State AP awards

As if I don't work enough, I headed to the Ohio Associated Press awards banquet yesterday. It was worth the time, however, as the speaker was pretty interesting, the food was excellent and, best of all, The Advocate hauled home a good number of awards.

As an editor, none of them actually had my name on them, of course, but it's still exciting to have been a part of many of them. The awards I played the biggest role in are general excellence (third place) and best daily sports section (third place).

The complete list of our awards is here.

Good weekend

We just wrapped up a great weekend, with three of our Harding friends (Jake, Lyz and Megan) in town to visit. Sunday, the girls went to see "Riverdance" while the guys took care of Abby. Other than that, we just hung out a lot and had a good time.

The other big news from the weekend happened Friday when Abby went back in for an appointment in the preemie clinic. She weighed in at 18 pounds, 3 ounces, so her amazing growth is continuing.

Most of the visit was a developmental check, during which the physical therapist used a lot of toys to assess Abby's cognitive development and motor skills. She tested extremely well (good standardized testing runs in the family!), scoring at or above where she should be in every category.

Abby's first Sunday

Yesterday was Abby's first time attending our home congregation in Columbus. She had attended church services twice before (once in Massachusetts, and last weekend in Cincinnati), but this was the first time most of the members at F&K had a chance to meet Abby in person.

Coincidentally, it also was the day she turned 10 months old.

As usual, Abby did exceptionally well. She was quite well behaved during both morning and evening services, only having to go out once toward the end of the evening service. Her worst behavior was her loud sucking when drinking her bottle -- hopefully, nobody was too bothered by that!

She was, of course, the star of the show, with countless people coming up to meet her. She handled it well, and even smiled most of the time. She even did well in the nursery while both of us went to Bible class.

It also was the first time ever Abby got to leave the apartment three times in one day. It was such a nice day that we took her for an afternoon walk.

Today's agenda: Abby needs a bath and another walk. Also, Bravo is showing a marathon of "The West Wing," so I'm sure that will keep my attention for the next few hours.

In bad news, Columbus-based Skybus shut down late Friday, forcing us to scramble to make alternate plans for our summer trips to Iowa and Massachusetts. Not cool.

17.5 pounds!

Abby had a follow-up appointment with her surgeon today, and the mere fact she's up to 17.5 pounds had him convinced that everything is fine. That's right: 17.5 pounds!

It's April, which means Abby now has been released from her virtual house arrest that was cold and flu season. We've taken her freedom quite seriously, taking her on our weekend trip to visit Jake and Lyz in Cincinnati over the weekend and then showing her off to Katrina's friends and colleagues at OSU today.

Next up is her first Sunday worshiping at our home congregation here in Columbus. We're looking forward to it, of course. It will be interesting to see how she handles it, although her response to larger groups of people thus far has been good.

Abby's latest photos are here.