Chip Bennett

As these are commercial Themes, you will need to consult the support offerings of the developer, StudioPress. Part of your purchase price for the Themes includes support.

If a Theme uses thumb.php, in any shape or form, run away screaming and find a Theme that implements core WordPress featured images/post thumbnails.

TimThumb is an inherent security risk, and an attack vector just waiting to be exploited.

First: if you’re using the static page called “Ticker” for your blog posts index, then that page is not using the sidebar-page.php template file. Per the Template Hierarchy, the Blog Posts index uses, in descending order, only one of the following template files:

1. home.php
2. index.php

So, since Twenty Eleven doesn’t include a home.php, the page is actually being rendered using index.php.

That’s really more just FYI, because the solution I propose doesn’t care what template file is being used. I would, instead of using query_posts(), filter pre_get_posts instead:

function mychildtheme_filter_pre_get_posts( $query ) {
    if ( is_page( get_option( 'page_for_posts' ) ) ) {
        $query->set( 'ignore_sticky_posts', true );
    }
    return $query;
}
add_filter( 'pre_get_posts', 'mychildtheme_filter_pre_get_posts' );

Add that to your child Theme’s functions.php file. It tells WordPress: “if this page is the page used to display the blog posts index, then modify the query to ignore sticky posts.”

The great benefit of this method (in addition to being, generally, cleaner) is that the query is modified before posts are queried – meaning that everything – including pagination – will work entirely as expected.

1) If you switch (temporarily) to Twenty Eleven, do you still observe this issue? If not, then the problem is Theme-related. In which case:
2) Where did you get the Apricot Theme?

As this is a commercial Theme, you should consult the support offerings of the developer, Elegant Themes.

Let me try to rephrase. 🙂

Does the actual page structure need to be this way, or simply the navigation menu?

Can you describe, in human terms what you’re trying to accomplish?

I can’t tell from your structure what you’re actually trying to do. Are you trying to make a page a child of itself? Or are you merely trying to modify the page list output/display?