Just this past rainy Monday, my family and I were all driving around in our car (well, Carrie was the only one actually driving; Avery & I were riding in the backseat). My 3-year-old daughter asked if she could use my phone to take photos out the window. She ended up taking 86 photos in about 10-15 minutes. Here are my nine favorite in random order (click any to embiggen):
Also, at one point she put the camera lens down right on her leg and said, rather ominously, that she wanted to “take a photo of the darkness.”
On Saturday my wee beb turned 1 year old. If you aren’t aware, over at her website I’ve been doing a photo-a-day project. Long ago when I started doing this, I had the idea of stitching all of the photos of Avery’s first year together into a video where each photo is shown for one second so the video would be 366 seconds long.
Unbeknown to Carrie, I thought that watching a six-minute video of a bunch of photos would be much better if it had some musical accompaniment. So I secretly set about writing a song that was exactly 60 beats per minute and had exactly 366 beats in it.
We just happen to be a part of a community that contains some of Seattle’s very best musicians, so without Carrie’s knowledge I secretly reached out to several of them to see if they would be willing to be a part of this project, and the response was very enthusiastic.
Over the month of October various awesome musicians recorded their parts and I mixed it all together, until on Avery’s 1st birthday I surprised Carrie with the results (she was rather thrilled). You can now see the full music video here:
Facing such incredible danger is unbelievably brave. But I’m glad someone had the courage to make this video, because there is now a baby in my life. What will I do ifwhen Avery attacks me?
Now, thanks to Gavin McInnes, I have some great tips that mightwill someday save my life:
I wonder if there is any correlation between a baby’s cuteness and its ability to fight. The baby in the video is pretty durned cute, and it has mad fighting skillz. But just look at how cute Avery is!
She’s ready to Karate me!
I’d be a dead man for sure without the knowledge of how to fight a baby!
After two weeks of indulging in new-baby bliss (and catching up on Doctor Who), I went back to work on Wednesday morning. It wasn’t actually all that bad; the people there had run themselves pretty ragged trying to keep up with my workload, which I greatly appreciate.
I did miss all my girls while I was gone, all four of them. I recently realized that they all have names that end with the “ee” sound: Carrie, Suki, Rory, and now Avery. What is it about names that end in “ee” that attracts me so?
Anyway, it was a good day because I got to come home to this:
The Many Faces of Avery
What isn’t so good is that I can’t take the carpool lane anymore since Carrie is stay-at-home for the time being. So I now have to negotiate actual traffic between Tacoma and Tukwila twice a day. Kinda yucky.
But if anyone is ever in the Southcenter area around lunchtime and wants to grab a bite with me, I am (usually) completely available now! Hit me up! Let’s do lunch!
One thing that was very nice about the night (other than the musics) was the fact that when I looked around the rather-packed room I knew probably 90% of the people there.
The Crowd
But what was especially special was the fact that we brought wee baby Avery with us for her first real outing at only one week of age. She ended up being the real star of the show! It was for many people the first time they had seen her. She was passed from friendly hand to friendly hand all night long.
Lara & Avery
Even rock stars couldn’t resist the urge of the cuteness of the wee beb:
Julia & Avery
In fact, Avery is so beloved that Julia Massey & The Five Finger Discount actually wrote a song for her before she was born. It is called “Montana Capri” because before we announced the name of Avery we used Montana Capri as her codename. This was the first time the song was ever performed live, and it was performed for Avery:
How many babies have songs written for them? And how many babies have the song performed for them live on stage in their first week of life? We have a very, very lucky wee beb.
Unfortunately we had to leave while The Old Salt was setting up due to the wee beb having been out for a couple of hours. But it was a pretty amazing night.
Details: DOB: 11/1/13 4:00 AM
Weight: 10 lbs, 12 oz (!!)
Length: 20.5″
In order to keep this website from becoming just a baby blog, I have created a separate website just for our wee baby Avery: www.averyfharris.com/. Most updates and photos and what-not will go in there.
Thanks so much to everyone for all your love and support these past nine months. This is just the beginning!
