The army crawl is long gone. Abi now does a full-speed, zooming-across-the-house crawl. She can also pull herself up to standing, and then get herself back down when she’s done (usually). Here’s a little video we caught of her in the kitchen, and there’s some new pics in the sidebar…
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=8814546839438542961&hl=en&fs=true

One of our favourite features of our new house — one that might strike other people as unusual — is that there’s a hill in our backyard. Its sort of an odd slope, and certainly makes lawn maintenance a challenge, but when I saw it, I immediately thought: sledding in the winter, slip-and-side in the summer!
Yesterday, Ben and I got all our winter gear on, and stomped out into the snow, and across our backyard to do a little sledding. Our hill is perfect — just the right height so that you can get some good speed up, but not so high as to be scary. We had a blast!
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-2573023490029619282&hl=en&fs=true

This morning I had to run into town for a breakfast meeting, and I awoke early to a fresh, soggy dumping of snow on the ground. The trip in was slow and terrifying, and there were a few points where I didn’t think I’d make it..
Going into town you go down a hill, and then have to climb back up it. Our little car, with its lousy summer tires (that we really can’t afford to replace with winter tires for the one year we’ll be driving it) barely made it. The steering wheel was pointed left, while the car was drifting right, catching purchase on the pavement with just enough frequency to correct course and make a little progress up the hill.
On the way home, I decided on a different, hopefully better-traveled route, and headed out of town toward the main highway. After about 20 minutes of even worse driving conditions than earlier in the day, I’d begun to second-guess that decision. I finally pulled onto the on-ramp, noticing for the first time how treacherous it was — its one of those ones built on an embankment, with a wicked curve to it.
As I rounded the terrifyingly slippery ramp onto the highway, this is what I saw:

They appeared to me, then, like heavily-armored guardian angels, charging shoulder to shoulder, on a mission from heaven to push back the howling forces of hell who, today, had taken the form of slush and thick wet snow. I settled in behind a salt-truck and felt every muscle in my body unclench as I relaxed for a slow-moving, but wonderfully safe trip down the highway, thanking God for snow plows, and the guys that sacrifice their good night’s sleep to pilot them…