard doings

i'm pretty sure that this is our first non-eleanor post in a long time. she was sleeping when these evening shots of various lawn and garden happenings were taken. granted, it's not a major screen porch re-vamp, but we do what we can...we have an ace hardware within spitting distance of the house and this is a pretty major temptation for rob. however, when he comes home with cheery annuals for the deck, i can't even pretend to be the least bit irritated about an impulse buy. my dad won that dos equis umbrella at a golf outing!
one of our project green purchases was a japanese maple. rob also snagged a redbud, spirea, lilac, silver lace vine, and some perennials for me. we hope this little tree is happy in the front yard.
ever-vigilant oscar patrols the yard for pesky critters. literally. a few days after this was taken, he dug a hole a foot deep in the center of that bed under the deck, presumably to get at something nesting in the stone wall, and some of those not-yet-blooming irises paid the price. now the rest of them have bloomed a lovely purple. i need some yellow ones for next year to round out the iris palette. at the corner there you can see the jack in the pulpit and solomon's seal that jean gave to us this spring as well as one of the hostas she planted last year. it's my favorite kind with huge quilted-looking light green leaves. anyone know the variety?

zoo aficionado

you can tell here by the hat and her wild gesturing that eleanor's ready to see some animals and have an adventure. she's not even a year old and she is already a seasoned zoo veteran. her first time around was at the national zoo in DC and this past weekend we visited chicago's lincoln park zoo. we got the idea to come down to the lakefront because our friends julie and carly were participating in a fundraising walk for epilepsy research that took them through lincoln park. we later went back to their house for a grill-out on the deck.
i have to confess that i've always been a bit snobby about my hometown's zoos. brookfield zoo (paid admission) was the ritzier (less smelly) and flashier (tropic world asia!) of the two when i was growing up, while lincoln park (free) was the sad (concrete and steel bar enclosures for the animals), second-choice option. that said, i was completely bowled over by how beautiful and updated the lincoln park zoo is now...maybe we'll actually go on the endangered animals carousel on our next visit. we had enough fun just watching everyone else go around and around and we spent our $3.50 on a little carton of popcorn instead.
here we had just seen some chimps amble by in their outdoor habitat. the primate house is always my favorite. we spent a long time inside spying on a silverback gorilla and his family.
rob was most impressed with the kangaroos. can you see that the one in the middle is rolling around on his (her?) back in the dirt? oscar loves doing that at the dog park--maybe he's part kangaroo. and did you know that a kangaroo's feet can't move independently of one another? zoos are great for random marsupial facts like that!
this flamingo photo should give you a pretty good idea of just how beautiful the day was. all of the zoo's redbuds, flowering crabapple trees and tulips were in bloom. i was totally won over. yay for free zoos available to everyone!

moms not bombs

sunday was my first mother's day with eleanor ex utero and we had a lovely breakfast here with my mom. e had to wear her "my mom is the bomb" onesie (a gift from matt and sarah--noa's folks).

rob put out a nice spread of eggs, bacon (not pictured), strawberries and yogurt, and some homemade bagels. though i have made bagels myself--with sarah back in ye olde grad schoole days, from a nigella recipe--these were boiled and baked by a woman who lives a few blocks away. she has a big brick oven in her backyard and she makes crusty loaves of bread and bagels to order on the weekends. you pre-order, she puts the baked goods in a cooler on her porch, and you leave your check or cash. fun, huh?
speaking of cottage industry food, i was introduced to d'alessandro pasta to go in rock island by my carpool friend sharon this week. the business is run by a 68-year-old italian woman using recipes for ravioli, manicotti, lasagna and sauces passed down by her 91-year-old mother (a good mother's day tie-in, no?). i took some home and we had their prosciutto ravioli and asparagus ravioli with marsala sauce for dinner on saturday. amazing. if you're dying to learn how to make and sell pasta in the quad cities, the business is for sale!
also, eleanor had her first bagel on sunday. she gummed it all up but good, then left most of it on the edge of exer-saucer when we took her out to play elsewhere. this didn't escape oscar's attention. just when we had forgotten all about it, he downed it in one swallow.

my breakfast with eleanor

here's our first experiment with video on blogger. rob used some kind of converter software to shrink the file size, but we might need to tweak the settings a bit if it seems too pixel-y. what do you think?
eleanor loves to eat her O's. she's got the pincer grasp down pat!
sometimes mealtime can be an adventure...

avocado is one of her very favorite foods. when she goes for the spoon..look out!
never mind that bruise on her forehead. our little daredevil loves to test her physical limits. sadly, experiments with walking sometimes lead to not-so-graceful landings.